Chapter 2
“There’s a ladder!”
The man on the roof was not dead. The man on the roof was gone. Agatha repeated this to herself, over and over again, until she got it through her spinning head. He had simply absconded, naked, after somehow slipping out of his clothes in less than the half second it had taken for Agatha to turn around and look at her son. People who die after falling off roofs don’t also disappear - or melt, melt is another option - into the snow.
That wasn’t a thing that happened.
“Mama! Look!”
Did Agatha believe in a God anymore? If she did, it wasn’t a benevolent one. Lord forgive her, but she was a little too preoccupied with the mysteriously gone body and the mall Santa suit on the snowy ground. Her fingers were starting to go numb, lips quickly following in the idea.
“Mama!”
There was a soft thud, like boots on a ladder. Agatha looked up, gathering the pieces of the suit in her arms for some godawful reason, and it was exactly what it sounded like ... It was boots on a ladder. To be incredibly specific, it was Nicky’s boots on the ladder as he started climbing his way to the roof of her house.
“Nicholas Harkness-Vidal! You get down here this minute!” She wasn’t a yeller. Oh, she was a loud and angry person in general - but not when it came to her son. He got the best of her. The soft, gentle parts of her.
Rio had, too, once upon a time.
Right now, of course, Nicky was halfway up a ladder, and Agatha was scrambling up the ladder after him, one handed and cursing like a sailor, suit dangling from her hand.
“Don’t you dare step foot on this roof-”
“Whoa! Mama! Look at them!”
Perhaps Agatha had died, and that was why Nicky couldn’t seem to hear her. She cursed under her breath again and pulled herself up onto the roof. Maybe she was a ghost.
“Nicky, Mama’s too old for this. When you turn thirty you get this letter in the mail that tells you your spine is … out … of … warranty …”
The words died on her tongue as she stood up on the (slippery, snow and shingle covered) roof. Nicky was scrambling up over it, still exclaiming, and Agatha -
“There are … reindeer, on my roof. There … there are reindeer on my roof.”
“And a sleigh!”
“And … a sleigh. This is Dottie. Oh, I’m gonna kill her! Nicky, don’t touch those! It might electrocute you!”
“Reindeer can’t electrocute me! Mama, they’re soft! C’mere!”
“It’s not reindeer!” She huffed and puffed and threatened to blow the whole house down as she threw the Santa suit over the side of the sleigh. If she was standing on the roof, she needed balance. In her body if not in her mind, which felt further away the longer this went on. “This is Dottie. I think we just killed Dottie’s handyman.”
“Her handyman?”
“Her handyman! The man on the roof!”
“Santa,” Nicky said, his little voice a mixture of insistence and sorrow. He had turned around to pout at her. Oh, that pout. He had inherited that directly from his mother. She was weak to it. “We killed Santa.”
“You didn’t do anything,” Agatha wiggled her finger at him. “Remember that for the court of law I’m sure we’re going to have to partake in..” What was it that Taylor Swift said, though? No body no crime? Well! There was certainly no body. Did divorce lawyers also take on murder trials? “I won’t take you down with me in this.”
“Okay,” he nodded, sensibly. “Before you go to jail, can you come pet the reindeer? They’re so soft!”
The calm in response to Agatha’s dramatics was undoubtedly something he’d learned from Rio. Not that she was any less dramatic, when the occasion called for it, but Agatha definitely had the upper hand in it. After all, what was life if she didn’t cause a carefully controlled scene once in a while? If her life relied on not causing dramatics, she would’ve been dead a long time ago.
“If they give me rabies, I’m suing the HOA.”
“Okay. But come pet them first.”
Agatha could hardly refuse him. They were … soft. They were soft, and definitely alive. This was not an animatronic, unless those had drastically been improved in the past couple of years. These were not lawn ornaments, because lawn ornaments didn’t breathe. It was breathing. It was looking at her. It had very, very human eyes.
“Okay,” she said, her hand still on the reindeer’s side. “Dasher. Of course your name is Dasher. Did you come from the North Pole?”
She was imagining the nod. She had to be imagining the nod. Reindeers didn’t nod.
“We’ll have to figure out what zoo you’re missing from,” she grumbled, “and why they’re giving the animals in zoos jet packs now.” Her money was still on Dottie. The woman had been giving her looks ever since she forgot to return that library book, and then returned it with the nibbles in it from the bunny. And then she’d refused to join her women’s running group - “Nicky?”
Fear spiked momentarily in her chest, but the disappeared boy reappeared from his new place inside the sleigh.
“Get out of there. That can’t be stable.”
“No, it’s a sleigh! Get in! You’ve got to see this!”
The issue, of course, was that Agatha was exactly the type of person to climb into a sleigh because someone had dared her to, or said she couldn’t, or she wanted to prove a point. The second problem was that she had passed that onto her son.
“Fine. Fine! We’re already on the roof. Five seconds.” Nicky scooted aside as Agatha shivered, noticing now that her feet were going a touch numb, still bare, but at least it was warmer in the sleigh. Were those floors heated? And there were controls. Like this thing would actually fly. Like it was actually Santa Claus’ sleigh on top of her roof. She tucked her hands underneath her armpits and shivered as an icy wind blew through her.
“Mama, you’re in pajamas. You should put on the suit.”
"I'm not putting on an old man's clothes." An old dead man's clothes.
“Okay,” he drew out the word. “But when you freeze to death, don’t come crying to me!”
“Who taught you that? Fine, just-” she held up the jacket. It wasn’t her size, not even a little, but it did look warm. Her teeth were starting to chatter. Warm seemed like the best idea.
“Mama, something fell out!” He darted down to the floor of the sleigh, making Agatha curse under her breath for fear of them capsizing off the roof. When he came back up, he was holding a small red and white business card. Brief hope flared. There’d be a person’s name on that. They could figure out what the hell was going on before Rio came back in the morning and saw them trapped and frozen on the roof.
“Santa Claus,” Nicky read. “North Pole.”
She sighed. So much for that.
“If something should happen to me, put on the suit. The reindeer will know what to do.”
“You’re reading wonderfully!” She said, momentarily having forgotten the predicament in lieu of how great he sounded reading aloud. Her arm was already halfway into the suit before she processed what he said. “Hold on.”
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t stop herself. It was as though someone else’s hands were controlling her as she slipped on the other arm of the jacket. It was warm, sure, and the shivering had stopped near immediately.
It was more than that.
She felt – different. She felt powerful. There was something ancient crawling up her skin. It was a humming. It was electricity dancing in the palms of her hands. Every cell of her body felt realer than it had five seconds before.
“Mama?”
She sighed. It was like relief. It was a drink of cold water after a week of nothing.
And it was fear. Fear in every cell of her body.
“We should go. Come on, Nicky, we should go.” She had to shake herself out of it bodily, but the feeling didn’t go away. It was on her tongue. As strange as all of this was, she couldn’t keep Nicky up here. It was past his bedtime, and she worried. “Let’s go.”
Years later, she would consider the safety of saying something like that while sitting in a sleigh.
Tonight it made the reindeer take off.
Nicky was screaming. Agatha was screaming. She was thrown back into the seat as the reindeer started to run, then quickly surged forwards to grab him and press him to the seat. They were going to run right off the roof. This would be the end of them. This was what action movie heroes must feel like before going off the end of a waterfall to certain doom -
They were flying.
Her eyes were closed. When had she closed them? When she opened them again, no longer facing imminent death, she turned to see Nicky gripping the dashboard of the sleigh and laughing. His laugh was beautiful. It had always been beautiful. She listened to his laugh for so long she realized she had no idea where they were going, and scrambled desperately for the reins.
Only for them to land on the very next roof.
–
“But I’m going to,” she said, reaching back into the sleigh as she stepped onto the neighbor’s roof. The man’s shoes had disappeared with him, otherwise she’d have certainly put them on - her toes were cold as ice. She was still in her own pajama pants, so she pulled on the Santa ones. They were far too big - by the feel of them, they’d been designed for a man around 6’5’’ - and she had to put worn suspenders over her shoulders to keep it in place. “How do I look?”
"Like you put on a giant's clothes!"
This argument had been going on for no less than ten minutes. There was a chimney. Nicky wanted Agatha to go down it. Agatha, without thinking about logistics, had agreed. In retrospect, he definitely thought this was Santa’s suit, and Santa’s sleigh, and he probably thought he was going to see how Santa’s stuff worked. Agatha, when she’d agreed, had been pretty sure she was dreaming.
She was in over her head. She was stalling. Considering they were on a roof with nowhere to go, there wasn’t much place to stall to. She had to learn to stop saying yes, especially when it came to her son. But he looked at her like that, with those big eyes and that pout, and how could she do anything but everything he asked for?
Even if he was asking for her to climb down a chimney. With Santa’s bag in hand. Which had toys, by the way. There were toys in the sack they’d found in the back of the sleigh.
She could pretend. Give it her all. He’d appreciate a good show, of course he would.
“Ho ho ho,” she said, with what she hoped was feeling. It got Nicky to grin. Steadily - and still without shoes - she walked towards the chimney. Rio had done this thing where she would pretend to go downstairs by getting shorter and shorter. She could do that. If she was feeling generous, she’d drop the present down the chimney while she did it, and wake up in bed.
Except -
“Nicky!”
“You’re flying!”
The bag was flying, she would have pointed out, except she was dangling from her hand by the end of it, and it was lowering her - oh no.
–
She had wanted a quiet night watching Christmas movies on the couch after putting her son to bed in a house that was so new it still didn’t feel like her own.
Instead, she had been chased by thirteen dogs, caught by at least two kids, found out what happened when a kid didn’t have a chimney (and it involved a lot of squeezing) and seen the inside of so many houses she’d started ranking them. She liked more even numbered houses than odd ones, and don’t ask her how she knew which address was which, considering that she had never once went through the front door.
That power was still thrumming in her fingertips.
It was the weirdest night - or dream - of her life. Every single house they went to she announced would be the last one, and every single time it wasn’t. She did it. What was she going to do when Nicky was looking at her like that? Like she was hanging the stars in the sky - or putting the presents underneath the tree?
He looked light. He looked delighted. It didn’t hurt that the more houses they hit - visited? - the more she felt that humming settle into her bones.
So she kept doing it. And doing it. And doing it.
Until, suddenly, they weren’t landing on a house. They were landing on a large expanse of ice.
–
Agatha Harkness was very good at denial. On her license plate, where the name of one’s state should be stamped, were the letters DENIAL. She lived there. It was a beautiful state, absent of having to face down any harsh reality she didn’t quite feel like looking in the eyes at the moment.
That being said.
She was good at denial, not complete and total refusal to live on planet earth. If someone held up a diamond in front of her, she wasn’t going to call it a turd. Unless there was an angle.
And right now?
Agatha could not see an angle.
What she could see was chaos surrounding them from every side. The word that came to mind was bustle. People moved in every direction, carrying boxes, pulling wagons - was that a baby in a wagon? Was that a child pulling the wagon? - but it all looked controlled. It looked like - god help her - a workshop.
It looked like Santa’s workshop. They had landed in Santa’s workshop. Or at least, they had landed in the North Pole, and then they had lowered into the workshop after someone had typed a security code into the actual and literal north pole.
And truly, after the night she had, was that the most bizarre part of all of this? Santa’s workshop? Had she not squeezed down chimneys? Had she not given children gifts, drank milk and eaten cookies meant for Santa Claus? Was all of this really the part that was going to put her over the top?
But -
It was multilevel, and stretched in a circle around them. Huge, arching doors decorated with candy cane stripes and white walls and floors embellished with soft golds and greens, all washed with warm lighting. Through one of those grandiose doorways she spied a wall of boxes and wrapping paper, and a statue of a polar bear at least half the size of the doorway itself, his arms arched above his head like a ballerina. It seemed they were big on statues - just from craning her neck in the sleigh, Agatha could make out larger than life penguins and nutcrackers. The penguins encircled the top level and were at least as tall as Nicky, if not taller, and the nutcrackers guarding some of the lower doors towered over Agatha.
It was both whimsical and industrial. Willy Wonka came to mind. The thing she was sure was a giant piece of ice kept lowering, until they were solidly on ground on the bottom level.
“Whoa,” Nicky whispered. Everyone was staring. Everyone was staring and had pointed ears. There wasn't a person she couldn't see them on. As soon as the platform came to a stop and settled, level with the ground, Nicky was climbing out of the sleigh. “It’s Santa’s workshop!”
“Wait-” Agatha had to scramble after him. “Nicky, don’t run off, we don’t know where we are.”
“Yes we do!”
The place was eerily silent. When she climbed out of the sleigh and stopped to look, she could see that the movement in the building had nearly stopped. All eyes were on them. She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, trying to look less like a woman wearing someone else’s clothes who’d just climbed out of a sleigh without shoes on.
Movement caught her eye. A woman was approaching them; she wore a patchwork dress of red and gold and had curly gray hair held back by a scarf, which was pinned through by a broach that looked like holly. She held a clipboard in one arm, and the other was extending towards Agatha. There was an authority about her; several of the others had stopped to turn and stare at her.
“Lilia Calderu,” she said. “Head Elf.”
“Head Elf.”
“Head Elf.”
“Head -” she hadn’t taken the woman’s hand, pinching instead at the bridge of her nose. “I can’t explain what’s happened in the past -” she went to check a watch she wasn’t wearing, and a cell phone that was still on the living room coffee table. “However many hours that was.” With how many houses they’d hit, surely it had to be fifteen to twenty. Rio was going to kill her. Agatha might even let her.
“I can,” she said. “I can explain.”
“Mama, we’re in the North Pole. This is Santa’s workshop.” Nicky tugged on her hand. “You’re Santa now.”
“Smart kid,” said Lilia. She looked older than the rest of the people running around the place. Just about everyone looked like a teenager, or younger. More than one looked to be six years old. What sort of child labor laws were being broken here? And on how many counts? It wasn’t one or two kids, there were at least one hundred. And that was on the level they were currently on. She grabbed Nicky’s hand a little tighter. “Kids usually get it easier than adults. Adults forget what life is really about, the important things.”
She could feel Nicky nodding, and she had to work hard not to scowl.
“I haven’t forgotten anything.” She bit her cheek. “I’ve been kidnapped to the North Pole. Or at least a recreation of it by whoever did Willy Wonka’s workshop. I'm not Santa Claus. I'm Agatha Harkness. That's Nicholas Harkness-Vidal.”
More likely: she was asleep. She was getting too old for ice cream before bed.
“Come with me,” Lilia said, gesturing. Agatha shrugged. Did she have a choice? The other option was staying here with the reindeers, and Nicky’s eyes were wide with wonder. It was a bizarre dream, but at least there was that. She kept her hold on Nicky’s hand as they followed after Lilia, walking up the stairs to the second level.
This level overlooked the first; she could see a woman with a straw hat approaching the reindeer and starting to unbuckle them from their harnesses. This second level had those arching doorways that seemed to lead to more hallways and more rooms, a labyrinth of endless whimsy.
“Over there is Alice, she’s head of security.” Lilia indicated a woman with a wave of her hand who seemed older than the rest. Her hair had red streaks in it that Agatha wondered if she kept year round or just for Christmas. Though she was dressed similarly to the others, she’d thrown a red and black leather jacket over the loose red turtleneck sweater she had over black leggings. The woman turned as if she’d heard and raised a hand in a greeting before Lilia waved her over. She handed something off to one of the children - elves, they were elves - before joining them.
“The North Pole needs security?” Agatha questioned, her hand finding Nicky’s shoulder again. “What sort of security concerns -”
“Well,” Alice had joined them, slotting herself alongside them as they continued to walk without breaking stride. “Mortals can’t find this place without help, but that’s the work of security in the first place. But we also do Santa failsafes.”
“Mortals,” Agatha muttered. The woman had said mortals, as if this was not something they were a part of. “Santa failsafes?”
“You see,” She said, and Agatha looked from the corner of her eye to see a smirk on the woman’s mouth, “Occasionally, Santas meet such hazards like being chased by dogs, or home security systems, or … overzealous home owners. Falling off a roof hasn’t happened since …. 1873? That’s when I took over. Thank you for tarnishing my record.”
Agatha blinked. “That is a lot of information to take in at once.” Far too much information. She played it back in her head. “Do you just … lose Santas all the time? Santas are out there dropping like flies?” She pointed, wiggled her finger in the woman’s face. “Did you just say you’ve been alive since 1873?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I didn’t take over the job as a baby. I’ve been alive since 1801.”
There was a pulsing behind Agatha’s eyes that knew no end.
“We don’t lose Santas all the time. Santa is magical, and long-lived, but not immortal. Santa can die. As you demonstrated tonight.”
Agatha pressed the pads of her fingers to her temples, trying to quell that pulsing feeling. It grew with every word Alice spoke and every step they took. No amount of pressure pushed it back to the back of her skull.
“It was an accident. He was breaking into my house and I shouted.”
“He wasn’t breaking, Mama,” Nicky said, tugging on her hand. “He’s Santa.”
She bit back the was Santa on the tip of her tongue. That wouldn’t help anything. Tonight, in the early hours of Christmas, Agatha Harkness had killed Santa Claus and been on the weirdest trip of her life. However she and Nicky got out of this, she’d take it. She wanted her bed. She wanted the hot cocoa she’d intended on making herself - Belgian hot cocoa that she’d have melted a candy cane in - and toasty socks, and her noise machine that played forest sounds.
Maybe it was the trauma. Maybe she had fallen off the roof and was having a hallucination.
“You won’t be prosecuted,” Alice said. “It’s not like we can get you into a court of law, and then it’s an international thing, and secrets are shared - we’d do it here, but the most we could get you on was accidental manslaughter, and it makes the younger elves sad-”
“Alice,” Lilia interrupted. “Can you take young Nicholas here and show him where the toys are built? Get him some pajamas and show him where he’ll be sleeping as well.”
“Your name is Nicholas?” Alice turned to Nicky, grinning. “Everyone’s going to love that! Come on, I’ll show you.”
“Hold on-” Agatha reached out to clamp her fingers around Nicky’s shoulder. Her boy looked up at her with big eyes and that famous pout right in place. “I’m not so sure I’m comfortable with that.”
“Alice is one of our most senior elves. I can assure you, Nicholas is in fine hands.”
“It’s not my first rock around the Christmas tree,” Alice said. “We’ll be fine, won’t we?”
“I wanna see where the reindeer live,” Nicky said, hand slipping from Agatha’s as Alice began to lead him away. The flutter of panic in her stomach was momentary but fierce. “Are there baby reindeer? Is Rudolph real?”
Lilia’s hand fell to her shoulder, and Agatha startled. “He’ll be fine,” she said. “I can see you’re worried, but you needn’t be. Alice is a good elf, and we’re in the North Pole. There’s nowhere safer.”
“Are you sure about that?” Agatha asked, huffing and crossing her arms. She caught sight of what she was wearing and remembered again - Santa’s suit. She was wearing Santa’s suit, in Santa’s workshop, and if it weren’t for two hundred or so elves she knew were looking at her, she’d strip out of it right now. “About three hours ago, Santa fell off a roof and died. And disappeared! Off my lawn! Where the,” she lowered her voice a touch, “hell did his body go?”
“About that,” Lilia started, but Agatha turned and cut her off.
“I’d love to know about that. All of that you’re not being prosecuted shit was cute, but I live in the real world. Someone fell off my roof and died. My son and I were there. I’m not putting him through a trial. Someone’s ring camera could have caught that whole thing. Someone’s ring camera could have caught me breaking into people’s houses!”
“It wouldn’t have,” Lilia sighed, clearly put out with Agatha’s refusal to let her talk. “Ring Cameras do not pick up on Santa Claus activity, otherwise this entire operation would have met its match in 2014.”
“One small flaw there,” she said. “I’m not Santa Claus.”
Now that got Lilia to stop completely. The woman turned towards her so fast that Agatha nearly walked right into her. Instead, she managed to pump the breaks and stick her feet to the ground.
“Then what are you wearing?”
“That’s not-” Agatha waved a hand around dismissively. “Nicky wanted me to put on the suit. So I put on the suit. I didn’t know I was going to have to … throw myself down chimneys. I’ll say something I normally don’t - I’m sorry.” She spread her hands around her in a shrug. “And I’m sorry Santa’s dead. That’s not something I wanted on my record. Or even in my head. What’s the process, now? Does one of you grow a beard and start putting this suit on and going down chimneys? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s obviously magical. Who does it now? Please don’t tell me I killed Christmas. I’ve already ruined my son’s life with a divorce this year, I can’t prove my mother right and ruin the life of everyone else on earth.”
“Agatha!” Lilia half shouted. “Stop spiraling. You haven’t ruined anything. By the way, your mother? She’s been on the naughty list since she was six.”
“Obviously. She’s a wretched woman.” It came out of her mouth easily enough, with a scoff attached to it, but in all honesty there was no proper way to process that. She hadn’t believed in Santa five hours ago. She might not still. The jury was out. Her mother was on the naughty list. Of course she was. She would have liked to say that she wasn’t spiraling, and had meant the ruined her son’s life thing as only a joke, but the words stuck in her throat. She did feel that way, despite the flippant way she’d said it.
She had seen her son’s face over the past year. The way it had crumbled. She had done that. It wasn’t Rio who’d brought up a divorce after ten years, it’d been Agatha. Agatha, who was crawling out of her skin, who couldn’t do it anymore and had burned her own life down on purpose. Who was still, in so many ways, burning her own life down on purpose.
Ten years, nearly. It wasn’t that she hadn’t loved Rio any longer. She couldn’t have stopped. She still did. But she had spun out of control, and taken them both down with her.
“Do you have the card that came with the suit?”
“The business card?” Agatha startled out of her reverie. She dug around in her pocket. Santa’s pocket. Her fingertips brushed the cardstock, and she pulled it out and handed it over. “Did you read it?”
“Of course I read it. I was trying to figure out what mall he worked for.” She pressed the card into the woman’s outstretched hand. “And all it said was Santa Claus, North Pole.”
“If anything should happen to me, put on the suit,” Lilia said, not reading from the card but rather from memory as she led Agatha over to another part of the workshop. “The reindeer will know what to do.”
“Yes, yes, I read it. The reindeer knew what to do.”
“So!” Lilia slapped the card down on the table. “You’re Santa Claus.”
“Come again?” Agatha choked out in a laugh. “That’s a wild conclusion to come to. I didn’t even give you my resume.”
“You didn’t need to,” she said. “Did you read the card or not?”
“Are we playing a game?” She lowered her voice, batting her eyelashes a little. It wouldn’t be the first situation she got through by flirting, and she doubted it would be the last. “Or are you batty? I can work with either.”
Lilia scoffed, and gave her a look that made Agatha feel not unlike a chastised child. She broke the eye contact she’d been making, scuffing her shoe along the ground, and muttered something about just asking under her breath. She looked up only when she heard a mechanical noise, as well as Lilia clearing her throat.
“Look in the microscope, Miss Harkness,” she said, and stepped aside.
“Whatever,” she said, continuing to mutter under her breath, nose scrunched. She was a mutterer, at heart, and she continued to do so as she pressed an eye to a microscope in the weirdest laboratory on earth. If they were even still on earth. Agatha had her doubts.
“Read it,” Lilia said. “Out loud.”
“In putting on the suit,” Agatha started, grunting. “Why is the print so small? Do you know human eyes can’t generally see this? In putting on the suit and entering the sleigh, the wearer waives any and all right to any previous identities, real or implied, and fully accepts,” her mouth was going dry as she talked. Was she dizzy? She felt dizzy. “Fully accepts the duties and responsibilities of Santa Claus, in perpetuity, until such time that the wearer becomes unable to do so by either accident or design.”
“The last Santa became unable to do so by accident,” Lilia said, as Agatha reared back from the microscope and stared at her. There was an inkling of what the woman was saying, and she did not like it one bit. “Once he fell off the roof. You put on the suit.”
She indicated what Agatha was wearing. With another grunt and a curl of her lip, she shrugged off the coat entirely, sliding it down her arms, and when it was off, held it out between thumb and forefinger, out to Lilia like an offering. It left her standing in the sagging red velvet pants, the worn suspenders pulled up over the shoulders of the Christmas sweater she was still wearing. The hat was ridiculously lopsided on top of her head.
Though Lilia laughed, she still took the suit jacket from her.
“That’s not how it works. You put on the suit, Harkness. From that moment forward, you inherited the mantle of Santa. You took their power, their persona, their identity. They absorb into the jacket when they -” she tilted her head back and forth as if to indicate die, “and then they are absorbed by you.”
Agatha laughed, though there was little humor in it. Lilia had started walking again, and Agatha trotted to keep up, still shoeless. “Sorry - Lilia, was it? I’m not doing that. You’re either going to send me home, or I’m going to wake up, and I’m going to get on with my - beautiful, fantastic Christmas morning.”
The one where nothing depressing was going to happen, where she’d hold her breath through the pain of losing Nicky at ten am because this was the universe she’d created. This was her making, because she’d closed herself off like a body in a coffin, and hadn’t let anyone through. Not Rio. Not even herself.
The way Lilia was looking her up and down now - something in Agatha squirmed. The rhythm in her chest picked up. Seen. She felt seen. All the way through, like she was being dissected. It was such an uncomfortable feeling that she had to try to physically shake it off, rolling her shoulders and tossing still wet hair behind them.
“We’ll get you home,” Lilia said, still looking at her like that. “You’ll sleep here.”
“No.” She blew out a breath. “No, he needs to-” another breath. “My ex-wife is picking him up at ten. After presents.”
“You’ll sleep here,” Lilia said, as though Agatha had said nothing at all. She scoffed and tossed her hands in the air, but Lilia continued to speak. “And you’ll be brought home. There are rules you’ll have to follow, we’ll send them by. Expect them.You’re to be back here by the Friday after Thanksgiving. That’s eleven months at home, and one month here.”
“Please. You can’t make me do anything.”
“No,” Lilia said. “But you’ll be here.” It wasn’t a statement or a question. It was more of a fact: like it had already happened. Like she was reporting from the future. “You can go back and forth, if need be, and Nicky is more than welcome to visit. And like I said, there are other matters to attend to. You’ve had a rough night, Agatha. Let’s get you settled in, hmm?” She smiled that same smile, and pat Agatha’s arm. “You’ll be here. You’ll be alright, baby.”
–
She did not feel alright.
There hadn’t been this many thoughts in her head since the first few weeks Nicky had been born, when her head had been all mottled. It was only a couple of hours ago she’d been asleep on her sofa with the television on in the background, milk and cookies for Santa still on the kitchen table.
And now?
The room was extravagant. If there was a size above King bed, it was that, and it was set into an ornately carved wooden bedframe. It continued the same Willy Wonka theme, including a door that looked like it was entirely made out of glass of varying colors and circle sizes. Toys were laid out on nearly every surface - a wooden rocking horse looked like it was made in the 40s, and wooden trains painted in primary colors, connected to each other by magnets sat on a little coffee table. It was placed parallel to a large striped red couch that immediately looked more comfortable than the one she had at home.
It looked cozy. It looked like a place you could sink into. If she wanted to stay here, and didn’t believe she was hallucinating, both of which were factors.
And then the puppets started screaming, and Agatha nearly jumped out of her skin. They were just there, in the puppet theater, holding a show on their own, because there was certainly no one else in there.
“If you don’t,” Agatha made a slicing motion across her neck. “This isn’t Toy Story, and,” she laughed. “I am thirty seconds from losing my mind. I’ll start a fire in here! I won’t even-” the puppets had stopped moving to stare at Agatha in horror. “I’m talking to puppets. And they’re talking back. Do you know how many people would have a field day with this? My mother would finally have proof I’ve lost it, and Rio - actually. Rio might find it endearing.”
Rio was weird. She’d always been weird. It was what had drawn Agatha to her in the first place. Agatha had always been hard to love, she’d thought. She was mean, and sarcastic, and there wasn’t a wall she couldn’t build around herself to keep anyone from seeing past that. She worked to present herself as a force of nature, a woman who held her head high, played by no one’s rules but her own, and who maybe, more than a little, considered herself better than most anyone else.
But Rio had stayed long enough to see past it. Or maybe she had right from the start. Instead, she had seen the fear she barely knew how to hold in, the shame, the anger that spilled out but didn’t bother Rio. She could see how much she loathed herself, not just how great she thought she was. Instead of trying to fit her in a box, she’d pulled her out of it, thrown her wherever she needed to be. They’d joined a softball team together to channel Agatha’s anger. She made Agatha talk instead of letting her showboat around an issue or weave a pretty lie. She let Agatha get away with shit, but not when it mattered.
And she was fun. Rio was weird and delightful and entirely herself. She played the drums (badly) and gardened (wonderfully). She cackled like a witch when she laughed, which set Agatha to snorting. She was gentle, and kind, and she could see right through a person until you could see yourself staring back. She liked rules, and order, and followed them in a way that made sense to her and only her. She’d left dark lipstick stains on Agatha’s cheeks, or the collars of her shirt.
And she’d loved her.
So, naturally, Agatha had set fire to it, and run after ten years, just to not see her own reflection. She’d undone herself.
Undone herself to the point of delirium, it seemed. There were purple silk pajamas folded on the end of the bed. She’d have expected them to be red or green, or maybe gold, but there they were in her favorite color.
Lilia, Agatha thought, nonsensically.
Fine. She’d play by the rules of whatever game this was. They were nice pajamas.
–
“Agatha Harkness?” She turned from her spot by the window, hands shoved into the pockets of the pajama pants, straightening her back when she saw an unfamiliar face. The newcomer looked younger than Lilia, possibly the same age as Alice, but who knew what that meant anymore, considering what Alice had said. She was beautiful in a way that caught Agatha’s eye - a shaved head and flawless makeup, and large eyes that seemed to appraise Agatha for everything she was worth.
She’d like to stop being looked at, but she’d put on the suit.
“I’m Jennifer Kale,” the woman said. She was wearing a dress in the same style as the others, but it was more pink than red. The same gold from the walls clung to her ears, the left one sporting what looked like a polar bear shaped cuff. “Head of Kitchens. Head Chef, Head Bartender, Head Chocolatier.”
That got an eyebrow raise out of her. “That’s a lot of hats.”
“I look fantastic in a hat.” Jennifer held something out - a small gold cup that Agatha might have imagined held a moscow mule, but on closer inspection looked distinctly like hot cocoa. “This is for you. Sit.” She indicated the edge of the raised area the bed was sitting on with her chin.
“Are all elves so bossy?”
“No. Sit.”
She considered continuing to stand, but – the idea of sitting down was enticing, once she thought about it. Wasn’t going to do it without a fight, so she huffed as she folded her legs underneath her. Jennifer sat facing her, and handed her the cup. It was still warm.
“I’m glad you’re a woman,” she said. “Our last three Santas have been men.”
“Happy to murder someone for your feminist project,” she replied, lifting both the cup and her eyebrows. She took a sip, and - oh. It was rich, but not bitter, and the smell of it washed over her like a breeze. It was easy to say it smelled like chocolate, but it smelled like the first bite of cold in winter, like laying underneath a Christmas tree for the first time and looking up at the lights. It smelled like what curling into bed felt like. “Wow. This is-”
“I know.”
“You’ve ruined me for other hot cocoa.”
“I know,” she said, again.
“I’m going to bill you for emotional damages,” she said, her nose still in the mug. “After I kill you. How did you manage this?”
“It’s a pole secret. Plus, I spent close to 500 years perfecting it.”
Agatha regarded her through her lashes. “You don’t look a day over 35.”
“Thank you,” she said, “but I’m seeing the Head of Security.”
She sipped the rest of the cocoa to swallow down that fact. For a second, silence stretched on, before Jennifer cleared her throat.
“What is it? You look miserable. We can’t have a miserable Santa Claus.”
“I’m not-” she sighed through her teeth. “I’m fine. It’s not that I don’t believe in Santa, because I don’t.” Despite being in the middle of the North Pole, she didn’t believe it was happening. Why should she? She knew how Christmas worked. She knew, too, how it had worked in her case - with an overeager mother who’d always been willing to ship gifts back to the North Pole, should she underperform in some manner at five years old. And she always did. Santa, she had learned, wasn’t real.
Maybe that was why she had tried so hard with Rio to keep the magic alive for Nicky. And she’d leaned too far into it, considering what she was currently hallucinating.
“Then what is it?”
Agatha shook her head, then smiled. It didn’t feel genuine, but she worked to make it look that way. “I wanted movies on the couch and presents with my son,” she said, “not getting whiplash from reindeers. Literally.” She pressed a hand to her neck. “I’m going to need to see someone about it. It wasn’t what I had planned.”
And it wasn’t anything else. It wasn’t. It wasn’t that she was overwhelmed, or that she couldn’t process half of what she saw. It wasn’t that the first Christmas without her wife and trying to pull something together for her son had been thoroughly derailed. It wasn’t. And it certainly wasn’t all the things she wished she could show Rio. Rio would have been up the ladder first before Nicky. Rio would’ve been the one to put the suit on.
None of that bothered her. Nevermind the fingers digging into her ribs, or the longing buried between them.
“It rarely is.”
“No, it is. I’m very good at getting exactly what I want.”
Jennifer plucked the empty cup out of Agatha’s hand. “Right.”
“I usually am.”
“That’s why you’re here wearing a dead man’s suit after stealing his life,” Jennifer said. “Because you always get exactly what you want.”
“Thank you for the hot cocoa, Jennifer,” Agatha dismissed her, her voice gone cold in a way she hadn’t let happen to the cocoa. “If I don’t get home in time to meet my ex, you’ll be hearing from me.”
“We’ll be hearing from you either way,” she answered. “And we’ll have to talk about that. The Mrs. Clause.”
Agatha pinched her nose between her thumb and forefinger hard enough to hurt. “Please don’t call me that. Agatha is fine.”
“No, I - did Lilia-”
“Mama!” The door to the bedroom burst open, and Nicky ran in at full force. He slammed into Agatha’s legs, and she caught him with both her arms, scooping up the seven year old. It was getting harder to do with every passing year. “Mama, I saw so much. I saw baby reindeer, and I fed them from my hand, and there are elves that are older than me but they look littler than me! And I saw where they make presents!” He had grasped her face in both his hands, so she had no choice but to look at him while he talked. “They didn’t let me see the naughty and nice list, but that’s okay ‘cause I loved the reindeers so much. And I got these PJs, and-”
“Take a breath, baby.”
Agatha looked up, intending to ask Jennifer what she’d meant, or at least to thank her for the cocoa, and tell Alice thank you. But the door was closed, and the room was empty, save for the two of them.
“Everything is so cool.” He slumped against her shoulder, boneless. “I’m so glad you’re Santa Claus now.”