After the second trial, after… after Teen…
Agatha only manages to sit with their sorry excuse for a coven for mere minutes around the fire. She chooses a seat next to Rio, though she doesn’t know why she does it. She might think it a spell, a curse, if she didn’t know better. But no. this compulsion is much different from her years made dumb and deaf and blind by Wanda. No, it’s an old, friendly, raw, thing that tugs her towards her... her... Rio.
She despises it.
Then there’s the others, asking about Teen, trading battle stories. She offers her own, forcing a flat laugh after the quip they all chuckle at. There's Rio, speaking in few words their story– their story, how dare she let it fall from her lips like something so casual, so insignificant. Agatha can’t even look at her.
And yet.
Instead of the hatred she expects, something odd fills her chest. Something tinged with bittersweet taste, something like regret and shame and heartbreak. It’s too much for her. Her throat is tight, flashing images plague her mind. Nicholas. Rio. Teen. Nicholas, lost. Rio, lost. Teen, nearly lost.
Nicholas… lost? Rio… back. Teen…
She simply can’t. Not with the warmth of firelight on her face, pale in comparison to the way Rio’s mere presence, inches to her right on the rotten tree they sit on, lights her up inside in a way she hasn’t felt in decades. So she doesn’t. She mutters some vague excuse and briskly stalks off. She has half the mind to think perhaps she hoped it might signal to Rio to follow.
Agatha’s pacing, soft crunches beneath her steps, dark all around her save for moonlight spilling through keyhole gaps in the treetops, and feeling very much like this isn’t helping. She needs… she needs… she doesn’t know what she needs. It’s just that seeing Rio, hearing Rio like that , summons an all-too-familiar urge that has her feeling dangerously impulsive. She’s just standing and staring at a log. Leaves damp and chill beneath her bare feet, stuck in place, but her mind still traveling in circles of old memories, of new parallels. She bites at the cuticle of her thumb and stares with hollow eyes.
But then- footsteps behind her. Fingers in her hair.
Lightly pulling loose the wild tangles that have formed from their traipsing about. She can’t help but let her shoulders fall, sigh into it. A tingling relief spills over her body. Because there’s only one person here who that could be. Only one person who’s spent countless nights doing this very thing, running nimble fingers through her hair like it’s something precious, like every bit of her is golden and deserves softness, as if that were ever true.
Rio.
Agatha might have been prepared for a gloating Rio, a taunting Rio, hell, even a flirting Rio. But in no way is she prepared for the Rio before her now. The same, but so, so, different.
The dark-haired woman’s face is all uncertainty, that lip biting that usually means something else but now looks like bitten-back words, eyes flicking back and forth between Agatha’s eyes and lips. And that– the same but oh-so-different Rio, the Rio who might’ve just saved Teen, the Rio who very nearly agreed to put things aside and return to old comforts after just one word from Agatha in the soundbooth– that’s definitely too much for Agatha.
So without thinking too much she tugs Rio, eyes shining and mirroring surprise, into her arms.
Maybe she just wants comfort. Maybe it’s some acknowledgment of the almost apology spoken round the fire. Whatever it is, she leans into it, hard. She cradles Rio’s head in her hand, snakes her other arm tight around her waist, desparately. She feels more than sees or hears a puff of breath escape Rio- less like surprise, more like relief. And its- oh . It’s everything that’s been missing. Agatha tightens her hold and they sway with the force of it, legs slotted together and not an inch between them. She feels Rio breathe her in. She does the same, nose tucked in dark locks.
Rio smells like earth and spice and all that makes sense in the world.
When Agatha pulls back, it’s to tuck a strand of hair behind Rio’s ear, to cradle her face between worn palms and let herself drift even closer. She’s never been one for tenderness, for naked vulnerability. And yet, something pulls her into Rio, amplified by years of distance, by history laid to rest and now dug up again. Suddenly– horrifyingly, blessedly– she’s all too ready to live and let die, to believe that she’s been mistaken and that this wound can be healed and forgotten. The heady closeness between them pushes her toward familiar lips.
But just when she can feel the warm cloud of breath on her chin- “Agatha.”
She has to stifle the cry that threatens to escape her aching throat at the soft sound of her name from that cursed mouth. Lips she still can’t take her eyes off of. Because if not now, when? If Teen is… if Rio didn’t actually…
Rio’s dark eyes glint with resignation, and they shift away to look at a tree. When they return to her, they carry pity. “That boy isn’t yours.”
Agatha blinks. She feels Rio’s thumbs rubbing circles on her wrists, still in her grasp. The roiling storm in her heart she thought she’d escaped descends upon her again, and her face crumples.
Just for a moment.
Rio’s brow pinches with concern. But Agatha slips from her hold before questions can be asked. She blinks away the sting in her eyes, hollow once again, and offers her once-lover an understanding nod and broken smile. When she stiffly walks away, it’s with her own arms crossed tightly across her torso against the returning chill.
She doesn’t have to look back to know that Rio doesn’t follow.