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Death cries.
In eons of existence, it’s only happened once before. She lets her eyes pass over the flowers over her love’s grave as the tear rolls down her cheek.
Her cheek.
Mortals have many tales of Death. Of bargains and games and promises, giving themselves a little glimmer of hope that if they can just be clever enough, just good enough, that Death will be honorable and hold up her end.
Death supposes she is, in fact, honorable, as mortals would call it. In truth, Death just has no use for falsehoods. Everything rights itself eventually into the great Cosmic Balance like leaves in a river. They might swirl in an eddy, might get stuck behind a rock, but Death’s hand will eventually come and right them.
Her cheek.
Death’s hand is still resting against it, the tear trapped between her fingers. She should cast the spell, let the flesh melt away and leave only the grinning jawbone behind. Death is honorable. But her hand stays stuck.
She thinks, for a moment, of the things she has seen mortals grasp at while she walks their lovers away. Inconsequential things like clothing, receipts, a bottle cap–Death feels another disturbing mortal emotion coiling in her chest. Anger. Death wants to rage at something, wants to rage at all the lovers left behind and let them know how her suffering is worse. That they can hold their trinkets, but that she must tear the only thing she has left–herself–and leave it in the grave.
Death is honorable, she must cast the spell.
“Mother?” A voice cuts through the silence where Death deliberates. A familiar voice.
Rio looks up from where her gaze has been swimming among the flowers, sees the world distorted through water and blinks the tears out of her eyes.
Nicky.
For a brief, wild, hysterical moment, Death wonders if she is dying too. She has seen it before, when she arrives a little too early and has to wait for a slow death to take someone, as they look out, almost seeing something, and call to their loved ones.
Death tries to speak, but there’s no air left in her lungs to rattle her vocal cords. She hasn’t been breathing. She doesn’t have to, and supposes that with her love in the ground she had no words left to say.
The world blurs with tears again but Rio staggers forward and falls to a knee as her boy moves toward her. His little arms wrap around her neck, and his hair rustles against her cheek.
She’s glad she hadn’t dropped the spell, never wants to scare her boy.
There’s noise happening, and it takes Rio a minute to realize that she’s repeating his name. She stops herself, wills herself to regain control. These wild, uncontrollable, human feelings almost scare her, if Death could be scared.
Death has been scared before.
Rio pulls back from the hug, presses her hands to frame Nicky’s smiling face and feels her own pulling into a similar shape.
“I tried to be patient like you asked,” He says, “But it’s been so long.” He draws the last two words out almost petulantly, almost in a familiar way that reminds Rio of–
“You did good,” Rio says. She thinks back to a time in another forest, of holding his hand and telling him You must continue on, it is the way of all things, and when it is your mama’s time, I will bring her to you.
Nicky’s brow furrows, “Where is she?” He looks around as much as he can with Rio’s hands still holding him, and she reluctantly lets him go. He takes a few aimless steps around the clearing. “I thought the time had come, I felt her, but then she was gone. Mother, you promised.” The words fall out like chatter, like he isn’t thinking of what they mean, just talking.
Rio stays kneeling, her thoughts race. No one has ever walked back from the final path. She had thought it was impossible. As she looks at Nicky, something strikes her. He looks different. Stretched almost. There’s still baby fat around his cheeks, but he’s taller. Not by much, but everything about Nicky is pressed permanently into her mind, and she can tell the difference.
The dead don’t age, they don’t grow.
Nicky is still talking–it reminds her of someone–
“You felt her?” Rio interrupts, “What do you mean, Nicky?”
He shrugs, “I mean I felt her, I don’t know. I just knew it was time and that I would see her soon.” He comes and sits next to Rio, and dejectedly says “But now I don’t anymore.”
Rio can start to see the picture, and every single part of it puts her on edge.
“Would you like to take a walk?”
*
They had taken many walks before.
Rio had never intended to start it, but interfering with mortals was always messy.
She had intended, while Agatha slept soundly, to peek over the edge of the basket, just to get a glimpse of the boy she was holding back the universe for. Perhaps if she saw him, she would understand and the burden would be easier to bear.
It was.
Brown eyes stared up at her, and one little hand, which had wretched itself free of the swaddle, grabbed towards her. Rio held out a finger, and the little hand gripped it.
Rio stood still, just watched the little one in his blankets, let him move her hand back and forth. Eventually his eyes drifted shut. Rio knew she should leave, that it was time for her to go back. There were souls, after all. There were always souls.
She gently tugged her hand away.
Eyes opened and crinkled. A little whimpering wail started. Eyes wide, Rio glanced at Agatha. Even in sleep, she looked exhausted.
She had told herself she wouldn’t. But Rio reached into the basket, took out the boy, and rocked him, whispering gently as she did. When he stopped crying, she stayed a little longer, told herself she had to be sure he was settled.
She told herself a lot of things during those years.
She told herself that she would only watch from then on. She had cut it too close.
But, of course, sometimes he woke in the night. Some little, human part of Rio wondered if he could sense when she came. When he was younger, he would occasionally sleep through her visits, but as he grew up, and once he could walk and talk, it seemed that he always woke up on the rare night she visited.
They would walk in the woods. Rio let him talk, telling her about everything he had gotten up to, for the most part. Every now and again, she would stop, point out something to him. A plant, an interesting mushroom, one of the nocturnal creatures that walked the woods with them. His eyes would be wide, and he would crouch down to get a better look, his little fingers digging into the earth as he did.
Sometimes Rio wondered if Agatha noticed the fresh dirt on his fingertips in the morning.
*
This walk was unlike the others.
There were souls piled up from her time spent on the Road. Rio could feel them, pressing against her conscious.
She stood, and held out a hand to Nicky. He grabbed it like always, like no time had passed for them.
Rio had never walked between realms with someone. She doubted there was anyone who could follow her steps as she walked to gather souls. But she had doubted that anyone could walk back out of Death too.
“I have a little work to do,” Rio said, almost feeling embarrassed, like she had to give Nicky an explanation, “Your mama’s been keeping me busy, and I have to take care of this.”
“Okay,” Nicky chirped.
And they walked. Nicky followed her as she reaped souls, content to wander around and take in all the sights of the world he missed while she worked.
“Don’t go too far from me,” She said at one point, as he poked his head down the hallway of an apartment building where an old man had slipped and bashed his head against a kitchen cabinet handle.
“I can’t,” He said, coming back to stand next to her as they continued on.
“You can’t?” Rio echoed.
Nicky shook his head and reached for her hand again, “It gets all grey and it feels like I’m going back to the other place.”
Rio nods like she understands any of it. She feels a familiar thought bubbling to the surface.
Death was not meant to have children.
*
Death was not meant to have a home either. But she did, for a time.
It was a cottage deep in the woods of west Massachusetts, and Rio had thought it was perfect. Even though there was a small spot near the front door where Rio couldn’t quite coax the wild grasses to grow. Agatha had gotten a little carried away draining the previous owner and accidentally pulled all life out of the earth four feet down with it.
She had been trying to fix that spot, like a husband tinkering with a stuck window, because Agatha sent her out of the house. Apparently her witch was in a studious mood again, and Rio was “distracting.” Rio loved to be distracting. But, Rio could give up a little joy now in exchange for Agatha’s full attention later. It was a recently learned skill, but she could.
All day, she had wandered around the yard tending to things. The chickens’ coop had a weak spot that would be a hole if they weren’t careful, the garden gate had started to sag in its hinges–Rio worked her way around patching and fixing and trying to keep herself occupied.
She finally managed to get a scumble of clovers and some ivy that was hugging the porch to root down on the dead spot. The Green magic buzzes through her hands, strong and vibrant and fighting to live. Rio could almost feel it chattering her teeth with the focus she put into it.
“My love?”
The words cut through her reprise as she admires her handiwork. Rio grins and steps back into the cottage, feeling as delighted as a hound let inside on a winter’s night.
Agatha is seated at the table, chair pushed back like she needs physical distance from the books that spread across the surface. One hand rubs her eyes, but when she sees Rio, she holds it out, drawing the other woman onto her lap.
“I thought I wasn’t to distract you,” Rio mutters as she settles down, straddling Agatha’s legs so she can see her beautiful face.
“Would you rather I sent you away again?” Agatha asks, lips pressed into a pout. Rio is driven wild watching her lips move, and she surges forward to try to press her own against the shape, but Agatha tightens her hold on Rio’s face and keeps her in place.
“Or would you prefer a reward for doing as I asked and being so good?”
Rio doesn’t have to answer the question–which feels rhetorical anyway–because Agatha pulls her forward to kiss her. It feels dizzying, Rio is practically humming with energy and anticipation. These types of days, when Agatha has been pouring over her books and studying spellwork, are her favorite. Her witch feels pent up and powerful and Rio is more than happy to be the outlet for that power, all of it that she’ll give her.
Agatha’s hands begin to work down her body, one to her chest and one to her chin. Rio mouths toward the top one, gentle-mouthed like a dog, and catches it between her teeth. She starts to lick at the finger, looks at Agatha while she does it and watches as her mouth drops a little and her breath comes in a small pant. Rio’s eyes gleam, and she releases the finger, but not before giving it a little bite.
Agatha gasps and grins, “And here I was going to keep praising you.” Rio feels a wet spot as Agatha grabs her chin with the same hand. “It’s rude to bite.” And then the hand is pulling Rio closer, setting her against the smooth skin of Agatha’s neck, pinching slightly to bring her jaw open.
“Unless you’ve been asked.”
And Rio waits, sure that any moment Agatha is going to follow those words by asking. But she doesn’t.
Instead, the hand that has been palming her chest drops lower, to where the hem of her skirts are bunched around their thighs. Agatha doesn’t even give her the pleasure of truly touching her, just rubs her through the cloth, and Rio should be embarrassed by the way her hips jump forward at the contact and she starts to rut against Agatha.
“Please,” Rio asks, voice high and needy, not sure what she’s even trying to ask for, and watches Agatha’s throat bob in response. Up close, it’s like she can see all the little movements, can practically feel Agatha trying to find her voice again.
“Please what?”
This witch is going to kill her. Rio is going to die, and there’s going to be no one to walk her over, so she’s just going to be pressing against Agatha forever and forever.
“Please…” Rio whines out the word, stretching it to give herself time to try to think, “Let me touch you.”
Agatha gasps, and even though Rio can still only see her neck from where she’s waiting (so patiently, so so patiently), Rio knows the exact shape of Agatha’s mouth. The self-satisfied, sarcastic little circle.
Agatha doesn’t answer with words–Rio likes that she’s affected too–but instead cradles the back of Rio’s head, lets her nuzzle into her neck and press a storm of kisses against it.
Rio feels hot, feels like her flesh is humming, and has to get the energy out, so the kisses soon become sprinkled with bites. Rio likes that she can feel Agatha’s hand stutter occasionally, goes back to those spots and tugs at the skin as it’s bruising.
“That’s what you want?” Agatha says, “This was meant to be your reward and you want to touch me?” Agatha shivers, and her voice pitches in a way that makes Rio feel wild. “What a good husband I have.”
That’s the game Agatha wants to play tonight. Rio likes this game, almost as much as she likes to be distracting.
“My wife,” Rio says and works the laces of Agatha’s bodice–tied in the front, almost as if her witch was planning this. She slides her way down Agatha’s body, keeping her mouth working at every piece of new skin she uncovers.
Agatha keeps one hand in her hair, not guiding, but occasionally she will twist her knuckles and pull at the roots deliciously. “I saw you, working outside all day,” Another gasp as Rio works her tongue across Agatha’s nipple, “So good, taking care of me like a husband should.”
Though it feels impossible, Rio pulls herself away from Agatha and stands. Agatha follows and brings Rio in for another kiss while they stand cramped in the small space between the chair and the table. It’s long and it feels like Agatha wants to devour her. Rio wouldn’t mind.
Rio turns them, presses Agatha against the table and up onto her precious books. Rio likes this game, knows that Agatha wants to call her “husband” and compliment her, and then have Rio on her knees to please her. As if the only way Agatha would keep a husband would be subservient, under her thumb. Rio supposes she can understand it, the power of it.
Agatha has always loved power. It is an excellent balance, then, that Rio loves to have her face buried under Agatha’s skirts.
Rio is pulling those skirts up, finds Agatha bare and ready for her and can’t help but surge forward. Rio had wanted to be slow and teasing like her witch, but she’s buzzing and can’t control it.
She swipes her tongue across Agatha, and hears her groan, feels the hand in her hair tighten. Rio likes it, tries to be slow and precise but can feel herself getting faster, sloppier with her movements. Agatha is saying something above her, but her thighs are clamped against Rio’s ears and distorting the sound.
Rio doesn’t even really realize that she has her hand against her own cunt until Agatha pulls her back by the hair, and now she can make out the words her witch is saying.
“Rio, my love, your fingers, please.”
And then, enraptured with the idea, Rio takes the hand that she was touching herself with and presses it into Agatha’s cunt. Rio watches the two fingers slide in, watches Agatha take her, and groans.
Agatha drops her head back and Rio jogs her hand, watching as Agatha bites her lip. Encouraged, Rio continues to fuck into her and then lowers her mouth back down as well, desperate to get her off.
Agatha’s thighs snap closed as she comes, and Rio is sure she is saying something she can’t hear again. She slows her paces, lets Agatha decide when to open her legs again and let Rio pull her fingers out and lick them clean.
It doesn’t feel like she’s humming anymore.
*
As they’re walking, Rio watches Nicky. He takes in everything with wide eyes, for the most part doesn’t touch much. Or if he does, puts it back as it was.
He’s a good kid.
Rio realizes that this world is different from the one he left.
Very different.
He seems surprised but doesn’t ask about it. Rio wonders if he even knows.
“Nicky,” She asks, “How long were you waiting?”
His head tilts to the side, “How long has it been?” And true, of the two of them, she should be the one who knows.
Rio shakes her head, “How long do you think?”
He shrugs again, “I don’t know. Maybe…ten years?” He crosses his arms, “A very long time to be patient.”
Rio laughs and ruffles his hair. When that doesn’t ease his grumpiness, she tickles him until he laughs and runs away. She chases him for a time, in the small clearing.
How much time, neither of them could say.
*
Death did not observe time, for most of it.
Death knew she had been wandering since it started and would wander until it ended and she had no reasons to mark the passing of it.
Every once and a while there would be festivals in various places of the world to celebrate the green of spring coming back. Sometimes, Rio walked among them since they were for her. The Green Witch. She liked to walk away from those festivals, encouraging things to grow with each footfall.
But Death tended to wander into those celebrations unintentionally, and was often surprised to find herself among them.
This became untenable when she met Agatha Harkness.
Mortals, probably because they had so little of it, obsessed over time. Divvied it up into increments, named and renamed them, counted their passing.
Agatha was cross with her.
“You said you would be gone a few days.”
The sound is muffled through the front door. Agatha stands inside, where, from the smell of it, a hearty stew is cooking. Rio, on the other side, stands in the rain. It is not their cottage, just a small space that Agatha has taken like a cuckoo bird with someone else’s nest.
Rio conjures a flower, “Has it not been a moment?”
The door does not open.
Rio tries again, “How long has it been, my love?”
“You’re clever,” Agatha says, not answering the question, “Perhaps you can figure it out.”
Rio looks around. She sees that the trees are bare. When she left, they were full in their foliage, and beautiful. Mostly green, but there were tinges of yellows and reds.
“I am sorry I was gone for months,” Rio says, “Will you forgive me?”
The door opens, but Agatha doesn’t spare her a glance and goes back to the soup pot over the hearth.
It hangs open, and Rio is honestly unsure if she should enter. But, it is raining, so she does. Rio quite likes the rain, doesn’t feel uncomfortable like mortals complain about. But she’s learned little mannerisms from Agatha and knows that if you’re out in the rain, you should come in.
She stands there, dripping on the floor, and sets the flower on the table. She does not think she is forgiven yet.
“There are hosts of people dying each day, it is a lot of work,” Rio starts.
Agatha raps the spoon she was stirring with against the side of the pot harshly, “By all means, go spend your time with them then.”
Rio reaches out, puts a hand on Agatha’s waist, but it is picked up by her love’s thumb and forefinger like a particularly revolting bug and dropped back into the air.
“You are cold and wet and a nuisance.”
Rio waves a hand, gathers the water and sends it under the door back into the dirt.
“I am no longer cold and wet.”
“Hm, just a nuisance then.”
Rio wraps both arms around Agatha’s waist, and at least this time, they are permitted to stay. She doesn’t know how to tell Agatha that she is still learning to keep time, that she is only keeping time for her. They are not yet married, and Rio is still slow to share the secrets of her existence, although Agatha loves nothing more than to wheedle them out of her.
“Your nuisance?” Rio hedges, tone feeling unsure in a way she doesn’t recognize.
Agatha turns in her arms, “You’ll have to come around more often to be considered mine.”
Rio vows to manage that. She thinks it would be like a human trying to keep count of their heartbeat while they went about their life, but she will.
Her heart, after all, only beats for Agatha anyway.
*
Rio is not sure about her theory until later. Part of her thinks this is some kind of hallucination, that her mind has fractured with Agatha’s death, or that she has somehow crossed the timeline back onto itself like a fucked up ouroboros.
She is in a house, new construction up in the northeast. Rio doesn’t pay attention to the state lines usually. Doesn’t want to think that maybe she’s in the territory that was once a Bay Colony.
But it snowed. Bad. Piled up against the side of the house and against the vents for the furnace. New, quick construction, didn’t pull the tab on the detector’s batteries. The carbon monoxide didn’t escape and inside Rio is walking a father across to the other side.
She knows he’s a father because she passed the kitchen on her way in, saw the fridge. Family of five. Lucky. The driveway is shoveled and one of the cars is missing.
“They’ll have each other,” She says, “And they’ll see you in the little things they do and remember.” He seems to accept this and walks.
“You forgot one,” Nicky’s voice echoes through the house from the floor above.
Rio walks upstairs cautiously. She had always thought of Nicky as her boy because of her love for Agatha but now.
Now she feels doubt creeping through her veins. As if she is getting a tasting menu of the spectrum of human emotions today!
When she reaches the top of the steps, she sees Nicky and a little girl. Nicky has her hand in his and he’s talking to her softly, Rio can’t tell what about. Rio can see, from her vantage point, that he’s oriented them so that the girl can’t see her body. Clever boy.
Her clever boy.
Nicky takes a few steps with her, she’s talking now, and he nods along. Then, the soul is gone.
Rio feels her heart beat again.
*
Rio catches him yawning as they make their way back down the stairs.
“Need to sleep, sweetheart?” She asks.
“No,” He says through another yawn.
Rio goes toward the couch, “Well, I could use a rest.” She puts her feet up on the coffee table, “We’ve walked a lot today.”
“Okay,” Nicky says, curling up on the couch next to her and putting his head in her lap, “If you’re tired.”
Rio strokes his hair, and he’s asleep not long after.
It’s curious. Rio doesn’t need to sleep, but sometimes she did, years and years ago. She wonders if Nicky needs it or if he’s just re-enacting the things that feel familiar to him from life. She should figure out if he needs to eat. Agatha would kill her if she starved her son.
Agatha.
Rio allows herself to think about her. She thinks about what Nicky said. She thinks about the grave.
The pieces line up. Agatha, true to form, has probably chosen the most annoying of all possible options and become a ghost. Refused to cross over and just continued to haunt this plane, wasting energy and aggravating Rio.
Maybe aggravating Rio wasn’t on her list of considerations, though. Agatha had seemed hell bent on never seeing her again. At least Rio wouldn’t have to see her as a ghost, if that was the case.
But Nicky–and Rio lifts her hand out of his hair as she feels herself growing angry–Rio would have thought that in her death that Agatha would have gone running to their boy. All the years of hurt and anger and now she was avoiding him? Rio bristled.
Fine. If Agatha wanted to run around with someone else’s son, Rio would take care of theirs.
She isn’t sure how long they stay on the couch, but when Nicky eventually wakes, Rio asks the familiar question.
“Do you want to take a walk?”
Nicky nods, and asks if she still has to work or if they can go look around the woods like they used to.
Rio takes his hand and tells him that she has all the time in the world for him.