Archive of Our Own ^beta

It's the oldest story in the book.

Women fall in love, Fate laughs. Hearts get broken, lives get stolen, people leave. Flowers wilt, tears fall, books burn. The World keeps turning. Time keeps running.

There is no hope for the oldest story in the book, it ends in tragedy.

***

Daisies are the first thing she remembers.

Or better yet, her mother's hand in hers is the first thing. The daisies come a moment later, when she looks up at the woman standing next to her and sees them blooming in her hair.

She's loved picking flowers her whole life, her hands grabbing at stems in the garden when she was barely taller than the wheelbarrow in the clumsy way of childlike fingers struggling to wrap around things. As a child of three or four she'd run out to gather the prettiest flowers she could find, and then wobble back to the house, her mother sat in the shade of the drawing room.

Elizabeth was a woman of many interests who wouldn't let her mind rest, always reaching for the next book, embroidery thread, music sheet, but she would always drop anything her industrious hands were holding at the sight of her beloved daughter. It was her favorite sight, Harriet in the muddy skirts the nurse had dressed her in that day, with a bouquet of mismatched wildflowers and a toothy grin.

"For you, Mama."

"Well, these might be my favorites yet."

"But you say that every day."

Elizabeth would only laugh and pull her daughter up onto the sofa next to her, muddy shoes and all, for there was no one to disapprove of how she brought up her child during those spring afternoons, when husbands are away and neighbors are too busy in town to call, and she'd gently pry the ensemble out of her daughter's hands to have a closer look. She'd hold each flower to her, let her smell it and say its name, she a nature-lover who had read many volumes about blooms in the quietness of a wife's life, and who had passed her passion to her sweet daughter, and then thread them carefully through their hair.

Harriet kept running around in her garden for a long time. She relished in the change she got to witness all year round: picking daffodils in April, watching the roses bloom slowly as the weather got warmer, see the grass fields get darker and dot themselves in white, hold her palm out the door during a sudden summer rainstorm feeling the heavy drops on her hand, count rainbow colors over the hills, witness the first leaf of the tree outside her window change to yellow and inevitably fall. Even winter was awaited with as much trepidation as the rest of the seasons, because besides the celebrations that would make any girl happy, Harriet watched nature lose its light and slowly close its eyes. She would open her window, only for a few seconds as the cold was too much to bear, and she'd listen to the world wrapped in snow, she would breathe in that feeling, the quiet of something that is so still you're not sure it's ever going to move again.

No sound, no life. Some years it felt like winter would go on forever, like it had somehow won. But she would always wake one morning to find that the snow had melted into dew and that the ground was thawing to spring once again.

Harriet has finally grown much taller than the sunflowers that are withering in the dusty September air, and, now a young woman, she walks briskly back into the house, with the intention of soaking in a long bath.

"Don't traipse all that mud through the house, please."

"I'm sorry, Mama."

"Would you go get some flowers for the dinner table? The Wilsons are coming."

"Father would rather you just got an arrangement delivered by the florist in town, I think."

"Your father doesn't appreciate freshly picked flowers like we do. Go on, I trust you'll bring back my favorites."

Boots laced up again Harriet wanders the garden, snapping stems with expert flicks of the wrist, gathering akin colors, picking some foliage to fill out the ensemble. She's become an expert at this, a young woman in her early twenties who has spent her life growing alongside the bluebells, whose roots feel almost as deep as the maple she's watched change leaves every year. She's learnt how to take care of this garden, how to hold petals softly, how to admire bees. But also how to shelter plants from storms, how to wait for the right season to plant bulbs, and how important it is for things to go back to the Earth so new ones can begin.

A red dot on her hand makes her smile, there's always so many lady birds flying around this time of year. But when she focuses she can't see the black dots, she can't see it move. And when she wipes it away it leaves a stain.

She tastes iron in her mouth before she's even realized that the dot on her hand was not a ladybird.

Blood.

She raises her head slowly, and she screams. Or she thinks she does. She can feel it, the scream, making its way through her body from the depth of her belly running through her lungs, it's tearing her open. But she doesn't hear it.

There's a man in front of her, one with a slit throat and eyes that look like glass. They're not in her garden, they're in an alley, and she grasps around her, having fallen to her knees without realizing it, but her hands meet dirty cobblestones rather than the soft ground she's so used to.

A shadow towers above the man on the ground, above her. He has a lost look in his eyes, a sway in his gait as he steps towards her. She instinctively retracts, gasping for air, her throat dry, the alley and the man spinning around her in a dance of shapes and outlines as she tries to make sense of the scene.

It must be a dream. She must have slipped and hit her head on a rock in the garden, and now her body is lying in the grass but her mind is running wild. It must have been that new book her mother's reading and left on the sofa, it's a mystery story about a man who gets killed. Admittedly by his business partner in his office. But this can only be a dream, an hallucination, fueled by her mother's passion for novels.

And yet the scratch in her throat feels real, the pavement digging into her knees feels real, the man lying so close to her feels real. The shadow standing next to him, staring at her as if she holds any answers, feels real too.

He takes another step towards her, and when he finally catches a glimpse of her he steps back, tripping on his own feet, arms out and shaking hands.

"No, please, don't take me, it's not fair! It's not fair!" He shouts, turning his face away from her, as if he could hide his whole body behind his hands.

Harriet is dizzy but finally grounds her hands in front of her and pushes herself off the floor.

This has to be a dream. She used to dream all sorts of things when she was younger, when her mother would tell her stories before bed making them up as she went along. Dreams of far away realms, of forgotten cities, of sea adventures, of stars, of pirates, of daughters. Of mothers. And though her dreams changed as she got older, as she grew out of calling her mother's name in the middle of the night when waking up from a nightmare, she still dreams most nights of people she doesn't know and places she hasn't seen, as they entwine in stories that remind her of the ones her mother used to tell. She knows how dreams feel, how things look and bend and fall in and out of focus, and this one is foreign land. But it has to be a dream, she can't possibly come up with another explanation.

She steps towards the man. Not sure what has taken over her body, she slowly puts one foot in front of the other. He is backed against a wall now, trying desperately to keep his face turned away. Harriet stops right inches from him.

A dream. It has to be.

There's a doorframe to her right: an entrance or an exit based on what you want to see in it, no clear path ahead just mist and dull light. She doesn't have to turn to see it's there, she can feel it, she can see it in her mind. She doesn't say anything, she's not sure she can. But the man looks at her, finally, after what feels like an eternity. Then he lowers his arms, he steals one last look at himself on the ground, and walks through to the other side.

The alley has stopped spinning, Harriet is staring at the wall in front of her now, where a minute ago the face of the man was, still trying to wrap her head around why he would be so terrified of her. She's just a woman.

Then she turns her head, and sees her own reflection in the window of the building next to her. She expects the round face she meets in every mirror of her house, the one she glimpses at when she's getting ready in a rush to go into town, the one that looked the same to her for a long time until she looked one day and she was completely different - in the sneaky way of days changing you through the years - she expects to see herself, as anyone would.

Looking back is someone else. Something else.

She's back in her garden, knees sinking into the moist ground of early evening, the flowers she'd gathered scattered around her like unclaimed bodies, petals missing and stems bent out of shape as if she'd thrown them down herself.

When she screams this time she can hear every single bloodcurdling moment of it.

It had to be a dream. And yet she knows in her heart, and deeper than that, in every bone in her body, that it wasn't.

***

It happens again, and again, and again.

Standing in the ribbon shop with her mother, as Mrs Jones rummages through boxes to find the right shade of pink, Harriet's in a room she doesn't recognize, an old man surrounded by his family stands next to his body lying in the bed.

Thumbing through the pages of a book spread out over the sofa in the drawing room, the fire crackling in the hearth, then sitting on a low stone wall watching a cottage burn, the screams of a father reaching her ears.

Walking in the market choosing carrots and apples, watching a child balled up in the corner of his hospital room as the parent's sobs tear the room.

Somewhere between the dark alley and the endless bedrooms she stopped screaming, she stopped fighting it. She's gotten better at walking the line, at jumping from reality to dreams and back without losing track of where she is or what she's doing, and if people have noticed the empty look in her eyes or her lips mouthing silent words for a second then no one mentions.

Every strategy was considered: stopping people from becoming corpses, running away, closing her eyes and shutting her ears willing it to pass; but whatever her intentions are she's brought back to the same scene over and over again. Until she looks at the shadows, at the people, and leads them to the door she's stuck there. She hasn't walked through yet - she still thinks this is some sort of trick her sick mind is playing but she's not fully sure, and crossing the threshold might just be admitting defeat to the designs of her psyche.

All she does now is lie awake at night, waiting for the inevitable moment when she'll be ripped from her bed and thrown into another version of this sick game she can't seem to win.

Whether they are dreams or hallucinations she knows they would be enough to get her isolated from society so she keeps living as if they're not happening. She wakes up and slips into dresses left on the chaise for her, opens a book in the drawing room turning pages after what would look like an appropriate amount of time to her mother, embroidering the napkins for her daughter's eventual trousseau on the opposite sofa, goes for a walk into town, careful to avoid crowded streets and the promenade through the park, escaping the risk of running into her family's acquaintances.

Harriet is not completely delusional, she knows her parents have noticed the changes, the same ones she sees in herself daily - the skin under her eyes tinting purple a bit more every morning, the tremble in her hands that she can't seem to be able to steady anymore, the way she startles at sudden noises, at tree branches against windows, at doors slamming, at books falling from the shelves. If they're worried about her they don't let it show too much, she's sure her father is chalking it up to young women's flare for the dramatic and has talked Elizabeth into listening to him, for once.

She doesn't know what she'd be able to say if they asked - that she's being haunted by her own mind but it feels as normal as drinking tea downstairs? That she sees people leave this world every day and she feels it's somehow her fault? That the veil between dream and reality is getting so thin she thinks it'll rip to shreds and she doesn't know if she'll be able to recognize up from down if it does?

The garden doesn't see her much anymore, it's winter by now and the paths lie unwalked, the bulbs unplanted, and the few evergreen uncared for. She's a shell of herself by the time the frost of December lands on the tips of everyone's noses, having given up on a lot of her routines to spend time in her room, with the excuse of the weather confining her.

Some days, when it's fragment after fragment of places that are not her home, she's not against bashing her head against the wall. Just to make it end. To go back to who she was before, to her careless days picking wildflowers for dinners with the Wilsons, to her mother placing buds in her hair to match her own.

A soft knock and her mother's head poking through the door. She seems almost scared to see what her daughter's room holds now that she's drifting far from the girl she was, and her knitted eyebrows relax a bit when she clocks her sat at the edge of the bed.

"Jim Wright is here to see you" she whispers, which in the quiet of the bedroom sounds like a scream. "I think it would be very nice if you came downstairs to meet him, he is in the drawing room."

"Of course" Harriet smiles and stands, hoping for peace for just a little bit longer.

Jim Wright is one of her father's assistants at the press, a young boy she met for the first time when she visited her father's office a couple of months ago. Now he's standing in her drawing room, talking to her father, before smiling at her, hands gripping the brim of his hat.

"I know it's cold, but would you like to take a walk in the garden? You could point out your favorite flowers, your mother was telling me you're a lover of nature."

"There won't be a lot out there." She pauses. "It's winter, you see."

He colors slightly, fumbling over his words to agree that of course, there won't be many flowers, but he would love to see the grounds nonetheless.

Harriet didn't mean to embarrass him. Not entirely, at least. She's not a fool, she's an educated woman from a wealthy family, she's received her share of lessons, she's been loved by her mother, she's enjoyed her youth and freedom in her garden. She knows what the next step is, she knows this is the part of her life where her mother introduces her to the available suitors and she wades through them, picky enough to choose a good match but not enough to madden her parents.

Her friends, or the ones who were her friends back when she was still herself, the Abigails and Mollys and Charlottes she grew up beside, giggled with, and swapped ribbons with, have all been ahead of her, waiting intrepidly for the best matches their parents could find, hoping they wouldn't just be advantageous ties but that they'd lead to love.

What a wild thing, love. Wilder than any of the flowers Harriet has seen grow and wilt in her garden through all the years she's walked this Earth for.

"I apologize, Mr Wright, it would be my pleasure to show you the grounds."

Love doesn't exactly strike her as she walks out the door next to Jim, their shoulder brushing as they head around the house to the garden. But then again, she's not sure she knows love, really.

Love has been explained to her as many things in many ways, and as she steps on frozen ground that will yield blooms again in a few months she tries to see if any of them apply to the young man who is rambling on about printing ink, hands buried in his pockets.

Love comes overflowing of her mother’s poetry books, old verses written by people long turned to dust whose words resonate through centuries, painting pictures of hearts breaking and mending.

Love's preached about every Sunday in the little church on the town square that her family goes to, God's love so big it's unthinkable, so wide and so vast that she couldn't comprehend it if she tried, a love that knows no bounds - a love conditional on a life walked on straight, right tracks, a light that you only get to bask in if you are pure, and honest.

Harriet sees love in nature all the time: in the way bees dust themselves of pollen and fly heavy and slow from one flower to the next to spread life, in the way trees trunks will wrap around each other or branches reach across, it's in her mother's crystal clear laughter, in her father's sparing kisses on her forehead. It's in her closest friend Caroline's eyes lighting up when she walks in a room and sees her, in the way their hands fit together palm against palm, in the empty space between them as they lie on their sides looking at each other with candles casting a shadow from the two bedside tables after dinner parties.

Wilder than any flower she'd ever seen bloom, love.

Jim is sturdy and sensible, he would make a good future. Not that it matters anymore to her. Wild love doesn't matter when all she does is haunted by the knowledge that another world will claim her whenever it wants at any time and she is powerless to it.

They stop at the edge of the garden, where the curated bushes give way to a slope leading into the woods, Jim is talking about their next issue, something about a play being put on, but Harriet feels the air move around her as if she were sat in her room and there was a draft.

When she looks behind her she's in a sun dappled room, the curtains billowing in the wind. The wallpaper is all trees and animals, the blanket on the floor a pale pink.

There's a woman sitting on a rocking chair, Rio walks towards her before realizing the woman's eyes are looking right through her. It's not her. But there's no one else there.

Harriet scans the room, before her gaze falls on the wooden cot in the corner. Her lungs are squeezed out of all the oxygen.

When she looks over the side there's a little girl staring right up at her, big eyes, hands in fists, wonky toothless smile.

The baby's head rests in the crook of Harriet's arm, when she picks her up from the bed, bouncing up and down instinctively as if this soul needs calming. She doesn't, she's content grabbing a fistful of Harriet's hair in a firm grip.

Her mother rocks back and forth absentmindedly, staring straight ahead, straight through Harriet and her daughter standing just in front of her. Eyes red-rimmed, streaks of tears, mouthing silent words.

Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte.

Harriet looks down at the bundle in her arms. Charlotte.

It will rip her mother apart, Harriet knows. She walks away with this woman's child anyway. There's nothing else she can do.

When she turns again she's standing next to Jim.

How could she ever think it'd be possible to live with this curse?

"Take me home, please."

***

The halo of a candle isn't as wide as you think, but it's enough for Harriet to write the letter she's been drafting in her mind since that fateful evening in September. She folds it in half, debates whether writing “Elizabeth” or “Mama” on it, knows that it won't soften any of the words inside. So she scribbles “Mama”, blows out the candle and leaves through the back door in the kitchen.

The pull in her ribcage is too strong, and her resolve not to turn back dissipates. The house sits quiet in the deep of the night, windows dark, curtains drawn, her room up on the first floor - this is the place that made her, that gave her life, that gave her all these years of happiness and boredom and excitement, it hurts to leave it all behind. But she already has.

She needs time, she thinks. Time to figure out who she is now, she needs the freedom of screaming if she needs, of tearing herself apart at the seams with her own hands. She doesn't know it yet, but time will be all she has.

Elizabeth will wake up in the morning, with a soft knock on the door by their maid, followed by her husband rolling out of bed headed for work. She'll sit for breakfast, reading the paper folded in front of her plate of eggs, and then pick out a project to dedicate her day to. She'll only head up to her daughter's room hours later, not having seen her yet at almost lunchtime.

An empty bed, a burnt out candle, her name in black ink on a folded paper resting on a desk. She'll read this, already fearing what it might say:

Dear Mama,
I can't do this. Not anymore. Something happened in September. I am not myself, I haven't been for a while. I need to go. I remember the daisies in your hair, when I was a child and you'd walk with me through the garden. I will not forget that light. Please, don't remember me as anything but that innocent child.
Your beloved daughter,
Rio.

Elizabeth will let her thumb brush over her daughter's signature, the shortened name she'd whispered to her when she was just a baby in her arms like all loving mothers do to their children.

Out the window the garden is bare, and yet she still sees an adventurous toddler running through the tall grass, the ghost of a world as bright as gold and as promising as the Spring, that seemed only theirs and the flowers'. She'll keep looking until the shadows will fade out of her eyes and back into her memory, knowing she won't see her daughter walking those steps again.

But Rio won't know how desperately her mother will cling to the memories, or how her tears will warm her cheeks in the afternoons for many years to come. All she knows is walking ahead. What she wants is her old life back, what she needs is to figure this out, what she does, once she reaches the depth of the woods, is crumble.

***

There were no lessons this time, no masters. This was not learning flower names as her mother held them in her soft hands or word sounds as she pointed at letters on dusty books and mouthed along. This was finding the rules and the logic of a world that should have never existed in the first place.

The thought of ending it all had gone through her mind more than a couple of times, shaping into a practical plan as soon as she'd been far away from her town not to hear the Puritan preacher's booming voice echoing in her head that taking your own life was one of the greatest sins. As if it still mattered. As if it was the greatest sin she'd commit.

She'd jumped off a bridge the first time. The instant she held in the air as she was falling was almost magical, the fields silent around her, her body emptying of thoughts rapidly. The impact crushed her breath and her bones, and she sank to darkness, stones in her pockets. For a second there was nothing.

Then the sky again, as she opened her eyes slowly on the grassy bank, only a few miles from the bridge. Lying there she tried to catch her breath, spitting the river back up drop by drop, her lungs on fire. Drowning burns. How ironic.

The next time she tried to hang herself, not seeing how the system could fail. The rope was sturdy enough, thrown over a tree branch. It dug into her neck, her hands instictively rushing to it. The woods going out of focus as she blacked out, as breathing became harder and harder and then impossible.

But all she did was find herself lying under the tree, the stool she'd kicked away not far from her. The leafy branches covering the sun.

Not against harsher methods, she tried stabbing herself with a dagger she'd stolen from a blacksmith in a village she was passing through, a curved blade that left her bleeding but not enough to rid the Earth of her.

She wasn't invulnerable, but if the scientific method meant anything, she was immortal.

So she went on to find the rules, for if she wasn't going to get out of this then she was going to control it.

Air vibrates at a certain frequency the moment before she finds herself in front of a corpse, so she gets better at picking up the signals, at noticing how air shifts, how sound quietens, knowing when she's needed and where.

Matter is clay in her hands, she finds. She starts easy, waving her hand to revive a dead tulip. The smile that crosses her face when she realizes she can do things she never thought possible is almost childlike.

Dealing with people becomes easier too, once she gives in to fighting. She finds strength she never built in her body and, as souls try to escape her, she sharpens her skills until combat is as natural as walking.

A cabin in the forest is all she claims as home, though she thinks she doesn't need one anymore, she could just wander the Earth forever, from corpse to corpse and not feel the cold, the loneliness, the . She's not sure and she doesn't want to test that theory yet though. So Rio watches the days turn into nights and the weeks fold into each other as the months chase after one another on the almanacs, her days marked by leading souls through the door, into the other side, where they dissolve in something much greater than she will ever be able to grasp. She has no family left, no mundane task to fill her time, no human job to fill. She conjures simple gowns and capes every morning, tends to her gardens, walks for miles.

With nothing around her except flashes of other people's demises she withers away slowly like roses in August, browning petals turning sour on the flowerbeds. All she is is what she does now.

On a quiet night she blinks and she's in the woods, walking towards corpses, the waning moon as thin as a scythe in the sky making its way through the sparser areas. An energy she doesn't recognize envelops her and makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Her hand finds the hilt on the knife by her side and rests there, the heaviness against her side soothing the

There's a few bodies lying on the ground, on their backs, their faces drained of color, crumpled like old paper. They lie like petals.

Rio sees her first, the woman in the middle of it all. Unkempt hair, long skirts and hunched shoulders.

It's not the first time someone's around at a passing, Rio's seen plenty of people crying over their loved ones as she led them onto the next part of their existence. She moves forward, the underbrush shifting under her feet.

The air almost crackles when the woman whips around, hands outstretched, and looks straight at her.

She doesn't flinch at her horrible form, at how her face is morphed in a skull when she's doing her job. If Rio wasn't mistaken, her eyes almost glint for a second - curiosity? Excitement? Recognition?

"Are you here for me?"

Rio shakes her head slowly. The woman lowers her arms.

"I'm here for them," she nods at the bodies.

The wind through the leaves is the only sound that fills the woods as they find themselves breathing in unison. They stare at each other, waiting on who will break away first, who will make the first move.

They've found themselves on a chess board playing a game they're not sure they know the rules of yet. But they're in it now.

Rio takes a step forward. The woman stays where she is.

Their eyes are still boring into each other's souls hoping to read something neither of them finds.

Rio knows she should be collecting souls, she knows they might slip away otherwise. And yet she's looking at this young woman in front of her, still standing amongst the carnage. She hasn't run, she hasn't screamed.

Rio tilts her head, slightly, without realizing, in the simple way she's always done and hasn't shaken off yet.

The woman does something Rio didn't think someone looking at her would ever do again. She smiles.

"Who are you?"

Rio feels time stand still.

"Death."

***

Cold is the first thing she remembers.

Pulling a thin scratchy blanket over herself while trying to sleep, apparently an unwinnable feat in the nipping cold of late October New England.

Agatha tosses again, on the pile of hastily put together wood and straw that counts as her bed. She's in a corner of the living room, next to the fireplace that lies silent, ashes as the only proof that a fire ever took home in there. The house lies quiet, in the dead of night, the village outside asleep, no restless souls, all workers catching the few hours of rest they're allowed before returning to fields and shops and children dreaming of dragons and fairies. A couple of miles away the bigger houses of the gentry sit dark too, the newspaper editors, the heads of high street businesses.

To Agatha it feels like she is the only child in the world awake, the only person feeling anything.

The house creaks, in the way wooden walls held up with rusting nails and a lot of hope do, and she looks around her, for the noise, for her mother.

Evanora rests on a bed as uncomfortable as her daughter's on the other side of the room, her chest rising and falling in a rhythm that the child can't seem to sync with.

Agatha feels the cold seeping through her clothes, digging into her skin, crawling through her veins, freezing her breath. It turns the tears rolling down her cheeks into icy trails that burn her skin. She wishes more than anything to be warm, it's the only thing she wants. She doesn't notice it at first, focused as she is on wiping her face with her sleeve, but she hears it after a couple of seconds. The crinkling noise of wood burning. She sees the glow in the room, and when she finally looks at the fireplace, she finds an alive flame burning away at fat logs.

That was almost... Magic.

Agatha doesn't care whether it was witchcraft or pure accident, she just holds her hands to the fire and feels the sensation coming back to her fingertips.

"What did you do Agatha?" It's her mother voice, an edge in her tone that makes the child recoil from the warmth, flinching away from the woman.

"I'm sorry I was just so cold. I just wished to be warm." The little girl explains, barely above a whisper. "I just wanted to be warm."

Evanora's lips stretch out in a smile. Her daughter burned a fire just by thinking about it, there must be a lot of power stored into that tiny mind.

The way that her power made her warm, how it fixed that chill in her bones, will always be tied to that first memory Agatha has. Cold might be the first thing she remembers, but magic is what she will cling onto for a very long time. And how her mother looked at her with, dare she say, pride.

***

"Again."

"Mother, please."

"I said again."

Agatha draws a sharp breath and tries to focus on the flower pot in front of her. Clear mind, clear intentions. A wave of her hand makes it fly a couple of feet and topple over,

"You're not a child anymore, Agatha. You should be strong enough to make it shatter."

Evanora has been particularly dedicated to her daughter's magical abilities through her whole life. She could never deny hoping that when she gave birth and was told it was a girl, that she would turn out to be a witch like her.

Some witches had natural powers, others became witches as they cultivated the craft, but all had to improve on what they were given. Agatha had certainly been given a lot, apt as she was at thinking hard enough to make things true or wiggling her fingers and making disasters happen to amuse herself, but she still needed guidance. The child, however, was not very inclined to directions. Too busy enjoying flying over rivers in a leap, mustering objects from thin air, completing chores in seconds, to focus on the boring details of incantations.
Her mother's coven is the main part of Agatha's social life as she grows up. Women of varying ages who rely on each other for help and support, who share caulderons and books, who forage for herbs together, light bonfires and count stars. They teach Agatha what they know, the small spells to make , how to fly, the harder magic that needs a whole group. And yet they all look at her with the wisdom of the centuries they carry on their backs as if this child getting taller every year, mastering her craft, drinking in lessons, is a threat - as if this witch could be their demise. Her own mother feels it, that something inside her is not right, is not good, her mother who tried to love her but never really could, twisting her lack of attachement to something that's the girl's fault, and could be remedied if she got better.

Agatha's kept at arm's length, living at the outskirts of a coven that should be based on accepting sisters, and the resentment blooms slowly. Part of a coven she doesn't really belong to. And she doesn't know why - sure, she might have a particular tendency to a darker spell or two but she tries, so hard. But she stays a piece in the wrong jigsaw puzzle.

Life is slow and steady in their small village, as they try to remain incospicuous, going to work at the village inn and coming home at night to rosemary on the door. Agatha slowly learns how to channel her thoughts into latin words that yield her what she wants, learns to let the purple magic flow through her in the right way, learns what it means to be a witch and what she can do with her knowledge. She works from as soon as she can, along her mother scrubbing floors at the inn, watching the village girls and boys through the windows walk down beaten pathways, more groups she's never belonged in.

It doesn't matter. She has her magic. She has her mother's coven. It doesn't matter, right?

Sundays they go to church, like the whole town does. They sit on a pew towards the back. The sermons are long and their minister enjoys every moment of preaching. He talks of compassion, of lost sheep, of a second coming, and somehow it all goes back to purity. Pure souls will go to Heaven.

Agatha used to look at the altar growing up, after her mother had scolded her, after she'd kissed a girl for the very first time, after she'd wanted to hurt someone so bad that she did, and hope that her magic could make her pure, hope there was a remedy out there for everything that was wrong with her. There's a version of herself, she still thinks, that her mother loves, that her coven fully accepts, that loves men in the way a woman is supposed to. There's a version of herself that will be saved. She just has to be strong enough to surrender.

***

Katherine is one of the prettiest girls in the village. Golden locks, dainty hands that have never touched a hand tool, dimples in pale cheeks. She is the Governor's daughter, oldest of five well-groomed children always impeccably dressed and behaved. She helps the minister's wife with her toddlers, bows her head at the military men who know her father, bakes cakes for the less fortunate, and reads books to her younger siblings. She accepts flowers from suitors with a polite smile, helps the maid set the table for dinner, understands the county's policies, and horse rides gracefully through town.

She's also gasping for air in between sloppy kisses pushed against the back wall of the apothecary, Agatha's lips on her neck.

When they break apart their eyes meet, Katherine's cheeks flushed, Agatha's lips slightly parted, the shadow of a smirk.

"It's warm today." Katherine manages to spit out while catching her breath.

"It is. They say a summer storm is coming."

They don't move, wooden planks digging into Katherine's back, her skirt riding up on her thigh, their bodies flushed against each other, hips pushing on hips, hands resting on each other's bodies.

This isn't their first rodeo. It's merely a passtime. One that is way very more exciting than cricket.

Agatha's kissed more than one person behind this building - Thomas's lips tasted of burnt from the hours he spent hammering metal near the fire, Mary's rough and callous hands made her shiver as they made way through her white blouse - so she's used to the feeling.

The squeeze in the pit of her stomach is just the inevitable consequence of weekly mass, she know. Agatha knows the minister might close an eye to Robert if they got married but he would never forgive her Katie. And yet, Katherine's kisses are sweet as the apples that she picks right off the trees in September when they're as red and ripe as they'll ever be.

"You should go, your father will be wondering why you're not saving a kitten from a ditch." Agatha says pushing herself off the woman. She smoothes her dirty frock down, as if it could ever match Katherine's embroidered corset.

Katie doesn't smile, she just fixes the ribbon in her hair, and walks away. Agatha takes her place, rests her back against the wall for a second, pushing the moment she has to go back home to her mother a little longer.

The summer heat has burnt the grass a bit, so the field stretching in front of her colors of yellows and oranges as if it was Autumn. She likes to imagine what Katherine is doing now, what all the people who walk away from her do right after, and she sees her making her way back to the house at the end of the high street, next to the church, where she will open the door and go upstairs to the bedroom, slip off her shoes, sink into her bed. Cry for what she's done. Then get on her knees and pray. Hoping that begging for forgiveness will be enough for god to forgive her.

If Agatha thinks of them all, of the others and of how she's the bad seed in their lives, then she can swallow the guilt that slowly corrodes her insides down enough to be forgotten. Though she can always feel it making its way back up again.

She has thought many times about confessing her sins, asking forgiveness, pleading to her mother, to her coven, to her preacher - there's a small part of her that has always wanted to be good, to go back and try again, to be like all the other girls. But sinning is as sweet as apples. And she can't help but bite every single time.

***

When she looks for more she doesn't mean to defy her mother. All she wants is more knowledge. She wants answers about the details of witchcraft and she wants to look for them herself. A part of her just wants to see where the line is. And how far she can push it.

When her mother finds her whispering dark magic she has never seen such disappointment and anger. But also resignation, as if Evanora had always known this was inevitable.

The leaves crunch under their feet as she's dragged to the woods, a pyre waiting to be burnt.

"I always wanted you to be a witch, but I never wanted you to be this. You have betrayed your coven."

"I have not!"

Tears are streaming down her face, she can convince them, she's sure. There's enough of an actress in her to make them see she's innocent.

Agatha's favorite skill is lying, she can work her way through this.

"You violated our oath of secrecy. You stole knowledge above your age and station. You practiced the darkest of magic."

"I know nothing of these crimes, I swear it-"

"Enough deception!"

"I did not break your rules. They simply bent to my power."

The act drops, cheeks still salty. If she can't beat them appealing to their humanity maybe she can do it with the steel in her.

"Then you only deserve this."

Agatha's breath hitches in her throat, a mother would never choose a coven over her own daughter would she? A coven would never listen even if she did.

There has to be something under all the layers of contempt her mother has shown her through the years, under all the detachment, there still has to be some of that admiration Agatha saw in her eyes when she lit a fire the first time, admiration that she wanted so hard to be love. There has to be love for her own daughter at the center of a mother.

And yet Agatha finds herself bound by magic that she's not strong enough to fight, not when all her coven members are whispering incantations and waving hands at her.

"Mortem prodigio et monstro... "

The girl gasps for words that could make her mother understand this was in the name of growing her craft like she's always been pushed to do.

Agatha regrets all of it. Every single thing she's done in her life until now. Looking for answers in what she knew her mother would never approve of, lying, stealing, straying. Regrets her ambition, her hubris, her desire. Her inability to stay pure, to stay on the path, to not give in to temptation. If she could go back and do it all again she would in a heartbeat. She'd cut away every single part of herself to fit the mold she was meant to, she'd ignore her wants, her needs, her dreams, she'd fold away any plan - if she could go back and just try again she would live the life she was supposed to.

"Please. I can be good."

"No. You cannot."

Agatha has been powerless her whole life. She was bound by her condition, by her mother and her coven putting limitations to her magic, by boys tossing her aside, by preachers reminding her every day how her life was not going to lead to salvation. But now she can feel the power coursing through her veins. Now she knows what she was missing.

***

Killing the second time is easier than the first. It's a coven she runs into while she's roaming the woods, days after she killed her own mother, her face still imprinted in her eyelids.

Too good to resist. The witches blast her with magic before she's even finished an incantation against them, and as she drains them she can see their pleading eyes, hears their screams, their bodies folding on themselves. Then they fall.

It's a soft noise that makes her turn around. A few feet away stands a woman. Though she isn't a woman, not completely. She wears a face of bones, but her eyes are like any others'. Agatha looks straight in them, and they're a few feet away but she tries to reach in anyway. They're big enough she could get lost in there.

"Are you here for me?" She asks, rearing at the thought of using her new-found powers.

She shakes her head, and Agatha lowers her arms, in what might be a reckless gesture.

"I'm here for them." She nods at the bodies on the ground.

The woman, or whatever she is, holds a flower in her hand, she turns it and turns it without paying attention, as if it's second nature to hold the petals between her fingers. Adrenaline is still rushing through Agatha's whole body, and if this was any other night and they weren't in the woods surrounded by the bodies of dead coven members she wouldn't think twice about closing the distance between them. The list of her irredeemable sins grows longer by the minute, and yet she feels the other woman's is almost as long as hers somehow.

Then she tilts her head, in the natural way that anyone would, and a smile stretches Agatha's lips. Because under all that, is a woman. And Agatha's no gambler but she'd be willing to bet right now, this is a life-changing moment.

Agatha has an inkling of who she is, but she wants to see how far she's willing to go.

"Who are you?"

Agatha feels time stand still.

"Death."

***

"What am I supposed to call you?"

"You are not supposed to call me anything, because you should be gone by the time I get here, people usually don't bother me at this point."

"I can't call you Death, it's too... dramatic." Agatha takes no notice.

"Death isn't my name, it's just who I am." Rio says sharply.

"Right."

"Rio. You can call me Rio. But hopefully you won't need to."

"I wouldn't count on that." They can't see each other's mirroring smirks, facing different ways. "Rio."

***

"We have to stop meeting like this." Rio sighs, balancing her knife in her hand to keep herself busy.

"You're the one following me, my love."

"Occupational hazard."

"Right, I forget you only show up because it's your job. Nothing to do with..." Agatha waves a hand between them. "This."

"Don't flatter yourself, my love. If you stopped..." Rio nods at the bodies. "Then I'd be able to get a good night's sleep once in a while."

"Oh come on I'm sure you enjoy your sleepless nights with me."

***

"You know you can just call, you don't have to, you know..."

"But it wouldn't be as fun then, would it?"

Sure, Agatha enjoys the killing, the power rushing through her body, making her stronger. But she'd be lying if she didn't admit that the brunette who comes along to collect the dead is a good incentive to keep going.

"You think of this as fun?"

"You don't?"

"You mean reaping souls and ferrying them to the other side? No, not exactly."

"What is your idea of fun then?"

"Running into you is... interesting. And I guess interesting's half the fun."

"What's the other half?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

***

"This one wasn't my fault. I promise." Agatha tells the truth for once.

"Pardon me if I don't believe you."

"Ouch."

"You don't have a great track record."

"I wouldn't lie to you."

"Well, it's hard to trust a witch who killed her own coven."

It throws Agatha off balance for a split second.

"How did you..."

"Rumors about people like you run fast."

"Well, rumors aren't the whole truth."

***

"There's easier ways to make friends than to kill people to see me, Agatha."

"Oh so we're friends now?"

"I'm not sure, ask me again when there's not a corpse lying between us."

"Again? Planning on seeing me again then?"

"You think this is what I look forward to every day?"

"I think you'd miss me if I stopped."

"I think you're a very confident witch."

"I think you like to pretend this doesn't give you a rush."

***

"What the hell, Agatha."

Rio's gotten too used to this cat and mouse catch-me-if-you-can game they've got going on, and she'd lie if she said that finding herself in a forest picking up on a certain witch's energy doesn't thrill her.

Tonight is different though, Agatha is usually towering over a corpse or two with a smirk on her face, while this time the bodies are bent at weird angles and the ground is scorched in different places, remnants of a fight no one got to see.

"They came at me. There's people after me." Agatha is clutching her side, and barely manages to get her words out before tumbling forward trying to walk. Rio catches her without even realizing she's moved, the woman pressed against her side. "I told you, it's not always my fault."

"You didn't have to get stabbed, there's ways to get my attention that involve less blood loss." Rio nervously laughs, wondering if there's anything she can do. She's never tried to heal anyone, but who knows what she's capable of. Wouldn't want to lose a sparring partner.

"None that have you rush this quickly."

"You know I rushed for him." Rio nods at the guy on the ground.

"Always hung up on the details." Agatha inhales sharply as pain shoots up her side.

Rio grimaces as the other woman holds her hand over her wound.

"Is it..."

"I'm fine, I need to go or someone else might find me."

When Agatha lifts her eyes from her bloody hand she's looking straight into Rio's. They're inches away from each other.

"For someone who's supposed to be on the run you're not doing a lot of running." It's a whisper.

Agatha pushes herself off the woman and wobbles away. Slowly. Painfully.

"You could just-" Rio starts. Agatha holds her breath. "I have a house. It's small and it's quiet. No one will look for you there. You can stay."

"Are you offering to help?"

"It's what friends do I've been told. Are you coming?"

***

So they share a house. Death and a witch. Who would have ever thought.

Agatha's wound is deeper than either of them thought, and Rio can't help but fight as hard as she can to ignore the veil around them vibrating. It's not Agatha's time. And if it is, Rio turns a blind eye. The world warps at its edges but Rio only places a cold compress on Agatha's forehead as she sleeps.

Then one morning her fever breaks. And the birds start singing.

The world has kept going.

Rio opens the windows, the fresh air filling the room.

Agatha is still asleep, a bead of sweat rolling off her forehead. Rio brushes a strand of hair away from her face, watches the steady rise and fall of her chest, and breathes a sigh of relief herself. Alive.

Outside, the bluebells, the cowslips, the primrose and the cornflower all bloom at the same time.

Agatha gets back on her feet, and to her craft, quickly. Practicing spells she knows by heart and trying incantations she wants to refine, she thumbs through the pages of dusty old books she steals, and picks flowers in the mornings.

Rio watches the garden prosper and brings back fruit from the neighbouring towns, jumps from job to job without noticing people anymore, only getting souls through to go back to quiet. To go back home.

And if Agatha disappears sometimes and comes back with a wild look in her glistening eyes, Rio doesn't question it.

If Agatha asks "How does it feel to take souls?" and Rio pauses for a moment before admitting the forbidden, "Sometimes the screams sound like music", and Agatha smiles, the only witnesses are the poppies swaying in the wind.

If they feel the pull deep in the pit of their stomach when they stare at the ceiling at night, divided by a thin wall and their broken pasts, if they fall asleep to the comfort of each other's presence under the same roof, no one will give voice to the secret.

It's a quiet Spring evening when they sit on the edge of their roof - reaching the roof in one easy leap is definitely high on the list of witches' perks - swinging their legs as they bite into the apricots from the market, juice running down their chins.

Rio throws the pit in the garden, back to the Earth, to grow into their own apricot tree. Agatha throws her a look.

"It's the natural order of all things. Out of death, life." Rio shrugs.

Agatha throws the one in her hand two. Maybe they'll have matching apricot trees.

"So have you always enjoyed killing or is it a recent interest?"

"You don't beat around the bush."

"I haven't been around a lot of people recently." Rio shrugs. She left politeness on the threshold of the kitchen she ran out of long ago.

"It gives me power. It

"But if it didn't, would you do it anyway?"

The silence is deafening.

"My mother was right." Agatha's smile is bitter on her lips.

"Your mother tied you at the stake and tried to kill you."

"I used to conjure frogs in Mrs Hill's buckets when I was a kid. I'd always fall asleep in church. It took me ages to learn to write because I kept getting distracted. I used to kiss boys behind the apothecary. I used to kiss girls behind the apothecary." At this Agatha steals a glance at Rio, the other woman doesn't move an inch. "I used to steal fresh bread. I tried to learn dark magic by myself because I thought I was better than my whole coven. I was a menace."

"No, you weren't. You were a child, Agatha."

"A sin-inclined child. Now a witch-killer. The sins multiply."

"As if it matters anyway."

"What, a pretty girl like you doesn't want to go to heaven?"

"You give up on heaven when you're Death, a smart girl like you should know."

"Not pretty? Straight to the heart. So what, you can't die?"

"Doesn't look like it, no." She does consider whether sharing what's on the tip of her tongue, on an evening as clear as this, when it looks like the stars might just stop moving for once. "Believe me. I've tried."

Agatha tries to mask her surprise. Proof that people are never just black or white. Oh, how gray they both are.

"Drowning, stabbing, a few other not exactly easy methods. Nothing worked."

"How does it feel? Trying to die?"

"It burns. Doesn't matter which way you try, it burns you. Until it doesn't anymore."

The wind whistles, their hands are a whisper away from each other.

"Then I'd wake up from each attempt and remember, and it would burn again. A lot worse than before."

"You can't die but you can feel pain?" Agatha asks, looking at the moon painting Rio's profile etheral paleness. Rio doesn't have the strength to look back. Not yet.

"Yes."

"Can you feel everything else too?"

***

It's the smell that tips her off, before she's even opened her eyes.

Lilies.

It has filled the hallway she's standing in. Her childhood hallway.

Rio's parents' bedroom door left ajar.

This moment has been dreaded for a long time, and knowing it was going to happen at some point doesn't soften the panic rising in Rio's chest.

Harriet, she's probably still just Harriet under this roof.

How she finds the courage to enter the room is beyond her.

There, sat on the edge of the bed is her mother, in the green gingham dress she used to love as a child, with the big pockets and the wooden buttons, the one she'd wear in the garden, not to host, it was the one only Harriet got to see.

Her mother is also lying in the bed, hair on the pillow around her like a halo, face pale and still.

Rio's body is lead, she's stuck on the spot, not wanting to make a sound. Maybe if she doesn't do anything then they could live in this moment forever and her mother will always be sitting on the edge of her bed in her green gingham dress looking at the sunset through the window.

But the wind makes the door creak and Elizabeth turns, locking eyes with her daughter for the first time in a long time.

"Rio?" It's incredulity in her voice, as she rises to her feet. She's already crying. "I didn't know if I'd prayed enough for Heaven, but it must be, for this is all I wanted from it."

How does Rio tell her mother that this isn't Heaven, that she isn't

"Why did you leave us? Why did you run? What happened that September?"
Rio could tell the truth. She could bear her real face of bones and tell her mother what happened and who she really is. She could tell her about the way she's become desensitizied to people dying and of how she feels a small spark somewhere inside of her when she takes souls to the other side. She could tell her of the flowers she can grow with the gesture of a hand and of the woman currently sharing her house. She could.

Rio shakes her head, hoping the gesture is enough to satisfy her mother.

It is. After all, Elizabeth thinks she has eternity with her daughter to ask whatever she wants.

"I have missed you so much, my girl."

There's a ringing in Rio's ears, as her mother smiles and brushes off her tears. a pitched sound that drills through her brain and blurs her vision at the edges.

This is her mother. This is the soul of her mother. Her mother is dead.

"Have you lived a good, happy life?" Elizabeth asks, hands on her heart.

"Yes, I have." There is no other possible answer. "Mama."

Elizabeth breathes, as if she hasn't since the day her daughter left, always holding half a heartbeat for her Rio wherever she was.

"That's all I ever wanted. I'll see you on the other side."

When she blinks again she's back in the house, her knees hitting the wooden floorboards before she can catch herself. She's gasping for air. The floor isn't splinters of oak, it's jagged images attacking her as if she were defenseless.

Rocks in her pockets pulling her down.

Jim holding his hat in his hands.

The ink of the printing press.

Books with yellowing pages.

The green gingham dress.

A snapping rope.

Apricots.

Agatha standing amongst corpses.

The blood thick through her fingers.

Charlotte's weight in her arms.

Daisies. Daisies. Daisies.

"Rio, what is it?" Agatha is on her knees too, reaching out to steady Rio as she falls forward, scanning her body for an injury that would explain her behaviour, for any sign of physical harm. Rio seems just as fine as she was when she left but she must be seeing something or must have seen something, because she's trying to dig through the floor, her fingernails snapping and ripping apart.

"You're safe. You're home."

The voice cuts through the flashes and Rio's knee-jerk reaction is to push her arms out and get away. But Agatha holds onto her, she keeps her shoulders steady despite the hits she takes, and when Rio finally stops struggling she manages to lock eyes with her. Agatha sees recognition slowly wash over her face lifting the fog, she feels her muscles relax in her arms.

"You're safe, my love." She whispers so softly it can barely be heard, tucking Rio's hair behind her ear.

Agatha tentatively moves to hug her and Rio doesn't resist, she lets herself go slack against Agatha's body, burying her face in her neck. They stay like that for a long time, a bundle of dark green skirts and black hair on the floor of a quiet house, as the world keeps spinning lazily outside the window.

Agatha's rubbing circles in Rio's back and only realizes they're gently rocking back and forth when they stop, the other woman peeling herself off her. Agatha lets her sit back on her heels, slowly reaching for her hands, dainty fingers with torn and bloody nails.

"You should wash that off." She suggests. Rio nods absentmindedly, raises to her feet not saying a word.

"I can forget about it." Agatha says, sitting down next to Rio in front of the fire, handing her a cup and keeping one for herself, after the blood has been scrubbed off and the house feels warmer. "If it would make you feel better, I can forget about what happened and never talk about it again."

"You're talking about it now." Rio retorts, sipping the tea. She's pretty sure she's burnt her tongue, who knew that was a still a thing she could do. "Besides. Feeling better would require feeling something in the first place."

Agatha resits the urge to roll her eyes. And to hold out a hand to comfort her. How infuriating in her dramatics this woman is.

"Rio you were trying to claw you way into the floor half hour ago, that wasn't someone who doesn't feel anything."

"No, that was someone who just had to take her mother's soul."

The mere thought of her own mother makes Agatha shudder.

"Mother who loved me and who thought it was all a fever dream or heaven. And I didn't have the strength to tell her I am actually closer to Hell. She thought I was the same, she still thinks of me as the girl picking flowers in her garden. I was innocent. I could have been many things. I could have been her pride and joy."

"Your mother doesn't know what it means, she doesn't know what this life is like. She wouldn't understand, you did the compassionate thing not letting her see your real face."

"She died not knowing the truth. Not knowing how bad I am."

"It doesn't matter what she thinks of you, she remembers you nicely."

"I forget, you don't care what people think of you."

The bitterness flies across the room. Agatha stands and backs away, cup of tea on the floor.

"You don't know the first thing I care about."

"You drift through life like nothing matters, like nothing touches you. But I used to try, when I became this, when I thought I could change. I tried to be normal, so I wouldn't feel so--"

"Don't act like I didn't try too! You have no idea how much I've wanted to be good. How I've felt my whole life because I wasn't."

"Right, I'm not the one who's running around killing people for power!"

"Oh you want to think you're so much better than me, but I know that you've been starting to feel it - the rush when you collect a soul. The thrill of the forbidden, of what you're meant to do. Of what you want. You think I don't see right through you?"

"You think you know me but you're just some woman I met over a corpse, you have no idea who I am."

"I think I've got a pretty good idea. I see your sad little eyes and how they light up when you feel someone dying. And how you try to hide it."

"That's grand coming from a power corrupt, black magic witch who kills people to get stronger just for the sake of it. How dare you pretend to know who I am."

"No amount of polished dresses can hide who you are, Rio."

"How would you know?! You're just-"

"Because can't you see we're exactly the same!"

The shout bounces off the walls of the tiny room, words spit out with disdain. They're both standing on opposite sides, Rio has drawn her dagger without realizing it and Agatha's fingertips are glowing purple. Breaths are quick and shallow, they're rearing for a fight.

This is it. This is time standing still.

They close the distance in two strides each without thinking about it.

The dagger clatters to the floor and Agatha's fingers are caught in Rio's hair as their lips crash together.

Their hands roam each other's body quickly, as fingers twist around hair strands and pick at corset ribbons, as breaths shorten, and Rio steps back until she hits the table.

Agatha's lips make their way down Rio's jaw, trailing to her collarbone, as the other woman stifles a moan, Agatha smiling onto her skin. Rio pulls her face up so they're staring into each other's eyes, black pools of lust they see their own reflection in.

Death and a witch. And for an instant, two women.

Rio closes the distance again, with the same ardor as before, and more impatience. It's messy and rushed and loud and it feels like drowning and like a breath of fresh air at the same time and like nothing Rio ever dreamed of and like everything Agatha has always wished for. It feels like the best apple either of them has ever tasted.

They don't let go, gripping onto each other hard enough that they'll wake up with tiny bruises on their forearms in the shape of someone else's fingers, as if they're scared the other is not real, as if this is a dream that could dissipate. As if this is all they get - this kiss, this night is all that's allowed them before the world realizes its mistake.

Until they get burned for it.

***

If women must be condemned for wanting, that let it be known that at least they enjoyed falling from grace.

Rio and Agatha walk down the primrose path hand in hand, and if the echo of their upbringing is reminding them all they are is a sin then they don't listen. For how could sinning feel so holy?

So life keeps going, as Rio and Agatha discover what it means to grow next to someone who understands the kernel of darkness at the center of you and doesn't shun you for it, but rather loves you for it.

And Time never meant as little as it did during those days, when a speck of hope started to take root in both witches' hearts who could see the shadow of a future shining through the branches of the forest trees. But Time is ruthless and it rarely gives without taking something in every second it ticks.

"I would like to be a mother."

Rio slows down, fixing up the plates on the counter.

"There's an old tale, a rumor. A woman was so desperate for a child that she found a spell, and a powerful coven and created a baby."

"Rumors aren't the whole truth."

"You could help. You're the original green witch, we've got enough..." Agatha daren't say love. "Power between us to create a child. You were the one who said it - out of death, life."

"That works for flowers, for the Earth. It means winter will end and spring always come but not this. Death can't create a child, my love. I can't create a child. I can't give you what you want."

But Agatha has spent her whole life finding her way around 'no' so she tries all the charms she can find, all the ones she reads in books, the ones she hears from other witches, she tries runes and potions and hexes.

Nothing works.

Seasons change outside their windows. The hope bounces off the walls, it reveberates in the air, and both women are wishing so hard that if someone near them could read minds they'd go insane.

Then one day Agatha just knows. She just knows the magic she spoke did nothing, but it worked anyway.

Rio always thought Agatha was the most powerful witch she'd ever come across but this is beyond thinking, beyond imagination.

It is true, that rumors aren't the whole truth, but Agatha didn't make a potion or a spell like the tale goes. Agatha wanted to be a mother so much that she willed a child into being. And Rio can't help but admit that she had wished for this child just as much.

They don't talk about it, Agatha feels they don't have to. This child is Rio's as much as it's hers in her mind. She might be the one carrying it but Rio is standing beside her for every step.

Rio isn't as sure. She lies awake at night, when she lets herself rest instead of being pulled from corpse to corpse, staring at the ceiling of their house and she can't help it, she feels the small spark of hope that this unborn child might somehow be hers. She squashes it down within seconds, not letting herself even consider the possibility.

How could it possibly be true, she's Death, they're women, this is against nature. And she's know. But then again, she used to be a perfectly fine girl with a regular life and now she collects souls out of dead people.

It can't be.

She turns in bed, twisting herself in bed sheets, as close to a shroud as she'll ever come, and knows that even if it were true, even if this baby was hers she could never be a parent. No child could ever love her, and she could never care for them. She'd shatter them, hurt them, break their heart. And she'd have to take them eventually.

Yet she loves this unborn child no matter her relation to it. But she feels the wind run through the cracks in the windows, the ripples of energy, and for the first time in a very long time she is terrified. She can't shake the foreboding feeling deep in her bones, not when she's standing over dead bodies, not bending flower stems to watch dew drops roll off the petals, not when she holds Agatha's hand without thinking, as they sit by the fireplace.

Something is coming.

Rio isn't a religious woman anymore, she has slowly shed the societal imposition of growing up in a Puritan town and while some days she feels like the hateful retorhic of the church is etched in her bones, she thinks of herself as removed from that world - and yet, in the darkest of moments, in the stillness of a moonless night, on her knees in her garden, surrounded by flowers tended to every day, she begs to whatever higher power might be out there that the child stay safe, that the feeling she has is nothing more than a trick of her mind. And she knows, that she steps over dead bodies for a living, that she is not kind or gentle, that she loves a woman, that she isn't good or pure or devote to a god, that she has tried to take her own life too many times to remember them all, but she hopes that whoever is out there is compassionate enough to listen. And if they aren't that at least Fate is. But Fate is a funny old thing.

"I have a feeling."

Rio is standing outside, looking West, to where the sun will set in a few hours. Agatha wraps her hand around her middle, rests her chin on her shoulder.

"Go on."

"Agatha..." Rio turns in Agatha's arms, so they're facing each other. It must be in her eyes because Agatha's face falls slowly as she steps back, a hand instinctevely on her belly.

"No."

"I am not sure, it could just be a trick, it might be nothing."

"You've never been wrong, Rio. But you can stop it, right? You can just not do it, right?"

"It doesn't work like that."

"Then how does it work? Because it sounds a hell of a lot like you're saying this child will... And that just can't be true."

"I am Death but I don't control people dying, you know this."

"Please there has to be a way. Don't do this to us." Agatha doesn't even know if she means her and her child or the woman she loves, probably both, but she's holding on with everything she can.

Rio always knew this was going to happen at some point, and though she never expected the situation to be exactly this, she knew being Death would come between them at some point. Some things are just inevitable.

"It's not up to me."

"How can you do this? This is your child too. Your own child, Rio."

Rio closes her eyes as if that could be enough to disappear.

"You are no better than my mother." Agatha spits out.

Rio's guilt gets stuck in her throat as tears make their way up, pooling in her eyes not daring to cross the threshold. Being the same as Evanora Harkness makes her ashamed of herself more than any of the other awful things she's done.

She daren't move while Agatha stuffs a bag full of clothes - if Rio could run, if she could disappear, if she could just take herself out of the equation right now she would. She would rather never see the face of her child than see the pain she'll cause. But free will seems to have been left in her old life, all she can do is hope she's still wrong despite the signs.

"Don't follow me. And don't come when it's time."

Then Agatha's gone. The house sits quiet, the door the woman threw open still swinging on its hinges. Rio can see a maple through the frame. She can hear her own breath.

***

So many days pass that Rio thinks maybe it was all for nothing. Maybe there's a chance out there, maybe she can look for Agatha and meet her child.

Then she's picking dahlias and she blinks.

The ripples in the lake lap quietly at the shore behind her, she can feel the weight of the flower without needing to look down. The muffled screams reach her, making her flinch.

This is her worst nightmare. Nothing she's done in her life, nothing that has haunted her dreams, will ever come close to the drop inside her when her eyes make out Agatha leaning against a tree.

There are moments in the history of the world that split timelines. Events that, if they had happened differently, would have changed the whole course of time. This isn't one of them. This is just about two mothers and a child. But it still draws a line in the life of everyone present, forever marking life before and life after. There is no coming back from this.

"You do this and I will hate you forever."

Rio knows there are no moves here. This is checkmate if she has ever seen one. She's backed in the corner she was hoping never to be in. The only option is hurting the woman she loves, killing their unborn child. Their child is already dead.

Agatha wails and it cuts through Rio more than any wound she's had to suffer through.

Then she opens her eyes. She has never done this before, but she doesn't care. She doesn't care that she was thrust into an existence she never asked for, or that whatever she does will cost her love, or that she's making an exception.

"I can give you only time."

And Time has never been particularly kind to anyone, but she hopes it's enough. This is all she can give.

Then she blinks, and she's looking at dahlias again. She looks up as egrets fly overhead. She doesn't know the name of her own child.

Agatha gives birth in a forest alone, like she hasn't felt for a long time. And yet when she holds her son in her arms, this small mystery that the world would think an abomination, she sees a love that will keep her company forever. She traces her and Rio's features on a newborn and speaks his name into existence.

Nicholas Scratch.

Out of Death, life. And so the child who was never meant to live was born.

***

Agatha is the worst kind of addict. The one who justifies their addiction to a higher purpose. She has to kill witches so she can keep her powers to protect her son.

If there's enough bodies out there then maybe the inevitable will stay far behind. If the price of keeping her son alive until he's old and gray is never seeing Rio again then she'd pay now. But then sometimes he laughs, or tilts his head, or bends down to smell a flower, and Agatha's heart aches for the woman who can't see her son grow up, for all the normalcy that they will never get to experience.

It's a cruel balancing act of the universe, she knows. She got what she wanted but she also had to give something up.

What she doesn't know, as she sleeps in the forest or in the empty houses of villages is that Rio sits during the nights and looks over Nicky. She holds guard, in the way that any mother would with their child. The first time she did it Nicky was only a few months old, a restless baby wriggling his limbs, Rio only looked at him and smiled.

One night Nicky smiled back. And Rio wasn't fully sure how much of her heart was left, but it cracked open right then. She'd come back whenever she could to watch him change into a toddler, into a young boy. A boy who at some point stopped smiling up at her and started sleeping through the night, dreaming away. A boy whose biggest danger was his mother.

When Agatha sees her son run out the barn she feels the dread. It must have been the same that Rio felt all those years ago. Is she feeling it too now, wherever she is? She wonders.

"We can kill more witches tomorrow." He whispers.

Agatha hasn't felt regret in a long time, but as she watches her son run his hands through the leaves in a mindless game of repetition, she can't help but see that if she was different then they wouldn't be here. It always comes back down to the same thing, doesn't it. Being good. If she was strong enough to heal him, if she was strong enough to defeat Death. Or if she was just a good enough mother.

Their voices echo in the forest, as night falls, bodies close for warmth, as they softly sing. Rio stands far enough away that she could never be seen, but close to hear their words carried by the wind, to hear the laughter. Laughter that digs into her. She's not there to watch over Nicky tonight.

When the fire burns to embers she steps forward, walks softly not disturbing the equilibrium of the forest. Nicky wakes to see her standing a few feet away. He kisses his mom, once for himself, once for Rio. Then he walks away.

Rio holds her son's hand in hers for the first time and she smiles, wanting to commit this moment to memory, the weight of his hand, how his smaller fingers wrapped around hers, the slight waddle in his step.

This, whether by blood, Time, or sheer will, was her son too. And she hasn't felt pain like this in a long time, as she leads him through the door, walking through with him, wanting to hold his hand for as long as possible. Until he's not there anymore, until his soul dissipates, until all she's left holding is a handful of broken futures.

***

If someone had ever asked him, his mothers were the first and the last thing Nicholas Scratch remembers. Agatha holding him on her hip as they walked through the forest, Rio's soft hand walking with him over a bridge. They're both his favorite memories.

***

"What are you doing? Your job here is done."

The powers of the coven lying on the ground are rushing through Agatha's veins. Yet she's not sure she feels anything.

Rio is standing across from her, green skirts and hair pinned up.

"What are you doing? Nicky's gone, you can stop now."

"You think I was doing this just for him? Ah! I do this because it's who I am, my love. Did you forget? I am a witch killer. I have no coven. And you're a fool if you ever thought I could be anything else."

"You were something else, you were a mother. That doesn't change just because he is gone."

"Dead. He is dead."

"Yes. He is. But you're not. Don't throw it away."

"What do you care? This was our life, not yours. I was the one lying next to him."

"This is not on you, Agatha."

"No, it's on you." Despite knowing how raw Agatha must be feeling - she feels the mirroring tear in her - and an inkling that the accusation would fly her way at some point it still throws her off balance for a second.

"I gave you what I could."

"Well it wasn't enough." Agatha fires first. Rio dodges the shot, but the blast scorches the ground next to her

"I would do anything for him to be here, Agatha, you know that."

Agatha lounges at her, magic won't get her anywhere, so she tries strength, even if she has very little, especially now.

"Anything? Then bring him back, you're the one who took him!"

They brawl like a pair of drunken , Rio witholding her stronger but having to overpower Agatha, pinning her on the ground under her.

"It's not how it works."

"Then take me instead. Take me!" Agatha almost screams, looking up at Rio. Death can see the tears being pushed down.

"You know I can't do that." Rio lies. She's not sure if she can. You bend the rules once who knows how many more times you can try. But she's not willing to listen to self-loathing.

Agatha was wired to become better, to be better, but she never did, she couldn't even save her son witnessing death through his short time on Earth. So of course all she wants is to give her life for his. He deserved so much more time, he was so worthy of a loving, bright, fulfilling life.

"So it's not anything, is it." Agatha pushes her off, rolls back on to standing.

"You don't have to do this. You don't have to kill your way through grief."

"What would you know about grief, you obviously can't feel anything."

"How dare you. I love you."

Agatha blasts Rio to the ground not missing her target this time. Rio hasn't drawn her dagger, she can't. This isn't a real fight, this is heartbreak trying to hurt another, not realizing the pain runs exactly the same already.

"I hate you."

"I love you anyway." Rio shouts, as she gets back on her feet, wiping dirt from her cheek. "This is pointless."

Agatha can't kill her and Rio can't take a soul before her time. They're at a stand still, there's nowhere to go.

"It is. Don't you dare follow me. This is where this ends."

Agatha takes a step back, one small step that is enough to separate them forever.

"Go on, leave." Acid burns Rio's throat. "But I'll never be too far behind."

***

"D-E-A-T-H."

Rio's laughter fills the room. If anything, this Road has a sense of humor.

Being summoned to a non-existant fantasy road sprouted from a teenager, in yet another Maximoff true original, was not how she was planning on finally getting to Agatha. But here she is, two trials deep and in an 80s outfit that makes her sick. At least she looks good in it.

Crawling her way out of the ground wasn't even the worst part, having to pretend to be interested in any of the theatrics is. However, getting to finally see Agatha again was worth it. Even if she instantly lounged at her throat.

Agatha was handling the whole dead-son thing really well. Really. Killing covens, gathering power, burying everything that happened to her under so many layers of wittiness that it would take a knife to cut through them. She was great. She got used to this life and what not turning back meant, after all you say something enough times it becomes true.

You can never be good.

Witch killer.

I'll hate you forever.

Coven-less witch.

I was a menace.

And so a heartbroken woman coping by giving into her addiction became the rumor that travels through inns and covens and eventually through continents and centuries, she became Agatha Harkness. The most powerful witch.

Rio became addicted to the chasing in the same way, longing for the only person who had ever made her feel like she wasn't an abomination, who had loved her for all her wild thoughts and inclination, who hadn't cared about her sins.

Whoever said time heals all wounds had clearly never been hurt like this. Never lost a child. Time doesn't always heal, sometimes it makes you cruel, and resentful, and loathing, and guilty, and ashamed, and mad, and pathetic. And at some point you'll have been addicted to the running, and the killing, and the chase, and the thrill, for so long that you won't remember how it feels to live in a world of light because the last time you have was so far you're not sure it even happened at all.

Was there ever a point when I wasn't this? Was there ever a moment when I was good? Was there ever an instant when I could have stopped? Was I ever on the edge of saving myself?

So the Wheel turns and witches lie in the woods as covens, as sisters, and Death reaps souls feeling the weight of it a bit more every single time, becoming dull to the screams and the begging of the dead, and resentful towards a woman she simply loves. Why won't she just accept her love?

They don't wonder anymore, they don't question anymore. Agatha would like to say they don't think about each other anymore, but how could she when everytime she lures a coven it's with the words her son used to sing. Her existence, her son's, Rio's will never truly untangle.

"You can't kill me."

"You can't kill me. It's not allowed."

They both know it, they've known it since the door blasted off its hinges. But this isn't about killing, this is about hurting each other. Finally getting to put your hands on the woman who hurt you. It's about the blood trickling down. As if they were ever just human.

"I have a heart. It's black, and it beats for you."

The bonfire is sisterhood like Agatha has never felt, she who has always famously been a covenless witch. People laughing with her making her feel like there's a world in which she could have this, could have people.

"I've got a scar"

"No you don't." Her fingertips have traced Rio's body enough to know that.

"A long time ago, I loved someone. And I had to do something that I did not wanna do, even though it was my job. And it hurt them. She is my scar."

When they hug they can finally breathe. It's falling into each other. If Agatha is Rio's scar then they must have the same wound, because Agatha can feel the skin pull at the stitches when she lifts her hands to Rio's face and steps closer. Rio can't kiss her, despite wanting to, despite having wanted to for centuries. She can't in good faith.

"That boy isn't yours." Rio doesn't think she could ever have a right to say ours. The ghost of Agatha's hands on her cheek, as she stands alone, is all she feels.

"I ought to have killed you the moment you left my body."

When Rio blinks trying not to flinch it's Agatha she sees for a fraction of a second - Agatha holding on for dear life in labor, begging her to let her son live. Agatha who would have done anything to make her child live, faced with her own mother who was willing to kill her with no regrets.

"Her mother can't have her."

Rio gets to fight Agatha and threaten her and draw blood from her, Evanora can't. Rio would never do that to her, doesn't matter how many centuries Agatha spends killing witches, running, dropping bodies she has to pick up. Doesn't matter how much Agatha hates her and tries to make Rio hate her back, Rio will never let Evanora get her hands on Agatha.

"Why would you let them believe those things about you, about Nicky?"

Agatha hasn't heard Rio say her son's name in a very long time. It sounds odd, the way it rolls off her tongue. There was a time when she used to think of him as their son. But then again, there was a time when the world felt like it wasn't caving in at every step.

Was there?

What did flowers smell like then?

"Because the truth is too awful."

How can she ever face the reality of failing as a mother in the only way that matters? She couldn't protect her son. Not only that, his few years were spent helping her kill. Agatha doesn't know if she has space for regrets anymore, but she still regrets that.

But if she had a chance to go back would she really try to change it? Alice's power is still running through her veins. It's sweet. It was a glass of water in the desert. It's what she knows. If she had another chance would she be willing to give it up to be a good mother? Could she have ever been one?

It's too late now.

"I want you to stop making my life hell. And when I die, a long, long, long, long, long time from now, I don't wanna see your face."

"Okay."

Agatha swallows the surprise down as Rio walks away. As the edge of this made up universe tears, something else does too.

"Why don't you want me?" Rio spits out.

Agatha is not sure she knows anymore. But it doesn't matter. The hatred has calcified in her heart so much she's not sure she could ever chisel away at it.

Why would she want to?

The boy gives himself up. Agatha walks away, her end of the bargain upheld.

They've walked every square of the chessboard they've been living on since the day they met and now they're out of moves.

Nothing will come of this. Rio will take the boy and Agatha will keep wandering the world killing covens. They will never see each other again. This is the end of the Road. And though it feels like it can't be, it must be. For all things must return to the Earth.

Words from a long forgotten life echo through time: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

It feels like coming home. It's second nature. Centuries have divided them, corpses have fallen between them, but their bodies still remember. A kiss that holds all the grief, the hatred, the adoration, the thrill, the chase, the longing, the guilt. Agatha takes Rio's power and Rio lets her, for a second. Both knowing it will be enough to kill her.

Their last hurrah. They feel time stand still.

Then Agatha falls to her demise, and Rio has to watch the woman she has loved her entire life hit the ground, tears pooling in her eyes. Skin and bones melt into the ground fast, as flowers take their place.

Dandelions, lisanthiuses, lavender, dahlias, chrysanthemums. Daisies.

It's the resting place of a covenless witch who made a choice. Who went out on her own terms.

Agatha Harkness is dead.

Death's love dies on her lips.

***

It's the oldest story in the book.

Women fall in love, Fate watches. Children grow up, futures get dreamed up, hands are held. Flowers bloom, laughter travels, the World slows down. Time stands still.

There is no hope for the oldest story in the book, it ends in tragedy. And yet.