you're my favorite.

Title and link: If we stay swimming here forever we will never be free

Rating: E

No Archive Warnings Apply

Relationship: Agatha Harkness/Rio Vidal

Other Characters: Daisy Johnson, Jemma Simmons, Melinda May, Monica Rambeau, Billy Maximoff, Lilia Calderu, Jennifer Kale, Nicholas Scratch, Maria Rambeau

Description:

Agatha could NEVER forgive Rio for taking her son. …But what if she did? What would that take? The story starts shortly after Agatha’s canonical death, in a world broken by Rio’s rage. It journeys through the past, in flashbacks and memory spells, to see why the love AND the chasms between Agatha and Rio run so deep. With the help of a team of agents-turned-friends from Shield and a few familiar faces, Agatha and Rio find ways to understand each other like never before and, ultimately, claw their way out from under centuries of conflict, emerging to the possibility of an exciting new beginning.

Chapter 1: Agatha (flashbacks of Agatha growing up)

Chapter 2: Agatha and Rio (flashbacks of Agatha and Rio's relationship)

Chapter 3: Agatha and Rio and Nicky (flashbacks to conceiving Nicky, Agatha's pregnancy, and the rift)

Chapter 4: Rio (a glimpse into Rio's memories and her reality, with some unexpected revelations about the past)

And it turned into a 30k monster, and it's 98% late 1600's Agatha and Rio falling in love. This was not the plan at all, but here we are.

Title: If we stay swimming here forever we will never be free

Pairing: Agatha Harkness / Rio Vidal

Rating: E

Story origin:  Agatha could never forgive Rio for taking her child. 

…But what if she did?  What would that take, and what would it look like?  Is it even possible and, if not, is there another way forward for them?  

Story structure: It’s my intention that this story is fully canon-compliant with the most relevant material (WV/AAA, MoM, Captain Marvel/The Marvels, AoS).  The timeline toggles back and forth between the present day, specifically the weeks right after the end of AAAS1, and flashbacks that take place mostly between 1683 and 1756. 

There will be four chapters:

Agatha

Agatha and Rio

Rio

Coven

Characters: Agatha and Rio are the focus, and Nicky appears briefly.  There are some OCs to flesh out the flashbacks.  

I brought in Daisy Johnson, Jemma Simmons, and Melinda May of AoS because 1) I love them and have always wanted to write them 2) They have experience with the Darkhold, ghostly dimensions, saving the world, and above all, grief and loss.  My goal is that anyone familiar with them will get amusement and enrichment out of having them here, but you don’t need to have met them before to understand this story or their role in it.  The rationale for having Monica Rambeau here is similar.  

I did this last year & I'm still kinda proud of it.

The Costumes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Agatha Harkness (2021 - 2024)

If you are a USAmerican in a relationship that might be affected by legislation that dissolves same-sex marriages, who may no longer be recognized as next-of-kin, especially if you have children, get your rights in writing!

Your marriage certificate may not be enough to prove you have rights to make medical decisions for non-biological children or for a same-sex spouse or partner.

For me, queer motherhood is a big part of the answer. 

So, I don’t put any stock in Word of God, it doesn’t make it canon to me.  You can tell me Agatha and Rio lived happily in a cottage for a while and that’s a lovely thought, but if you don’t actually prioritize putting it onscreen, I’m basically just reading your fanfiction for your own show.  (This sounds more bitter than I actually feel -- it was nice to hear those things and I'm glad she said them.)

Anyway, seeing Agatha and Rio in their domestic life isn’t necessarily a need I have, though I do believe the show failed to deliver a truly satisfying picture of their relationship, and I think we’re allowed to be disappointed about that while still celebrating what we did get.  It’s not what the show was About, it never promised us a full backstory, yet it still left us hanging, emotionally imo.  Shippers are always going to want more and nobody owes their audience that service, but it doesn’t mean we don’t crave it.  Queer women saw the incredible potential here and craved more, and I don’t blame us for that.  Give us four seconds of Rio smiling at Agatha in the forest around their cottage while she plants (creates) azaleas, right?  Something to balance out the utter devastation on her face (oh my god, Aubrey) when Agatha so thoroughly and brutally rejects her at the beginning of episode 8.  Something, anything, to balance out the (admittedly delicious) rage and darkness.  Something, anything, to earn the natural, powerful, reluctant/irresistible closeness we saw at the end of episode 4. 

I say this because I think moving on to talking about why this show will be one of my favorite pieces of media forever and always without addressing that I share the disappointment in the development of the lesbian couple’s relationship would be disingenuous.  I think it all depends on what the viewer wants from the show, and with a show this complex and layered that gives you a lot of choices about what you’re truly invested in. I’ve certainly come away from seasons of shows that most people have absolutely loved feeling so dissatisfied I was enraged (Lost S1 and Severance S1, for example… don’t @ me, you will never change my mind).  But it’s because I didn’t get the answers I cared about.

What I got here, from Agatha, were so many things I cared about, oh my god.  So much for me is about the motherhood.  The queer motherhood.  A gay woman having a baby without men, without it being about the journey or method to motherhood.  (Uhh but yeah, it was absolutely Rio who helped her make that baby.)

It's so ridiculous, but on paper, I never should have watched Agatha All Along.  Little known fact, my wife runs a service out of her home office called “does the baby die.”  I’m the only client, but it keeps her busy nonetheless.   She previews any suspicious new media we’re about to embark on to check for violence (I’m big sensitive baby), but mostly for childbirth trauma and child death.  We did not think to check this silly little Marvel witch show.  In retrospect that was incredibly stupid given the role of grief in Wandavision and Multiverse of Madness, but here we are.  By the time we realized how huge the role of maternal grief and trauma was going to be in Agatha’s story, there was no stopping.  The cast, the writing, the queerness had us locked in their bewitched basement.  (And no, I will never not take an opportunity to force a quote from WV 1x08 into things I write, thank you for asking.)      

I have not lost a child (silently praying away my superstitions to every deity humanity has ever invented as I type those words), but I have come very close.  Afterwards, some potent PTSD convinced me that I was still going to, at any moment.  I would go to sleep (or, try, lol) thinking, if I lose her, at least I got three weeks with her.  At least I got two months with her.  Etc.  It wasn’t true, and I know how dramatic this sounds but… I have felt like death was stalking my child.  (I’ve told very few people in my life that, and this show has got me telling god knows who, lol.)  But it’s because the absolute rage you feel at that level of desperation and powerlessness and SHAME is not something I’ve ever seen reflected in a piece of media before.  Agatha lived with that for 6 years, and they showed her living with that, and to me that is a gift.  

Also, the way they captured the feeling of creating a child “from scratch.”  Hey, I made this thing, this life, it’s mine, she’s mine, oh my god is this real, my body did this?  Giving Agatha a moment to stop and revel in that and articulate that… what a gift.