Chapter Text
Rio lounges in bed, absentmindedly stroking over her wife’s hair as she watches her sleep with one hand, and twirling her scythe blade in her other like some kind of celestial fidget toy.
Agatha slumbers deeply due to her fatigue, and snuffles adorably as she curls up next to Death, buried under the covers. Her bunny familiar is snoozing too, pressed up against his witch’s sternum.
Her wife sleeps exactly the same way she has always done; on her side, one arm cushioning and protecting her head, knees pulled up to be level with her hips. Her other hand is gripping tightly onto Rio’s borrowed sweater, as if to reassure herself that her wife isn’t going to abandon her.
Agatha exhales, emitting the cutest, softest little noises as she turns her face into Rio’s touches, like a cat pleading to be pet. She cranes her neck, exposing the long length of her vulnerable throat.
Rio tightens her grasp around her knife. There’s a tiny greedy voice at the back of her mind that wants her to run the very tip of her blade down, nicking Agatha’s fragile skin and causing beads of blood to erupt. Those droplets of blood would then run down her throat in thin rivulets for Rio to lap up with her tongue, tracing upwards until she could heal the cuts with gentle kisses.
Blood play was something her wife was all too eager to explore with Rio after their soul bond, because it would allow Rio to tune into her emotions and experience the sweet biting pain, in a way that Death had never felt before. But Agatha is weak enough already, and her body will not tolerate any blood loss. It would undoubtedly wake her, and Rio much prefers her asleep right now, so she can watch her.
If this were any other person, Rio would rapidly get bored of simply lying next to them and waiting for the hours to pass. But Agatha… well, she finds Agatha sleeping fascinating, mostly because of her breathing patterns, microexpressions, and body language as she dreams.
“Mm, what are you dreaming of, mi vida?” she murmurs in a hushed voice, brushing her fingertips lightly over her wife’s furrowed brow. “What’s going on in that mystifying mind of yours?”
For as long as Rio has known Agatha, the spirit witch has had a strange relationship with dreaming. She was plagued by nightmares for the longest time throughout her childhood and early teens, and then a couple of times every week after she killed her mother and Salem coven in self-defense.
Rarely would she experience good, happy, peaceful dreams. And the reason for that is that Agatha primarily dreams of her own memories. When a person has lived as rough a life as Agatha, that results in a lot of night terrors.
As a primordial entity with jurisdiction over souls and the spirit realm, Rio has long since been able to enter people’s minds, and therefore their dreams. They are, of course, reflections of people’s souls; manifestations of a human's thoughts, desires, and expectations.
To welcome another witch into one’s mind is the greatest exercise in trust, as it exposes the witch’s soul. When they married, handfasting under the full moon, they performed a bonding ritual, whereby they linked their souls eternally. It created a permanent and unbreakable connection between the two of them. For Agatha Harkness to open her soul and mind up to another was extraordinary in itself, notwithstanding the fact that she was making herself vulnerable to Death.
Shortly after they married, Agatha gave her permission to bring her out of her nightmares and wake her by slipping into her mind; Rio would interrupt whatever tirade of physical or emotional abuse Evanora and her coven were attacking her with.
The green witch was allowed to partake in Agatha’s good dreams as well, not just her nightmares; sometimes just sitting back and watching her memories like little movies, or influencing them if she wanted, if they were of the NSFW kind.
(Those, predictably, were both Agatha and Rio’s favorite of her dreams. Rio would replace the dream figment of herself and ensure that when Agatha awoke in the mornings, her legs were sore and the sheets suitably soaked beneath her.)
Even when Nicky was born and they stopped seeing each other, Agatha still welcomed her wife into her dreams - albeit rarely. The spirit witch’s dreams about Nicky were Rio’s favorite ones to spy on, because she got to see their son grow up through Agatha’s eyes.
Then, after Nicky’s death, and after their subsequent break-up, Agatha cut her off. Rio, regrettably, took her access to her wife’s thoughts and dreams for granted; she didn’t think that there would be an end to their arrangement - that Agatha would ever shut her out. But the day after Rio ferried Nicky to the afterlife, Agatha raised her mental shields and refused to let Rio back in.
She used her connection to her partner’s soul to check in on her every couple of days, those first few years after their son’s passing. The link formed by their handfasting ceremony allowed her to sense Agatha’s general emotions, even with her mind blocked. Agatha was determined to put on an outward show of despising Rio to her core, but Rio could tell from her everpresent yearning that she still dreamt of her often.
But then, even that connection between them, allowing her to sense her love’s feelings, was crippled. Not severed, as that was impossible, but dampened. It was before Agatha acquired the Darkhold, so Rio knows it wasn’t dark magic of that kind; whatever Agatha did, it was mightily effective, and majorly pissed her off.
Today, Agatha seems to be drifting between dreams, judging by her ever-changing expressions. The magic that was keeping Rio shut out of her dreams before is gone, she can tell. She could force her way in and take a wander through Agatha’s mind and peek in on her if she so wished, but she doesn’t dare to.
Rio no longer has permission to do so, and if Agatha were to sense her and catch her out, she knows that the fragile trust that has scarcely survived between them, and is still ticking along, will shatter entirely. Agatha does not want her astral projecting into her subconscious, so she will definitely not want Rio taking a gander through her dreams.
“Are you dreaming of me?” she wonders aloud. She reckons that there’s a high possibility, considering the events of the past two days.
Agatha mumbles nonsensically in her sleep, eyes flickering beneath her lids. “Rio,” she thinks she hears her wife breathe out, but that might be wishful thinking.
Sensing the sun beginning to set outside, Rio banished her blade to its extra-dimensional sheath; she pries her sweater out of Agatha’s fist before scooting to the edge of the mattress.
Agatha has not eaten since breakfast that morning, and will need something nutritious, rich in calories, and easy on the stomach for dinner. Rio could just let her green craft do all the work to magic something up to eat, but she’s never been the best at conjuring food. Maybe it’s because she technically does not need to eat. She enjoys cooking, though, having taught herself how when she and Agatha lived together, and her wife was constantly fatigued from Nicky growing in her belly.
Rio hesitates as she stands, hovering next to the bed; she doesn’t want to leave Agatha alone. If she has a seizure in her sleep, she could stop breathing again, and what if Rio is too late to rush to her side? Her and Agatha’s bond is still strained and weak. In its current state, she won’t be able to tell if Agatha is approaching trouble until the moment occurs. A monitoring spell might work, even if it is invasive.
Snaking her hand around Agatha’s wrist, she closes her eyes and focuses in on her wife’s pulse, until her heartbeat is drumming in her ears. It’s steady and soothing; Rio has had it memorized for centuries.
In fact, there were days when Rio would bury herself in the memory of lying her head on Agatha’s sleeping chest to listen to her heart thrum, to escape the loneliness and emptiness of her realm.
The Realm of the Dead is populated by her reapers and also the souls of the decreased; it acts as a collecting pool, gathering all of the matter and souls of the denizens of the universe. But it’s vast, and dark, and endless.
When Agatha dropped off her radar, Rio no longer had much of a reason to linger on the Earthly plane; she retreated to her realm and immersed herself in her memories of her wife - her gentle but stern hands, her loving embrace, her warm skin and soft lips and, Rio’s favorite, her steady, unique heartbeat.
Focused on the rhythmically pumping organ, Rio reaches out delicately to brush up against Agatha’s soul. It squeals in delight as Death attaches a tiny thread of magic to her wife’s lifeline, that she can easily unweave later when Agatha inevitably notices and demands she remove it.
Now she will be alerted to any distress, whether that be physical or mental. She will be aware of anything bothering Agatha long before it causes her lifeline to trip and fumble.
For good measure, Rio sends a little vine shooting out of her hand to aggressively poke at her wife’s rabbit familiar, where he’s plastered against Agatha’s chest. He jolts awake, batting his paws at the tendril with an annoyed scowl.
“Keep an eye on her,” Rio orders him, pointing at Agatha, who slumbers on serenely. “I need to cook dinner. Don’t let her die in her sleep. If you do, you’ll be tomorrow night’s meal.”
Señor Scratchy eyes her beadily but releases a little huff, which she assumes to be an agreement. Flipping him off, Rio checks on her sleeping wife one last time, tucking pillows around her body so she doesn’t accidentally roll over and smother herself in her pillow. She then adjusts the blankets so they cover her body, brushing Agatha’s thick wavy hair away from her face.
This time, Rio doesn’t hesitate to bend down and plant a kiss on her wife’s cheek. If the only time Agatha will allow her to show her physical affection is when she’s asleep, then she will unashamedly take advantage of that.
The temperature outside is beginning to drop along with the sun’s descent beneath the horizon, and clouds are blocking out the last remaining sunlight of the day, threatening rain throughout the night later.
Aware of the chill that is seeping through the cracks in the window frame and leaching through the floor, Rio stokes a very small fire in the grate opposite the bed, casting a charm to keep it burning low and contained.
She hears Agatha shift around on the bed, emitting a soft sigh; even unconscious, she is able to instinctually sense a change in her environment, just in case it presents a threat to her.
Once she’s quietly padded out into the kitchen, Rio rolls up the sleeves of Agatha’s sweater and gets to work. Cooking is one of those mindless chores that she learned how to do once she realized, when she and Agatha started living together so long ago, that her wife is absolutely dismal at it.
And she’s dismal by choice. If Agatha actually put some effort into it, she would definitely be able to produce something edible. Unfortunately, Agatha used to find it somewhat hilarious to create as much chaos in the kitchen as possible, while Rio watched on in disbelief and wonder that her partner found a way to break the laws of physics and burn water.
She dissects the chicken in the fridge and sears the pieces off in avocado oil, in a giant stock pot loaded on the stove. Roughly chopped carrots, onions, and celery are added and fried off. She pours a carton of bone broth to cover the chicken, with a handful of herbs that Rio summons from her garden outside, spices, and a teaspoon of bouillon powder.
Now, it only needs to simmer for twenty minutes to cook the chicken pieces. The soup will make for a simple but hopefully not too bland meal, and should help by boosting Agatha’s immune system and aiding her in sleeping better.
While the soup simmers, she heads into the bathroom and waves her hand; her magic sweeps through with a crackle of green lightning, emptying and cleaning the bath of the cold murky water. She summons the wet towel from within the bedroom to set it on the towel rail to dry. The cottage is old and cold enough already, and she doesn’t want any lingering dampness making Agatha’s sickness worse.
Returning to the kitchen to set the table, Rio lays out cutlery and glasses of water on the table. She fishes out a pair of wine glasses and sets them aside on the counter to fill later. If Agatha is in a prickly mood when she wakes up, a small glass of chilled white wine will no doubt cheer her up.
She fishes out one of her favorite old vases, and blooms stunning white chrysanthemums from her palms. One of her favorite flowers; white, to symbolize her devoted love, loyalty, and honesty, and the particular variety she has chosen blooms in colder months, representing Agatha’s ability to survive and thrive in challenging conditions. Agatha may be sick and powerless now, but she will fight through this period of adversity and come out the other side as a beautiful and formidable witch queen.
The spirit witch knows the meaning of flowers - it was one of the first things she dedicated herself to learning, after she fell in love and married the Green Witch. Flowers are a love language that Rio adores to use with her wife, and Agatha loves to interpret her little floral missives.
Rio hopes that Agatha understands the message that she is sending with the chrysanthemums - that Rio is committed to her, and committed to repairing their relationship; she believes that their love is strong enough to survive the hardships they have suffered through, to bring them back together at the end.
She is busy picking the steaming hot chicken off the bones to drop them back into the soup stock when she feels a streak of anxiety coursing through her body. She hears a rapid heartbeat thudding in her ears. It’s the monitoring spell, activating. She freezes, completely still, and then immediately magics her hands clean and rushes back into the bedroom upon hearing faint whimpers, and the rabbit’s distressed bleating.
Agatha is tossing and turning on the mattress, cold sweat beaded on her forehead, which is creased with anguish. Her wife is desperately grasping at the sheets with white-knuckled fists, which are tangled around her legs from her thrashing. Every couple of seconds, a petrified, panicked little whine escapes her lips, often accompanied by full-body shivers.
At this point, Rio would typically dive into her wife’s mind and ease her out of the nightmare, but since she doesn’t have Agatha’s consent, that’s not an option.
“No,” she’s mumbling urgently, her voice slurred but scared. “No… please, stop. Can… be good. Please, I can… good, I can be…”
Oh. She’s not dreaming of Nicholas, as Rio would have expected - she’s dreaming of her monstrous abusive mom. Agatha has been alive for just over 350 years, and Evanora Harkness has been dead for 95% of that time, but she still haunts her daughter to this day, the ghastly, sadistic woman that she was.
Rio’s heart breaks. She doesn’t know why she thought that Agatha might have progressed in her healing from her childhood trauma during their period of separation - maybe it was wishful thinking. But it’s clear that her wife still dreams of her mother beating, starving, and berating her.
Agatha’s bunny familiar is perched upright near her head, tiny paws pressed against her skull as he tries to wake her, squeaking. None of Señor Scratchy’s attempts are working. His head swivels around, ears twitching, as he hears her nudge the door open.
Help her, Rio can sense him trying to communicate to her, with round, pleading eyes.
She shoos him down to the foot of the bed so she can take his place. There are three ways that she can go about waking Agatha up.
One, she follows her wife’s example and gives in to her feral cat instincts. That would involve shaking her awake violently, throwing water on her, or pushing her off the bed onto the floor. Another part of that may include waking her up with sex, which Agatha used to enjoy, but Rio knows for a fact would drive her into an unfathomable rage right now.
Two, she wakes her up calmly but firmly, raising her voice and giving her light shakes until she rouses. Or three, she takes the gentle route, and coaxes Agatha back into consciousness with tender, soothing motions and words.
Number one would probably result in her wife trying to kill her again - and while that would be titillating, she’s in no state to be wrestling on the floor with Rio again. Two would probably be the most sensible option, but three is an attractive one as well, if only to see how Agatha reacts upon waking.
Spotting how her wife is beginning to jerk and squirm around on the bed again, nervous mewls breaking free from her lips, Rio settles on option two. She grasps her shoulder securely and clamps down to ground her, calling, “Hey, Agatha. Agatha.”
She gets no response, so Rio applies pressure and, knowing that she may come to regret it, reaches out with her mind to where Agatha’s mental walls stand, tall and impervious, blocking her out. Tentatively, she extends a psychological hand to give the wall a prod - and is abruptly startled back into the land of the living when Agatha lashes out with a ferocious snarl, lunging upwards and tackling her down onto the floor.
Rio cannot be winded as she does not exactly need to breathe, but she’s stunned enough to be momentarily dazed as she lies on her back, Agatha sprawled out on top of her. She jolts in shock when she feels Agatha’s teeth bury into her bare shoulder, having nosed aside her sweater. It doesn’t hurt at all, but her canines tickle her as she chomps down.
“Wow, you’re keen. Ask me to dinner first, darling,” she wheezes.
Agatha bites down harder.
She moans in arousal. “If you’re trying to give me a hickey, mi vida, I think you might have forgotten that my skin doesn't mark. I appreciate the effort, even if you're a bit out of practice. Proper technique is more lips and less teeth.”
Rio receives no verbal response, and sensing that something is wrong by the way Agatha is trembling all over, tries to push her back. Her feral cat wife - who upon inspection, is still asleep - is clawing frantically at her with her blunt fingernails, lost in the throws of a nightmare.
She’s still caught up in the sheets; the sensation of them wrapped around her legs must feel confining, because Agatha kicks out, her knees jabbing into Rio’s stomach and one jamming up and between her legs, which makes her yelp. It’s the kind of rough play that she is used to receiving from Agatha, but not in this context.
When her wife’s hands scramble at her throat, Rio thinks, this again? and snags Agatha’s wrists, bringing them down to pin them against her chest. It results in Agatha falling forward so her face is buried in Rio’s cleavage, and she heaves a groan, reminding herself that Agatha is asleep, she is having a nightmare, and this is not foreplay. Her wife obviously thinks that she is defending herself against somebody in her dream. Agatha is trying to bite her because she is attempting to attack her, not because she is trying to rile her up for sex.
Okay, time to be a bit more forceful, before Agatha hurts herself yet again.
“AGATHA!” Rio shouts.
Her wife stops, eyelids fluttering. Her jackrabbiting heart skips a beat, that echoes in Death’s head. Sensing that her voice is finally breaking through, Rio releases Agatha’s wrists to thread her fingers through her wife’s hair. Agatha jerks at the feeling, but pushes her head into Rio’s hand.
“Wake up. You’re having a nightmare, sweetheart,” she croons.
Agatha gradually awakens, disoriented. There’s a fogginess in her eyes that tells of her chronic exhaustion. She blinks slowly, licking her dry lips as her perplexed gaze focuses on Rio’s face, recognition dawning.
“Rio?” she murmurs.
“Hi,” she smiles winningly. When Agatha bolts upright, her knees straddling Rio’s waist, she grasps her wife’s hips to keep her seated. Annoying Agatha is one of the best ways to wake her up quickly. And the best way to irritate her right now? Is to flirt with her. “If you were so eager to get on top of me again, you could have just asked.”
That seems to help wake Agatha up a little bit more, because she scowls, shaking her head to rid herself of the vestiges of sleep. The spirit witch flips her wild hair back over her shoulders, rubbing her gritty eyes. She looks so adorable, pawing at her face like a confused kitten. She leans to the side, aiming to clamber off Rio’s hips, but the green witch tightens her grip on her waist, smirking.
Agatha shoots her a disdainful glare. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Mm, I prefer insatiable. But this - this is scratching that itch,” she teases, bucking her hips beneath her wife’s. “I liked it better when you were just wearing that robe, though. Fancy changing and resuming this arrangement?”
Rio wiggles her eyebrows suggestively, finally letting go of Agatha’s waist - to bring her arms up above her head in a mock gesture of her hands being pinned to the floor.
Agatha’s gaze rakes over her, darkening. “Slut,” she scoffs.
“Yes,” Rio agrees, beaming. “Call me a whore next, that one really gets me going.”
She pouts dramatically when Agatha rolls her eyes, and staggers up to back away from her. She shuffles slowly back to the bed, as if her entire body is aching and sore. She nearly slips on the wooden floors because of the fluffy socks she’s adorning; Agatha collapses back down on the mattress just so she can rip them off and throw them away, vexed.
Rio uses wind magic to vault back to her own feet. She takes a step back to lean against the nearest wall and twirls her hand to telekinetically gather up the sheets that Agatha dragged to the ground, remaking the bed. The spell works as well as it can with the spirit witch in the way, wriggling the sheets beneath Agatha and making her huff in chagrin.
The glower she’s wearing at aiming at the green witch only disappears when Señor Scratchy hops across the bed and into her lap, whiskers tickling her palms. Almost automatically, Agatha begins to pet down his spine, fingers lost in his dense yet soft fur. The rabbit may be a nuisance, but he does a good job as his witch’s familiar and emotional support animal. Rio tries not to feel too jealous; she wants Agatha’s hands stroking over her body.
The pout rapidly vanishes from her face, replaced with worry, when she hears her wife hack out an explosive, rattling cough, hunched over on the bed and clutching at her chest. A glass of water pops into existence in her hand, and she offers it to Agatha. She snatches it and gulps it down without an ounce of hesitation, apparently no longer concerned that Rio might try and drug her.
“How are you feeling?” Rio asks.
“As if you care,” Agatha immediately fires back in a rough voice.
The green witch regards her patiently. “As we have already established, many, many times over the past day, I do care about you. Very much. And I am asking how you are feeling out of concern, not to try and manipulate you or hurt you in any way.”
“Whatever.” Her wife flips her hair back over her shoulder.
She will not back down this time. “How are you feeling?” she repeats.
“Oh, I’m positively jumping for joy,” Agatha deadpans. “Could not be more thrilled that after finally escaping the mind control of a psychotic chaos witch, my stalker ex, AKA the embodiment of death itself, had decided to take me hostage and play the role of my deranged horny therapist slash nurse. Superrrr excited to have finally had my chance to experience the Salem witch special of death by drowning.”
Agatha’s voice strains near the end of her sentence, and she ends up bending at the waist in a coughing fit once again, her entire body shaking as she gasps in frantic breaths, desperate for oxygen. Rio places a concerned hand on her shoulder, which the spirit witch angrily shrugs off. She chokes down another couple of mouthfuls of water from the glass.
“Well, hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but you kinda look like shit,” Rio smirks, winding her finger around a limp strand of her wife’s hair and giving it a teasing tug. “And I say that as somebody who has got up close and personal with her fair share of dead bodies.”
Agatha’s expression turns utterly thunderous. “NO SHIT I look like shit!” she grits out, her voice a wreck after coughing so violently. “You want to know how I feel, Rio? My lungs feel like they’ve been wrung out like wet towels. And my throat is drier than the fucking Sahara - why is it so dry? And why does my chest hurt so much?”
Oh… right. The small amount of what was probably inadequate CPR Rio performed on her earlier has consequences. “Thank you for being honest with me.” Agatha scoffs and looks away, her bottom lip sticking out in disdain. “Your chest hurts because I probably cracked your ribs getting the water out of your lungs, and your lungs themselves hurt because of the anti-drowning spell.” The green witch summons one of the rejuvenation elixirs and practically forces it into Agatha’s hand. “That’ll heal the cracked ribs.”
Agatha swigs it back without hesitation, apparently eager to rid herself of the pain, and rubs at her chest with a wince. Over the next few seconds, however, some of the visible discomfort observable in her furrowed brow and downturned lips eases.
“Lungs still ache,” she complains.
“Inhale some steam and you’ll be fine,” Rio assures her with an eye roll.
She tops off the glass of water with a flick of her finger when it runs empty, and Agatha presses her lips together unhappily. She slides the glass onto the bedside table, no longer interested in it. Rio flops down onto the bed next to her in a cross-legged position, making the mattress bounce, with Agatha on top of it.
“What were you dreaming about?” she asks boldly.
Agatha instantly stiffens. “None of your business.”
Rio props her chin on her hand, resting it on a knee as she scrutinizes her wife. She can see that her gentle probing has put her on the defensive, resulting in Agatha fortifying her protective emotional walls. “Your mother, if I were to take a guess,” she says bluntly.
“Then why ask if you already know?” her wife bristles. She scoots back against the headboard, legs crossed at the ankle as she rubs Señor Scratchy’s ears affectionately.
“I was giving you the opportunity to tell me yourself, if you wanted,” Rio replies with a shrug. “I thought the whole thing with humans and nightmares is that they feel better after talking about them.”
“Why would I ever want to talk about my mother with you?” Agatha snaps, tense and refusing to look at her now.
“You used to,” Rio reminds her, softening.
It took a while for Agatha to trust her enough to open up to her, even after they courted each other for decades and handfasted, in the early 18th century. Agatha was most prone to nightmares after rounds of rough and frenzied sex where she subbed (a rare occurrence) but was not in the right headspace to do so (rarer, but far too often for Rio’s liking).
Throughout the time they lived together - in this very cottage - one thing that never improved was Agatha’s understanding of her own limits, which led to multiple instances where she should have safeworded, but didn’t, spiraling and stuck in her own head.
Rio, ever attuned to her wife’s emotions, would have to put a stop to the scenes for Agatha’s own safety. Apologies would be aired, limits reinforced verbally, and then they would bask in each other’s arms in the aftermath, before falling asleep. But Agatha always awoke screaming hours later; those nightmares always tended to feature Evanora, and her wife would confide in Rio about her mother’s mistreatment in contrite whispers.
Her mother was a cruel disciplinarian, punishing Agatha for miniscule slights and imagined ones. She asserted her authority over her daughter with various forms of abuse. Her favourites included hitting her hands with a broom until her fingers broke, and insulting her, calling her evil and weak, undeserving of magic, and unworthy of covenhood.
Attempting to break free from Evanora’s iron-handed control to study magic herself, ended in her mother calling for her execution. After eighteen years of suffering under her mother’s rule, Agatha decided that she would no longer allow anybody control over her. It explained her difficulty with submission.
“Two centuries ago,” Agatha mutters. “Talking doesn’t erase the memories. Doesn’t stop the nightmares.”
“You used to let me into your nightmares so I could manifest in the middle of them and fight her off.”
After hearing how Evanora raised Agatha, Rio was all too pleased to beat the shit out of her in her wife’s nightmares, even if she was just a dream figment. She wishes now that she hadn’t ferried Evanora to the afterlife with such indifference. She didn’t know Agatha at the time, but now, if given the chance, she would make Evanora suffer for the agony she put her daughter through.
Rio bites her lip and offers hesitantly, “I could do that for you again, if you wanted.”
The spirit witch hunches her shoulders, tensed, as she bites out, “Yes, well this time you were there already, egging her on. Vying for me to be punished.” She runs a shaky hand down her face, which settles on her rabbit familiar’s rump to give him scratches. “I didn’t need a second you showing up and confusing the hell out of my psyche.”
“You -” Rio’s voice dies mid-sentence, a lump forming in her throat. A very uncomfortable tight feeling flares to life in her chest, one that she knows from experience is paralyzing guilt. “You have nightmares about me hurting you?” she rasps. Her partner goes still, cerulean eyes flashing up from her bunny. Rio catches sight of a glint of panic. Her wife clearly did not intend to tell her that information, but it burst out of her in her frustration. Is Agatha that scared of her? “When did those start?”
Agatha swallows, glancing back down at Señor Scratchy, who bats at her chest until the witch cuddles him closer. “You know when,” she mumbles, as her familiar nuzzles beneath her chin, comforting her.
Perhaps she shouldn’t be all that surprised; Agatha has night terrors about losing Nicky, and she knows she’s likely to star in those as the villain. But being the one who raises a hand to Agatha? No, she never thought she would be relegated to that role. And it breaks her heart.
Overwhelmed, Rio slinks off the bed and silently leaves the bedroom, needing to take a moment. She feels Agatha’s eyes piercing into her back as she leaves, but her wife doesn’t call her back.
Rio busies herself with finishing off the soup and putting a lid over it to keep it warm. She then brews tea to help cure Agatha’s aches and pains, and riffles through the medicine she salvaged from the Westview house, as she reflects on her thoughts and Agatha’s disquieting revelation.
The whole universe is terrified of Death - always has been, and always will be - but when she met Agatha, her wife did not regard her with fear. She loved Rio, skeletal true form and universe-shattering powers and all. As much as Rio is certain that part of Agatha does still love her, she’s now being confronted with the reality that there’s another part that is afraid of her. Afraid enough to conjure nightmares of Rio hurting her.
It’s incredibly sobering.
Once the tea has finished stewing for long enough, she pours it into a non-descript mug decorated with purple orchids, adds honey, and then carries it back to the bedroom, a packet of pills in her off-hand.
Agatha startles when she enters, curled up on her side on the mattress with her familiar cradled against her chest. She sits up abruptly, blinking at her with wide, shocked eyes. Her astonished expression morphs fleetingly into one of abject relief, before she quickly schools it back into one of forced apathy.
“You came back,” Agatha observes, in a far too nonchalant tone to be casual.
“Of course I did.” Rio approaches the bed trepidatiously, perching on the edge so as to not encroach on her wife’s space too much. “Did you think I left?”
Agatha crosses her arms over her chest, clearly trying very hard not to look embarrassed to have been caught. “How was I to know?”
Hope blossoms in her heart, chasing away the lingering remorse and sorrow. Rio maintains a flat expression, fighting back her smug smile. Agatha didn’t want her to go. Whether that’s because Agatha has realized that she can’t take care of herself in her current state and needs Rio, doesn’t matter.
Her wife doesn’t want her to leave - she wants her to stay. As if sensing Rio’s desire to gloat, Agatha shoots her a discouraging glower and pets her familiar a little bit harder, brow furrowed as she sulks.
Teasing her would just make her raise her hackles further, so Rio lets it go for now, instead passing over the blister packet of pills. “Take these. Antibiotics, so you don’t get anything nasty growing in your lungs from inhaling all that plant-infused bath water.”
Agatha eyes them warily, wrinkling her nose. She examines the sealed packet and confirms that they are antibiotics by reading the medication name, but still seems uncertain.
Rio snickers. “Do you need me to stuff them in some chunks of cheese or chicken, kitten?” she goads. “Or are you going to be a good girl and take your medicine?”
The cutesy little pet name and weaponization of her praise kink instantly pisses her wife off, which is Rio’s goal. “Oh fuck you, Vidal,” she seethes. “This pussy will make you regret ever taking physical form if you dare call her that again.”
But after that, she swallows two of the tablets down with the glass of water without further argument. She has to gulp down the glass of water on the bedside table just to get them down her dry throat; she visibly shudders at the sour taste of the tablets.
Once she’s medicated herself, her attention turns to the steaming mug that Rio is holding between her palms. “What’s that?”
The green witch snags her hand and wraps it around the handle, so she has to take it, or risk spilling hot liquid on the bed. “I made tea for you.”
Agatha scrunches up her face. “You couldn’t have made coffee instead?”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s medicinal.”
“So’s coffee.” When Rio raises an eyebrow, she defends herself, “It’s got antioxidants and shit, doesn’t it?”
“Too much caffeine will aggravate your headaches. And it increases susceptibility to seizures,” Rio tells her.
Agatha tilts her head in acquiescence, looking disappointed that she has to drink tea and not coffee, but begrudgingly accepting that it’s probably better not to drink something that could cause more seizures. She’s suffered enough of them already.
She takes a sip of the tea - and promptly spits it out. Señor Scratchy jolts in surprise as the liquid flies out of her mouth, and squeals in protest when Agatha pushes him off her lap and to the side so she can lunge for the water glass and rinse her mouth out. Rio grimaces; maybe she should have warned her wife about how bitter the tea would taste.
“That’s vile.” Agatha splutters, shoving the mug back into Rio’s grasp as she wipes her lips, disgusted. “Urgh, are you actually trying to poison me!? What’s in that?”
“White willow bark and feverfew,” Rio sighs, defeated. She really thought that the honey might mellow out the harsh notes of the bark, but it obviously failed. “I enhanced their properties.” Which unfortunately would have enhanced their flavours.
“You couldn’t have added honey to cut the horrific bitterness?” Agatha complains. Rio bites her lip, but not before a snicker escapes. “You did?” The spirit witch glares at the mug as if it contains cyanide, and not just mildly unpalatable tea. “Did you spit in that like you did the elixir?”
She came close, but ultimately decided not to. But Agatha thinks she did, which gives her the opportunity to tease, “And if I did?”
Agatha is already pale, but her ashen face actually turns a little green with nausea. “I’d ask you to spare me from your weird bodily fluids kink and stop adding your saliva as a garnish to everything I drink while I’m stuck here with you as my all-too-eager nursemaid.”
She doesn’t have a bodily fluids kink. Okay… maybe Rio has enjoyed it in the past when Agatha spat on her during sex, but that’s because she has a degradation kink. So what if Death enjoys being dominated and treated like an unruly brat? Sue her, she enjoys giving up control sometimes, given that she’s an ultrapowerful cosmic being who never gets a break and has a real downer of a job.
Agatha has always indulged her and seemed to enjoy it as well. It’s also not as if Agatha hasn’t ingested her saliva before; constant kissing with a lot of tongue when they were courting ensured that Agatha probably swallowed more of Rio’s spit than her own, some days. And she’s never been shy about consuming other fluids either, whether that be blood or sweat or cum.
Rio places the mug on the bedside cabinet next to the water glass and rises to her feet. She grabs Agatha by her ankle and gives it a firm tug, yanking her half a foot down the bed. Her wife barks angrily and kicks at her, baring her teeth. “C’mon, up. Dinner’ll be ready in ten minutes.”
Agatha sniffs. “I refuse to eat whilst wearing pajamas. Get out and give me a minute alone to get changed.”
Rio considers asking if she needs help dressing, since she needed it before after the bath, but decides not to; Agatha seems much recovered after her long nap, and wouldn’t be thinking about changing clothes if she didn’t think she was able to do so independently.
“Oh, baby, you won’t let me watch?” she pouts. “Don’t you want to thank your wife for her excellent nursing skills with a nice little strip tease? Don’t I deserve a reward for how patient I’ve been with you?” She leans forward over the spirit witch with a leer, hands braced on the mattress, either side of Agatha’s hips. “I’ll keep my hands to myself, I promise.”
“Knowing you, you’d start humping my pillow and whining like a fucking puppy being deprived of treats,” Agatha scoffs, shoving her away.
A puppy, huh? Rio raises an eyebrow. “Hmm, I’d sit and stay like a good girl if you ordered me to. You can even leash me to the headboard, if you’d like.”
She is completely elated when her wife’s cheeks turn a faint shade of pink. She spots Agatha try and hide her swallow, and beams smugly. She is definitely thinking about putting Rio on a leash and commanding her to heel like the old days. Nothing got Agatha off more than collaring and taking control of Death to treat her like a pet.
“If you keep yapping, as soon as I get my magic back, I’ll spay you,” she growls. “I will not be undressing in front of you. Now get OUT.”
Okay, fine. Rio sighs in disappointment. Her wife could play along to entertain her, just a bit longer. Señor Scratchy is lying sedately at the foot of the mattress, so Rio gives his body a gentle flick. “You’re in charge. Make sure she behaves.”
Agatha looks aggrieved. “He’s a rabbit.”
“And still more responsible than you,” Rio says, straightening her spine and stepping away. Her wife grumbles, but doesn’t respond, too focused on climbing off the mattress and not accidentally tripping over. “Drink the tea. It’ll help with your chest pain and any lingering fuzziness from your seizure earlier. Willow bark is nature’s aspirin, baby.”
Agatha huffs. She won’t drink it without an incentive.
“If you drink it, I’ll let you have a small glass of wine with dinner,” Rio bribes her.
At the mention of alcohol, Agatha perks up. “Now that is a compromise I can get behind.”
Is it all that sensible to allow her sick and physically frail wife to drink alcohol after having two seizures and a handful of valium earlier? Definitely not. But Rio will be around to keep an eye on her, and a very small volume of wine should not increase her risk of another seizure too much, so long as she eats, and drinks water and the tea alongside it. Wine might also improve Agatha’s mood by relaxing her.
Let’s hope they can get through this dinner together without Agatha going for her throat.