Chapter 3
“Mama! Mama! Wake up! Santa came!”
The groan Agatha let out could be mistaken for a seismic shift. She twisted in bed, pressing her face into the pillow to delay the morning light and stop the throbbing behind her right temple. The linens twisted around her calves until she was trapped and kicking at them, trying to free herself. The bed dipped once and then bounced as something - or someone - landed on it, and she felt tiny, warm hands pushing at her shoulders.
“Mama. Santa.”
She groaned again, twisting fully onto her stomach, legs now helplessly and permanently trapped. There was something wrong - a feeling of calm that had washed over her. Misplaced. Another thing existed underneath that feeling, just out of reach of her fingertips. The calm that you get when you wake up and haven’t quite remembered the important parts yet. Back in the worst days of Nicky being sick, she would get that feeling all the time.
Oof. Nicky’s weight landed flat on her back and knocked all the breath and thought out of her in one go.
“Mama. Mama.”
Nicky’s nose dug between her shoulder blades, directly into a vertebrae. A grin escaped her, despite the weight of exhaustion and because of the weight of her son. Her neck warmed from tiny puffs of breath, and tiny hands laid themselves on the parts of her face he could touch. She could feel him trying to hide his laughter by the way he was holding his breath. She kept as still as she could as he pressed cold fingers into her ears, tapped them on her temple, poked at her scalp.
“Mama,” he was saying, still, over and over, every time he poked her. “Are you dead? Mama, you’re Santa Claus. You gotta-”
Oh. Oh. That was the missing piece, wasn’t it? She shot up. The expression was like a bat out of hell. Nicky yelped, then laughed, as he rolled off of her and hit the bed with a soft thump.
“It’s Christmas!”
“Did you-” She turned to stare at her son, who’d picked himself up and was sitting cross-legged looking up at her. Soft brown hair clung to his face, and the pajamas he was wearing -
Silk pajamas. A soft sort of burgundy, with folded sleeves and collar. A pocket, on which was embroidered with thick white thread: N.H.V. Not pajamas she’d bought him. Not Rio’s style, either. Agatha tended to buy color coordinated sets that ended up mismatched anyway, and Rio was all about the Disney characters.
But silk?
“You’re staring.”
Agatha blinked, shaking her head to snap herself out of it.
“Where did you get those pajamas?”
There was no sugarcoating it: Nicholas looked at her like she was dumb. He looked at her like a wind would go straight through one ear and blow out a birthday candle on the other end. Instead of talking, he reached forward, grabbed the fabric of the pajamas she was wearing, and pulled.
“The North Pole.”
“No,” she said, and looked down at the pajamas he’d just pulled. Purple. Silk. A collar. White embroidery on a pocket over her left breast, with the initials AH. Not something she’d owned before, though certainly something she would have considered owning. By the feel of them between her fingers, real silk. Incredibly familiar. “That was a dream. I … had a very strange dream.”
“Nah-ah.” Nicky pulled his legs up and rested his chin on his knees, wrapping his arms around them. He stared up at her with those big eyes of his. “Last night Santa fell off the roof, and then you became Santa and-”
Agatha rolled out of bed and put on her slippers so quickly it made her dizzy. She heard rather than saw Nicky scrambling after her as she crossed the sparse bedroom - she didn’t remember going to bed! - to the door, then the hallway, through the living room and into the foyer, where she ripped open the front door without ceremony. An icy wave of air hit her in the face.
There was no mark in the snow where Santa had fallen. She stepped back, stared up at the roof. Jumped once, to try and see the top of it, to see if there’d be hoof prints on it. Hoof prints. Surely, she was losing it. She stepped back far enough she was in the middle of the street, only noticing when someone started honking.
“Who drives on Christmas morning!” Agatha yelled, turning briefly to face the stupid looking Kia down until it decided to drive around her. No evidence of the night before existed - not an imprint in the snow, not hooves on the roof, no ladder leaning against the home.
Because why would there be? It had been a dream. A dream she must have told Nicky about. Nothing existed out here, because there'd never been anything.
Just Nicky, standing in the doorway, staring at her.
“Can we still open presents if you’re Santa now?”
–
“Mommy!”
Their son was a burgundy blur as he barelled across the house. She heard his footsteps only after she saw him, a stampede of one, socked feet providing no traction as the only thing that stopped him from running into a wall was meeting his mother’s knees. Rio let out an oof as she caught him.
After Agatha had come back inside, they’d spent the morning opening presents. Wrapping paper was still strewn across the living room, and there was a bow stuck to her hair that Nicky had put there. It was possible she’d overdone it this year, but who could blame her? She’d torn his life apart the year prior for no solid reason, and she’d been prone to spoiling him beforehand. She’d made waffles in the waffle press she’d brought from their old home, and he’d insisted on eating them while he opened gifts.
They’d lost track of time easily, especially with the dazed feeling that existed still in Agatha’s head. Ten A.M. came by too quickly.
“I know I said I’d have him dressed.” Agatha shrugged. If Rio wanted apologies, she’d be hard pressed to find them. Not today. The best she could do was the coffee in a paper cup and plastic lid she held out. A second’s hesitation was all she got before the other woman took it from her hand with a nod.
“These are new. And you match.”
Rio indicated the pajamas, ruffling Nicky’s hair. Agatha bit her cheek, taking a breath - but there was no room for her own explanation as their son’s started.
“They’re from the North Pole. Alice probably would have got you one too, but she didn’t know about you! Or maybe she did, ‘cause they know everyone there, but you didn’t sleep there so they didn’t have one for you.”
“Nicky.” Agatha rubbed at her temples. As always, it did not help the pressure behind her eyes. It was nothing more than habit by now. A simple gesture that did just about nothing.
“What’s this?” Rio ran a hand through his hair, tilting his head up in the process to look at her, chin rested on her stomach. There was so much love in her voice Agatha thought it would kill her. “The North Pole?”
“Yeah! Right after Santa fell off the roof and died!”
“Agatha?”
Rio’s wide eyes had shot up to her, her hand still flat atop their son’s head. Agatha’s face warmed. She could flip a pancake on it and cook it in ten seconds flat.
“No one died. If someone had died, on my roof, there’d be police here. It’s just a story. I told a story before bed, and -”
“The police didn’t come because Santa disappeared.” Nicky pouted. “It was sort of like magic? Only not like magic. I guess it just happened. And then we delivered all those presents, after we climbed onto the roof and Mama stopped freaking out, and she delivered presents and we met some really cool elves. The reindeer were so soft. But there’s not really a Rudolph. That’s just a story.”
The noise she let out could only be described as a whine. A grown woman, letting out a whine. She dragged a hand down her face, pressed her fingers into the high points of her cheekbones. Rio was looking at her still, head tilted like a dog’s, lips pursed.
“Do you want to sit down?” The words left her lips before she could stop them. They fell out of her mouth and she couldn’t shove them back in. The heat climbed into her ears, traitorous. “I know you have a day planned. But I made waffles.” She met Rio’s eyes, desperate, trying to convey the only thing she could: I can explain.
“They’re really good waffles! There’s jam!”
“I’ll have a waffle.” Rio said the words after a moment’s pause like she was trying them out, and slid her bag off her shoulder. She hung it on the hook by the door with a sense of familiarity that made Agatha’s chest ache. “And maybe an answer or two?”
–
“So-”
Agatha groaned, placing the second cup of coffee with a heavy clink on the kitchen table. Her head followed it with a slightly heavier thud. In the next room, she could hear Nicky putting together the marble maze he’d got for Christmas.
“I know how it sounds when Nicky makes up a story,” Rio said, undeterred by Agatha’s theatrics. “That sounded like him telling us about his first day at school. Not some dream he was telling me about. I’m not saying you went to the North Pole, but something happened yesterday.”
“We went to the North Pole,” she muttered, into the table.
“Sorry?”
She lifted her head. Rio was watching her with a steady gaze. Who knew marbles were this loud? She could hear them plunking continuously from the living room. They were sure to be underneath her couch by now, but by the laughter she could hear as well, it was worth it. At least they'd both lost their marbles.
“I don’t know, Rio.” She admitted. “I thought it was a dream until he started saying the same thing.”
“Which is -”
Agatha took a deep breath, and started to explain. The noise on the roof, the person falling off the roof, the disappearance. The trip around kid’s houses, the North Pole, elves, waking up at home. She told about Lilia saying she’d get instructions later in the year. Halfway through, her hands found the mug again, fingers twisting around it to hide the anxiety that wanted to pour out of her mouth.
“Not that I believe it,” she ended, with a scoff. Rio was still watching her, and had stopped eating the waffle somewhere along the way. “We both had some mass hallucination. Maybe I should check for a gas leak. Carbon monoxide poisoning?”
“Mold?” Rio asked. Agatha scowled, despite having just listed a bunch of ridiculous statements herself. Were any more ridiculous than the reality of what she’d just said? “Dream sharing? Is that a thing yet? It seems like something Meta would put out.”
“Be realistic.”
“Sorry. Apple, then.”
“Rio.”
“Come on, Agatha! Give me a little leeway. It’s Christmas morning and you just told me you went to the North Pole with our son. And that you killed Santa.”
“No.” Agatha leaned back and put her hands up in the universal sign of innocence. “The most they can get me on is involuntary manslaughter. He was on my roof at two in the morning! About to go through my chimney. And then he fell.”
“And his body melted into the snow.”
“Those are the facts, yes.” She blew out a breath. “Something happened last night. I’m not saying I believe it was Santa Claus, but-”
“I do.”
Her heartbeat sounded hostile.
“What?”
Rio shrugged. “You have a working smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector. Both of us have been obsessive about things like mold and cleanliness since he got sick. This isn’t some toxin mass hallucination theory like they have about the Salem Witch Trials. So you’re Santa. Why not?”
“Because that’s insane.” Agatha pointed a warning finger at her. “Is this some sort of reverse psychology?”
Rio narrowed her eyes.
“Fine. But you can’t drop in Christmas morning and say you believe I’m Santa just because I said I’m Santa.”
“Again. Why not? I've always listened to you before.”
“Because things don’t work like that. There is,” she lowered her voice, eyes darting towards the doorway of the kitchen. “No Santa Claus.”
Rio put a hand to her chest. “Agatha Harkness. My parents certainly didn’t get me the robotic tarantula when I was eight. Or the skeleton cat when I was six.”
She crossed her arms. It would be nice to say she could counter with something - that she knew every single gift she had got on Christmas, and could safely say it came from her mother - but the memories, for Agatha, were fuzzy at best by design. It was easier not to remember something as awful as her childhood than to be able to continuously pick it apart.
“Sounds to me like all you can do is wait for those instructions. Life doesn’t always make sense, Agatha,” Rio said, voice taking on a softer tone. “Especially when it comes to you. Ten years. Ten. What are we doing?”
The frown dropped away from her expression, replaced with nothing but stoniness.
“I’m sure you have Christmas plans.”
“Agatha.”
“Thank you for dropping him off.”
Her voice did not leave room for argument. She did not do either of them the favor of looking down at the table and being ashamed of herself, staring straight ahead at Rio instead, refusing to let her jaw shake. Rio stood, looking at the woman in front of her with something Agatha recognized as resignation.
"I'll bring him for New Year's Eve." There was no denying the sadness in her voice. "Merry Christmas, Agatha."