Chapter 1
Agatha Harkness did not mean to kill Santa Claus and steal his power, but in her defense, it had been a rough night.
Year one of being divorced was going - it was going. That was all she had to say about that. (She’d had plenty to say. She had never stopped saying shit. She had said things to lawyers, she had said things to Rio, she had listened to her witch of a mother say things and nearly killed her for it, and absolutely none of it had changed fate. She was the one who’d asked for the divorce, of course, so why would it change?)
The holidays would look different this year. Ten years of married life, six of them with Nicky - ornaments stored up in the attic that they’d collected together, Rio baking the cookies and Agatha decorating (the latter far too cavalier about baking rules, and, on more than one occasion, the difference between baking soda and powder), the vintage multicolored lights it had taken two years of thrift store hunting to find, Nicky’s Christmas concerts in kindergarten and first grade, the songs they’d sung during Christmas tree decoration - all of those shared traditions were now split in two, with one jagged line down the middle.
Christmas, this year, had meant that split - Rio’s on Christmas Day, and Agatha’s on Christmas Eve.
Her house could be described as a bachelor pad, if one were so inclined, and she knew it. Rio had kept the cabin they’d lived their lives in - having half built and designed the thing - and Agatha had bought the ranch style house fifteen minutes away. It was nice enough. Two bedrooms, a den, a dining room. A kitchen with appliances that weren’t new but were nice enough they didn’t break down, and a bathroom with a tub.
The tub had been important.
It was the lack of decorations that really did her in. The bare walls, the plain couch, and sure, she had a bed frame, but that was because she had standards and an aging spine.
(Nicky’s room, of course, was impeccable - decorated with Cars bed sheets and school awards, a mountain of stuffed animals, some of which hung from those nets one hangs from the ceiling. It was herself she’d let slide, not him. Always.)
She hadn’t meant to kill Santa Claus, but we’re getting to that.
Rio pulled up with Nicky at three p.m., when the sky was already threatening to darken like an eye blinking shut, and snow encroaching on that darkness like an omen, holding the possibility of a white Christmas in those clouds, should it decide to stick.
Nicky was bundled up tight enough that his tiny nose was barely visible from where it peeked out over the knit scarf, mittens occluding his hands, and a hat with one of those big baubles on it firmly over his head.
“He looks like a gnome,” Agatha said, to an equally suited up Rio, standing in the open doorway and letting in both frigid air and snow that dusted over the welcome mat. Her mouth was visible, but her hands were shoved into her pockets, shoulders up to her ear muffed ears.
“Stay Puft Man!” Nicky shouted, voice muffled by the scarf as he bustled past her with his duffle bag, undoubtedly heading for his room.
“What?” Agatha busied herself with fixing the ends of her sweater - a red Christmas number with trees and reindeer on it that she’d had since her twenties - instead of the task of looking at Rio, whose eyes she could feel on her. Too warm. Looking at her like that. Like she could see every molecule in her body, and how it connected to the one next to it, and precisely what it meant.
“Stay Puft Man,” Rio enunciated. “From the movie Ghostbusters. That’s what he said when I bought him the jacket.” There was a small shrug, her shoulders up to her ears again, voice a notch too high - ears likely blocked by the earmuffs.
“At least gnomes are Christmas themed,” she said. “And you hate ghosts. When are you-”
“Ten a.m.,” Rio said, those eyes still watching her. “And I’ll have him back for New Year’s Eve. There’s something else-”
Nicky chose that moment to return, arms full of his own coat and hat. Agatha plucked them from his hands to go about hanging them up.
“Mama,” he said, and Agatha turned. “I can’t get my mittens off.”
He was indeed struggling - pulling at one of the mittens with his teeth, nose all scrunched, and suddenly Rio was laughing, and Agatha felt it catch in her throat, the smile growing on her lips despite herself.
“It’s not funny!” Nicky yelped. “Help!”
“We’re not laughing at you, baby,” Agatha surged forward to rescue him, pulling the mittens off and tucking them underneath her arm. That pout of his had come straight from Rio, transposed onto their son’s face like Agatha’s body had chosen photoshop as a child creation method. “You’re cute.”
“As a button,” Rio added, and Agatha could feel her over her shoulder. She still smelled like patchouli and daisies.
“Mama,” Nicky said, and those eyes - the part of his face that was most like Agatha’s, and maybe the only part, despite carrying him for just a week short of nine whole months - looked back to Rio, who hummed, and then to Agatha. She could feel a question on his face before he asked it.
“The boys in choir were all talking. And they said,” he shuffled his socked feet against the floor, eyes turning down as he talked faster and faster. “I didn’t wanna listen, but they asked me what I thought, and Mama you always say I’m curious. They said Santa wasn’t real.” He was hardly breathing for talking so fast. “They had proof. They said the Moms and Dads do it, and I said I have two moms and Santa came anyway, but then Michael said I wouldn’t get anything since my Moms didn’t even live together-”
“Okay, well,” Agatha interrupted, tossing her hands in the air. “Michael’s brain is made of dog turds and his parents don’t love him. I know his mother. She’s into pyramid schemes.”
“Like from ancient Egypt?”
“Agatha.”
“Hmm?”
Rio grumbled. “Nothing. Michael’s Mom loves him just fine, Nicky. He’s just a prick. And I told Nicky this entire thing was ridiculous. What did I say, Nicky?”
“You said Moms only buy the big presents and that Santa gets the little stuff, the stuff that the elves make. Like board games and baseball mitts.”
They’d done that ever since he was a baby - both of them having wanted to get him things from them and Santa, and never wanting him to brag about what Santa had got for him to other kids, in case their families weren’t as fortunate as their own. Rio had read it on parenting twitter, and the idea had taken off.
“But I don’t know,” Nicky said. “Maybe it’s silly. Maybe Santa is for babies.”
Agatha’s heart sunk straight to her knees.
“It isn’t childish to believe in magic,” she said.
“You don’t believe in the Easter bunny.”
“No,” she countered. “I said he doesn’t lay the eggs. I said that’s biologically impossible for a bunny. We have a bunny!”
Nicky shrugged. There was a calm on his face that Agatha wasn’t a fan of.
“It’s okay,” he said. “If you’re lying about Santa. Sometimes moms do that, to make kids feel better.”
A visible wince appeared on her face, and though she opened her mouth to speak, Nicky had already disappeared into the kitchen. She could hear the sound of him rustling just two rooms over.
“So-”
Agatha grunted. “Don’t. Maybe the magic is over.”
Lying to make him feel better was something they’d tried, once - when he was younger, and sick. It hadn’t worked. Telling him the truth had been much better in the end, for the countless doctor’s appointments they’d gone to, for the hours and years of terrified worry - and he was in remission, now. It was behind them, as much as something like that could be.
“I don’t know, Agatha. You were always pretty good at magic.”
“So you’re leaving his belief in magic to me?”
“You wanted Christmas Eve. Reap what you sow.” Rio reached out and gave Agatha’s shoulder a pat. AGatha continued to scowl. Maybe even scowled harder. “Nicky! Come say bye.”
The boy in question raced back into the entryway, crashing into his mother’s knees. One of the cookies Agatha had left on the counter was squished in his hand.
“Night, Mommy.”
“Goodnight, baby. Remember to brush your teeth.”
“I will. I’ll see you in the morning, right? And you’ll call before bed?”
“Check and check, Saint Nick.”
Agatha detected a sniffle. They were so close together that she couldn’t tell who it was coming from, but it turned her stomach either way. It was wrong, all of it. It was shaped wrong, felt wrong. The air burned with it.
But it was for the better.
“Okay,” Nicky pouted, letting go. “Merry Christmas Eve.”
“Merry Christmas Eve, the both of you. See you tomorrow.”
Rio’s honey eyes were red rimmed. Agatha, for once in her life, did the polite thing and pretended not to notice, letting her leave and closing the door shut behind her.
“Now. Whose name is Nicholas and is ready for Christmas?”
–
Only a few things turned to disaster.
She didn’t burn dinner. For all her faults as a baker, she was an excellent chef. She excelled when there were minimal rules to follow. The turkey was perfect, so far from dry it was ridiculous, and golden brown. The yams were so crisp Agatha nearly texted Rio about it before she remembered herself. Nicky didn’t even ask to eat mac and cheese herself, which Agatha had prepared and stored in the fridge, just in case.
Dessert, of course, was fucked. It nearly went up in flames. That was what happened when you divorced your star baker. There would have been actual flames, had she not had the rains to keep the goddamn oven closed, which she did. Of course that was when Rio had called, and of course Nicky had said that it was all fine because ‘Mama is keeping the oven door closed because she’s really smart and keeps me safe!’, because her life wasn’t embarrassing enough.
So it was The Tonight Dough in Christmas mugs on the couch, instead of peppermint brownies, but the weight of Nicky’s head on her shoulder as he fell asleep during Elf was the same either way. Warm, heavy, smelling faintly of strawberries from the only shampoo he would use.
And the heaviness of him, in her arms, as she carried him to bed?
Well. She’d kill thousands for that privilege.
She’d cross the earth, move mountains, sail the seas for this boy that was her’s. Even if she had to do it apart from the woman that she (still) considered the love of her life.
Her boy’s eyes fluttered open as she tucked the comforter around his chin, hazy blue focusing on her own.
“Mama?”
“Mm. Just tucking you in.” She leaned down, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.
“Do you really believe in Santa?”
Her hand paused for a fraction of a second in brushing his hair away from his face, and then she let it continue on its path down his cheek.
“I believe in all kinds of magic.”
It wasn’t a lie. There were plenty of magics that Agatha Harkness believed in. They were magics in life, and not in fantasy - the magic of her son pulling through his illness, the magic of his birth in the first place, of a white Christmas and her own, years ago, escape and estrangement from her own family (try, time and again, as her mother might) - that Agatha believed in.
“I meant Santa,” he said, derailing her. “Specifically.”
She pressed a pointer finger to that perfect nose, and was awarded with a giggle that made her heart soar.
“Why don’t you go to sleep and find out in the morning?”
He sighed, and snuggled deeper into the blankets.
“Will you stay until I fall asleep?”
“Always.”
–
It didn’t take long for Nicky to fall asleep. He’d always been good that way, even as a baby. Once his breathing had evened out, she’d made her escape to the living room for late night television on the couch. Every channel was playing a Christmas movie. She flipped her way through another showing of Elf, Love, Actually, and Home Alone before she settled on The Holiday.
Truly - really, truly - she hadn’t meant to fall asleep on the couch. She’d leaned her head against the arm and tucked a blanket underneath her chin, but she was going to go to bed. As soon as the women switched houses and lives, she was going to tuck herself into bed.
It just didn’t happen that way.
The clock on the wall read one in the morning when she startled awake, disoriented, breath held in her chest as she blinked. Agatha had never been a deep sleeper - quite the contrary, and more so since having Nicky - but she couldn’t tell what woke her this time. Maybe it was the crick in her neck. She listened, hard, and didn’t hear anything coming from Nicky’s room. She’d check, anyway, just to be sure - and then off to bed with her. She was too old to fall asleep on the couch and have a good morning, anyway.
And then -
Footsteps.
Something that could only be described as a clatter.
From the roof.
Oh, fuck no. Not tonight.
It would have been the sensible thing to call the police, but there were only a handful of sensible choices Agatha had made in her life. Having Nicky. Leaving her mother. Anything else was, at any various moment, up for debate either by herself or others.
So it was the door she went for, and not the cell phone she left on the coffee table, and the bat by the door instead of her coat and gloves.
The night, of course, was freezing. It could only be described as bitter. She sucked in a breath and let it fill her with rage as she stepped back from the house and looked up at the roof.
There was someone up there. Someone in a fucking red suit. And maybe, just maybe, she was having some sort of episode. Divorce related waking nightmare. Or maybe a mall store Santa was out for revenge or simple present stealing.
“Hey! You!”
If she had taken a second - even a second - she would have realized that someone breaking into her house from the roof didn’t make sense at all. There was no way into the house from the roof.
“Whoa!”
There was a way out of the house from the front door - a door which Nicky had just burst out of - to which Agatha turned with her teeth grit.
“Go back inside. Go back inside and call 911.”
He wasn’t listening. Too much like his mama. He moved instead towards her side, and she was briefly relieved to see he was wearing his coat, and even his boots. Minor miracles.
“Why do you have a bat? Santa’s on the roof! Is this what you meant when you said I should find out in the morning?”
“No. No, this isn’t what I meant.” She took a step towards the house, gesturing for Nicky to stay back. “Hey! Get down from there! Unless you want to wake up the whole neighborhood on Christmas Eve! There’s a neighborhood watch!”
There wasn’t, but Agatha had never minded a lie or two.
“I’m calling the cops!”
There was a ladder, she noticed. A ladder against her house. Agatha tapped it with the bat.
That, it seemed, was what did it.
The man in a fur lined red suit and pants turned, seeming to finally notice the woman and her son in front of their own house he was intending to rob.
“Let’s go! Pack it up!”
It had been snowing. That’s what she’d tell the cops, she decided, or better yet a lawyer. It was snowing, and the roof was icy, and she didn’t put him up there in the first place. The man on the roof gave a shout, and then his feet were slipping, and Agatha was shouting, and Nicky was yelling -
And Santa Claus was flying off the roof, landing hard on his back in Agatha’s snow covered front lawn.
“Shit.” Breath heaving in her chest, she took another step closer. “Sir? Can you hear me? What the hell were you doing - it’s fine, we’re going to call 911, Nicky, go get my cell -”
She was reaching out to touch his wrist, to try and feel for a pulse, and turning around to talk to Nicky. Her boy stood with his feet stuck to the ground, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open.
“You killed Santa Claus.”
“I did not - go get my phone, please, and call your-”
“Mama! Look!”
And Agatha did.
Where there had previously been a man in the snow, there was nothing but a red hat, a large set of pants, and a big red coat.
And Agatha could truly, really, not explain that.