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Agatha laid her hands flat on the cold floor of the morgue, and breathed a ragged breath in.
So this was how it all ended. Alone, again.
Agatha leaned back and set down her head on the frigid tile, spreading her hands across the floor in a starfish. It was her death bed now, might as well get comfortable. No one left to share it with.
Jen had escaped, and Agatha had let her. Not much of a choice in it, really.
The kid was gone, too. She’d helped him leave, even when she knew the clock was ticking.
She laughed, cruelly, at herself, wiping the tears pooling beneath her eyelashes. She’d done it again—put on the baby’s lifejacket before securing her own.
And what an apt metaphor that was. Because that’s what her life was amounting to, wasn’t it? A plane falling from the sky, and she was the only one without a parachute. She had spent the whole ride not thinking she’d need one. She thought she could steal it off the pilot at the last second. Rip the damn controls off the dashboard and fly it herself.
Because that was how Agatha operated, ever since Salem, on a strict diet of muscle memory;
Trust no one.
Take everything.
Give it all away without really meaning to.
Maximum risk, little reward.
Agatha sighed, letting the tears roll down her face.
The jet engine had been broken since takeoff—but she’d mistook it for a bit of turbulence.
Another light clicked above her. The room grew darker. There were only six left on the ceiling, maybe seven. Death loomed, but that wasn’t what scared her.
It was the heart of the matter. The thing she’d been hiding from for hundreds of years. The thing that made her scream at Rio, that possessed her to say such terrible, awful things to the one woman who had given her more grace than this life ever had.
Agatha Harkness did not fear death.
She feared what she would feel once she stopped running.
Stripped not of her power, but of her hatred.
What would she feel when she couldn’t suppress it anymore?
What would she do when she saw Nicky again, and he couldn’t forgive her for the childhood she’d given him? Witch killer. Witch killer. Witch killer. Who wants a villain for a mother?
The second to last light clicked. The floor was illuminated only by a halo of light now, barely an inch in size, and Agatha stared at the tile, feeling the blood pump gently under her skin for what she expected would be the last time.
She pressed her fingers to her pulse, just to commit it to memory.
But then the last light did not click. She was not bathed in darkness. Instead, Agatha heard a quiet sound echo on the stairs. A step, and then another. She craned her neck up, eyes wide like a scared animal. She felt a feeling she hadn’t felt since childhood. True, spine-tickling fear.
“Come to claim me, huh?” she said, voice thick with defiance. Stubborn, all the way to the end. “Finally tear me to shreds, just like you promised?”
She clung to her hatred and her anger like a child to their mother’s hand. It was the only thing she could think to cling to. She didn’t have the answers anymore. She didn’t know what came next.
The footsteps came louder, until a dark figure hovered at the edge of the room. Agatha could see only her feet, her ankles. But she’d recognize them anywhere. She’d spent enough centuries with their limbs intertwined. She’d spent enough time loving, then hating, every crevice.
“Torture? Is that what you want, Agatha?”
Death stepped into the light. Rio, dressed in a black billowing dress that cut right down the middle, collarbones exposed, stomach taut, was looking at her with an unreadable expression.
“Isn’t that what you want?” Agatha parroted up at her.
“Is that what you think I want?”
Agatha’s fists curled and uncurled, her mouth uncharacteristically empty. When Rio said nothing else, Agatha was forced to become conscious of their positioning, with her kneeling desperate at Rio’s knees, Death lording above her, like an unsubtle painting.
Refusing to die a cliche, Agatha rose unsteadily to her feet, so they were eye to eye. From this perspective, she could finally catch a hint of uncertainty in Rio’s eyes.
She didn’t look furious or lustful or any combination of emotions that she’d so skillfully performed for Agatha in the days preceding this—she just looked like a blank slate. She looked patient.
All this time, all this pain, and Rio was still waiting for her.
In that way, Agatha wasn’t special. Death waited for everyone.
She was only special when she made Rio delay the inevitable.
“It’s not my time yet,” Agatha said, not really because she believed it, but because it felt like holding onto a lifeline. “We had an arrangement, didn’t we? I deliver the boy—”
“You didn’t deliver the boy.”
Rio was matter-of-fact. Not teasing. Agatha clenched her jaw. Sighed.
“Okay. Fine. So I didn’t,” Agatha said, rolling her eyes and raising her hands, wavering her voice into exaggeration. She began to pace around the room, just to put distance between the two of them. “But you can just— go get him! Put those skeletal legs to use. Put some meat on them.”
“Agatha.”
Rio materialized in front of her. Agatha stepped back, startled, but Rio caught her by the chin. Her grasp was cold but firm, and it took everything inside Agatha not to soften in it; not to melt. With a huff, she craned her neck away from Rio’s grip, and felt the immediate loss as it fell to Rio’s side. Death wasn’t pushing her. Wasn’t twisting her with a knife. That could only mean—
The clock was ticking. Agatha had minutes, not years, not decades. Minutes.
“What?” she spat at Rio, like a feral animal.
Rio must have spotted the fear in her eyes, because she smiled. Sadly. Softly.
“If I did let you go,” Rio said. “What would you do?”
Agatha blinked, feeling the wind leave her sails all at once. She hadn’t expected that question. She had spent decades negotiating time with Rio from a place of disadvantage. Prodding and pulling and begging for more, like a starved coyote. Never once had Rio asked what she’d do with it. She’d only nodded and supplied, like a drug dealer to an addict. But now–
“Really. What would you spend those precious extra seconds doing? Taking more lives? Leaving behind more bodies?” Rio whispered. “Killing, stealing, terrorizing?”
Slowly, Rio grabbed her hand, stroking her thumb over Agatha’s palm softly. Warmth scored the skin where Rio touched, and Agatha felt it burn up her arms, pleasant like a bonfire. She couldn’t find the strength within herself to pull away. Couldn’t find the rage.
This touch was killing her, probably. She was smart enough a witch to know that.
But she didn’t pull away.
“All of the above?” Agatha said, weakly, clenching her jaw.
Rio’s hand stroked up her arm, her fingers playing with the hem of her shirt.
“If that’s what you really want, I’ll give it to you.”
Rio’s breath was as cold as the wind. Slowly, Death’s fingers crept up all the way to her collarbones, then her neck. She cupped the side of Agatha’s jaw. She gave her a look like she had seen Agatha’s insides—like she’d seen all the rot and the cobwebs, and still she wanted to devour her.
“But it’s not,” Rio said, and it was both a statement and a question. “What you want.”
Agatha’s lip trembled.
Then, she envisioned it.
She envisioned walking out of here, pushing past Death, magic in her palms, powerful once more. More powerful than ever. She imagined razing Westview to the ground. Burning every last witch in a hundred miles to the ground just because she could . She imagined finding the Scarlet Witch’s grave, and siphoning raw power out of her very bones.
She imagined being the most powerful witch in the universe.
And she felt nothing.
Complete emptiness.
“Everyone else got what they wanted from the road, Agatha,” Rio said. “They got what they were missing, so the road let them go. But you’re still here. Why?”
Agatha trembled as Rio’s fingernails stroked over her cheeks. A tongue whisked across Rio’s lips, and Agatha’s eyes followed it like it was the north star. Death was creeping up her bones, she could feel it, draining her not of life—but of anger, of fury. Giving her permission to finally let it go.
Her greatest fear had arrived, and it looked like the most beautiful woman she’d ever held.
The answer to Rio’s question slammed down on Agatha like an anvil.
Because, because—
When she imagined everything, she felt nothing.
Not excitement. Not despair.
But when she looked in front of her, at the simple curve of Rio’s lips—
Agatha wanted.
With an urge as violent as birth, Agatha raised her trembling hands, her fingers blackened down to the bone, and pressed the back of Rio’s neck toward her. Their lips crashed together, and it felt like an inevitability. It tasted like everything Agatha had been running from. Fear. Desperation. Joy.
Tears streaked down Agatha’s cheeks, but she could feel Rio smiling like the sun.
“I’m so terrified,” Agatha said between the bouts of their lips connecting. “Of seeing him again.”
“That’s okay, my love,” Rio whispered, pressing her nose to Agatha’s cheek. Agatha felt her body fading at the touch; felt her soul rising to meet Rio in her true form for the first time. “Because you won’t be doing it—any of it—alone, ever again.”