While Jen and Billy tried to understand why would Lilia willingly stay behind, die for a group that barely held any semblance to a real coven, Agatha was trying to escape a fight with her ex-wife, aka Death. Well, technically, still her wife. They had tied themselves together in a ritual so profound, nothing could break them apart. Not Death, not betrayal, not loss. Not matter how many divorces and marriages they had gone through with each other or apart, no matter how many affairs and lovers each of them had taken over the years. In the end, they were each other's and their hearts beat as one. But, for only the second time in her life, Agatha had a real reason to fear Death and she really didn't want to repeat the same results of the last time. She had to protect the teenage boy in a way she couldn't protect Nicky. Keep Death away from him. As she thought that, she stumbled right into the one she was avoiding.
Your coven is shrinking", Rio says with a cold smile. "First Alice, now Lilia. It's nice that she took the Salem Seven with her. The bodies are really piling up. Just like you promised." She's rounding on Agatha as a predator does it's prey but Agatha refuses to be a victim. Never again.
"Did you doubt me?" She puts as much strength as she can behind her words.
"I did." Rio has mastered the art of mixing half truths and lies of omission with painful sarcasm. Most days Agatha thinks it's sexy. Not today. "Yeah, I thought that'd be a trick in there somewhere... And there was!" Agatha knows the game is up. "You were distracting me from him!"
"You're a big girl... I knew you were going to figure it out eventually" she postures. She has a goal here. More than one, truly.
"He's an abomination!" Rio is serious about this and Agatha knows that. Knows that what Billy did goes completely against the natural order. But his entire existence is against the natural order and still, there he is. "He is disrupting the sacred balance... And I know how you feel about him."
Agatha puffs up her chest and glares at the woman she still loves. "Better than how I feel about him, how about we talk about what I know about him? You looked me in the eyes and fucking lied to me! Since the moment the road opened, I have known who he was, I have studied his behavior, his mannerisms, everything about him. But you, just because he wasn't Nicky, you rubbed salt on the wound. You said he wasn't mine. But that's a lie, isn't it? Wanda is a mind witch, a chaos one at that, THE Scarlet Witch!" Agatha throws her hand in the air for effect. "She has powers beyond imagination, she can spontaneously create, something no other witch can do. So she made the twins bodies. But she couldn't make them souls... No... Only the Soul Witch could do that... And where and when did Wanda dallied with said Witch? Oh! I seem to remember now... All those lonely days where her fake imaginary robot husband wasn't around and all that tension turned into quick fucks over laundry, like the perfect housewives we were supposed to be!" She took a step towards Rio, who didn't look into her eyes any longer, making her blood boil. "I have been replaying all of it in my mind since Billy showed up.I made them souls. Me. Billy and Tommy are my children as much as hers. And you..." She lifted her finger and touched Rio's chest. "You want to take him. Again." She sighed.
Agatha felt the weariness in her bones and turned to sit down. "What do I have to do, Rio? I can't let you take him, you must know that. Even if he has forsaken Wanda and has no idea I have a hand on his creation. You're right. I care. He's my son. And I don't want to mourn another son. Even if it's not the same as it was..." She faces her wife with the weight of the full truth. "He's not like Nicky. Nicky was made from our love. I wanted a family with you, I wanted us to be melded, to be united, that thought fueled my magic when I made him. With Wanda, both of us were mourning and in pain. Billy and Tommy were made out of our shared grief. There was no care, no love involved. We were using sex to extern our pain and we lost control. Too much magic... I didn't even put it together until he used his magic to make the road. I felt the familiarity of it. I still came to care for him."
Rio looked pained at Agatha's confession. "I don't have a way. I didn't have it with Nicky. I bent the rules as much as I could for him and still..." She shook her head. "Billy Maximoff stole a second life. I can't let him to do the same for his twin. I have to take him."
Against her will, a tear escaped from Agatha's eyes. She closed them and felt her heart break a second time, not as strongly as it had with Nicky, her bond with this son wasn't nearly as strong, but it still hurt. "Then take him." She refused to look at Rio's face and show her grief, using her wife's silence to relive all the moments she had with Billy. All the times she babysat him, as he grew in Westview during those months. The days on the Road. When she had told him he was so much like his mother, she hadn't meant only Wanda. She had meant herself also. Lying, manipulating, conning people but also being way more powerful than other witches could comprehend, trying to control and stifle her powers so other people wouldn't fear her. He made her think of herself at his age. Just before she rebelled against her mother and wound up killing her coven, like he was doing now, even without knowing it.
When she opened her eyes, Rio was still avoiding her gaze. Her mind went into overdrive, thinking. "You can't take him. If he dies, he can just body jump again and you will lose him." She shook her head in denial. "You want me to help deliver him?" She asked incredulously. "I can't do that."
Rio looked at her "Agatha, the consequences of what he's doing might tear this universe apart. If he brings his brother back, who knows what else may happen?"
Agatha knew she had the upper hand now, even if she wouldn't deliver them, she could know what Rio was willing to give up. "In exchange for?"
Rio said "you get a long life, your powers back and when you die, a long long long time from now, you'll never have to see me again."
Agatha looked at Rio as if she was insane "You are Death, not Daft. I haven't been killing Witches all this time just for power, just to try and get Nicky back. No matter how much I hate you..." She kept expecting Rio to understand. She loved her. She didn't want eternity without her. "This isn't a bargain, this is a cruel joke and I won't partake in it." She turned to get back to Billy. She now had a way to save him. It was a terrible plan, but it would work. She just had to know one other thing.
"Wait." Rio asked. "What do you want?"
Agatha retorted "There's no winning here, Rio. I lose Billy and Tommy loses any chance of coming back. Wanda wherever she is, never gets them either. Neither she or I meet them in the afterlife, because they are children of Two Nexus Beings. What can you give me? And the mother of whoever it is that Billy's body is occupying now, loses her son too. That's three mothers losing a son to save whatever sacred balance you always keep referring to. I don't like the payoff".
Rio begs "And if William Kaplan, the original owner of this body gets to go back to his life? He's not dead yet. By possessing his body when he did, Billy kept not one but two souls from passing the veil. If you help me deliver his soul, I can separate William Kaplan and give him back to his mother."
Agatha almost smiled at that answer. She could see her plan going perfectly now. She would have to make a sacrifice, of course. But it was manageable. Billy wouldn't ever have to know and she was so so tired. "Fine. I can do that. I can get him to the finish line for you."
Rio asked for confirmation "In exchange for?"
Agatha repeated the terms "William Kaplan gets a second go at life, I live a long life and we have a final divorce in the afterlife".
Rio sadly agreed "Ok." She turned and left. Hesitating just a second before crossing the veil.
Agatha felt the burden in her shoulders. Now, she had to find a way to get Jen her powers back before they ran out of time, and she would have to meet Rio at the end of the Road.
They went into the trial and everything was about to go to shit if they couldn't plant anything, even if Tommy now had a body and Jen was unbound. Billy's uncontrolled power served for something. The broken floor gave way to soil and Agatha took the flower seed from the last flower Rio had ever gifted her from inside her locket and planted it. The timer came to a stop and the trio laughed. Billy hugged Jen and Agatha looked at him for the last time, with unguarded affection in her eyes. She felt her magic returning to her and knew the time was up.
"Billy..." She sighed and both him and Jen let go of each other and turned to her. "You are a good boy. Go find your brother. And I'm sorry" she threw all her power on him, killing him, while Jen cried out in despair, knowing she couldn't attack Agatha. She hugged the boy's body and Agatha forced her to focus. "Jennifer, for fuck's sake, get your act together! Revive him. I stopped his heart, revive him!" She saw Jen start CPR and magically induce his heart beat.
"Your absolute fucking psycho! Why would you do this?" Jen kept working and Agatha rapidly explained as much as she could. "Rio is awaiting for Billy as soon as we leave here. Now, Billy's original body was lost when his mother ended the hex in Westview, he body jumped to the body of William Kaplan, who was dying, before the other boy had been reaped by death, so William's soul is still there. And Now Billy is no longer in this body. When he wakes up, the original owner of this body, William Kaplan, will be the only one there and if we're lucky, Billy jumped into the body of another teenager. He will find his brother, who he just put into someone else's body and Rio will have lost track of him for now. It's the best I can do. Buy him enough time for Wanda to come back and find them and keep Rio from them."
She watched as Billy's - William's now - chest began to rise and fall by itself and finished "now I'm going to distract Rio long enough for you to take him to a hospital and get the hell away from anywhere Rio can find you for some time. She is going to be pissed that I didn't deliver him and neither of you should be anywhere near us, so you don't get caught in the crossfire".
Jen nodded in silence, not understanding Agatha's reasoning and knowing that saving fellow witches wasn't really the M.O of the Witch Killer, but not wanting to provoque her, when she was about to fight Death itself to keep her, well mostly the teen, but still, alive.
Agatha nodded back "Goodbye, Jennifer." She said and left the basement to face her wife.
Rio was waiting for her. She cackles "Congratulations, my love! I'm sorry I didn't have a ribbon for you to run through". Agatha prepares herself for the first true magical fight they will have. Balance has to be restored somehow and Agatha knows Rio well enough to know that her own soul will be powerful enough to do it. Her sons are demiurges, but she's a Nexus Being. A Product of the Soul Stone, Witch Magic and Fate, all wrapped up in one. It took her almost two hundred years to understand her powers and only after acquiring the Darkhold she was able to do it.
"I got you the kid out, as agreed!" She yells.
"And he's now where? He was supposed to surrender himself. That means, you're coming with me." Lady Death looks at her and says "I'm thinking Death by a thousand cuts!" She supposes her reflexes are rusty because she is cut by thousands of paper cuts of glass shattered from the house before she can erect a protection.
She stares at the moon. This is going to make Rio even madder, but maybe it will make the end faster "Fire phase" she makes a protection circle "expelle hoc malum" she chants repeatedly.
"You're calling me evil? I am the natural order of all things, baby... And you love me!" Agatha's legs shake with the desperation and doubt in Rio's voice. Of course she loves Rio, all those deaths she kept commiting weren't for power or fun, she was gifting them to her, as she had been doing since meeting her in Salem, her only accidental murder, the one of her coven. "You are a coward!"
Agatha remembered Lilia's prophecy and ducked, almost being hit by a sink. Well, never let it be said that Lady Death wasn't one for drama. "Why don't you want me?" Rio said as she cut her once more, hearing Agatha scream. "Huh?" Agatha chanted in Latin, trying to heal herself, but Rio didn't allow her too. Vines pulled her and locked her in position, Rio descended on her waiting for an answer and Agatha finally had enough time to react. She used her power to free herself and heal herself.
"Power looks good on you" Rio called.
"Honey, everything looks good on me". They started fighting with their magics.
"You seem like you're having fun". Rio said.
"Who, me?" Agatha received a blast of power from Rio and fell down. Rio moved close to her but just before she attacked her again, Agatha was taken away by a blur. In a millisecond she was on the other side of the city of Westview and her eyes widened when she recognized the tug on her magic at their closeness. "Tommy..." She sighed.
"Billy is coming. Let us help you."The boy said.
Agatha saw Rio approaching on the distance and locked eyes with her youngest. "No. We can't fight Death. All I did was to assure that Billy and you would have a chance to escape her. You need to grab your brother and run far away from here. Try and find Wanda. She has enough power to protect you both from Death so you can live long and happy lives before she collects you both. Please, Tommy, promise me..." She begged him.
The boy realized how serious she was and nodded. In a completely unexpected gesture, he touched her cheek and kissed her forehead. "Thank you." He said. And moved in a blur, disappearing completely. Agatha closed her eyes and enjoyed this feeling for a second. They were safe. At least for now. She had done it. Protected them. She finally felt she had done her job as a mother. Where she had failed with Nicky, she now succeeded with the twins. It could never heal that old pain, no, but it was a balm over it. Soothing it a little. Just enough for her to feel it right to end this fight with Rio once and for all.
She got up and waited for her wife's form to fly to her. The moment Rio sat foot on the ground, Agatha flung herself onto her, grabbed her face and locking eyes with her, she said her truth. "I love you." And kissed Rio with all her might, tugging into her power, guiding it to her own soul. She felt it as her soul was severed from her mortal form and her body hit the ground. And then, nothing.
Rio looked at Agatha's body, her hand trembling. How could she have overlooked such an obvious loophole? How could she have missed the signs that Agatha would rather die than let her take another child from her? She thought about the deal, it was broken. She thought about Agatha's voice when she said You are Death, not Daft. I haven't been killing Witches all this time just for power, just to try and get Nicky back. No matter how much I hate you... and her last words, completing it: I love you. Agatha didn't want to spend eternity without her, she realized. She felt for their connection and felt Agatha's soul at the other end of it. She tugged on it until Agatha's soul left the body and was up in front of her, a shy smile on her face.
"You are a big girl. I knew you'd figure it out." The former Soul Witch said, laughing breathly.
Rio thought of her Realm, the throne she had for Agatha there at her side. Of their son, who had been running around the court for the last hundreds of years, finding a way of ask if this was the day mama came home. She smiled and extended her left hand to Agatha, right hand with her knife ready to cut through the veil. "Let's go home."
Agatha smiled and said "I'm ready. Let's go".