#finally xd

The voice sounded a little louder this time, though it was still a whisper. You turned around, following it in the dark. You knew who it was, but the pain you heard didn’t match the image you had of her.

"Aggie?" you whispered when you saw a figure in front of you.

The witch turned to look at you and you gasped, taking a step back. She was crying, and her eyes were filled with pain and remorse. This was not your Agatha, this was a broken woman.

"I'm sorry" she whispered. "Forgive my big mistake"

You tried to get closer to her, but it seemed like there was an invisible barrier between you two.

"Aggie" you said "what's going on?"

The witch just looked at you sadly as she moved her hands and various images began to appear around you. You saw everything, from the night she left, promising to return, to her arrival in a small town, the way she pretended to be Wanda's friend, how she sabotaged various things to further destabilize her, how she killed a dog, kidnapped some children and fought the Scarlet Witch. You saw how she tried to steal the chaos magic. You saw her losing.

You gasped when the scene of her punishment played out in front of you. Wanda had condemned her to the same torture that the town's residents had suffered, she had trapped her in the role she had chosen. Agnes.

"Aggs-"

"I don't have much time" she interrupted. "I managed to break one of the seals, just so I could see you, even if it's this way"

Then you got it. You were on a different plane. Your mind connected to hers, but your bodies thousands of miles apart. That is why there was a barrier between you.

"Tell me what to do" you said "W-where are you?! I'll get you out of there" you promised.

Agatha smiled sadly at you and shook her head. You felt your stomach churn as more tears fell down her cheeks.

"Forget me" she told you.

You froze.

"wh-what?" you whispered, fear spreading through your chest.

"Forget me" she repeated "you have to move on"

"What are you talking about?" you said, getting as close to the wall as you could.

"You were right. I shouldn't have come, I shouldn't have wanted more power ... I shouldn't have left you" she cried

"Don’t worry. We can fix this" you smiled at her, even though you could already feel your tears as well.

"I'm afraid there's no way to fix it" she said "I won't be coming home this time, love" her eyes were full of guilt

"No, don't say that" you begged, as tears began to spill onto your cheeks.

"Go on without me" she whispered.

"No" you said firmly "I won't leave you"

"You have to" she pleaded "Forget me. I wish the best for you, find someone who loves you as much as I do, I hope that love and luck will follow you wherever you are"

“NO” you yelled “Tell me where you are, Agatha, tell me what to do! Tell me how to help you! And stop this nonsense!” you demanded

"Go on without me" she said again.

"I can't" you said "Y-you, you promised that you would come back. You said that when you came back you would teach me magic. You said that you would make me part of your world. You promised Harkness, you fucking promised!"

"My world is not that beautiful, and you already see it, Y/N" she said, pointing to the frozen images around you "You have to run away from it before you get hurt"

"I don't care! You promised we would be together!"

You were hurt and angry. But more than anything, scared. Scared because she wasn't fighting, because she wasn't trying to break Wanda's spell, not beyond what she had already done to contact you.

"This is my fault, right?" you fell to your knees "I wasn't enough for you ..." Out of the corner of your eye you saw Agatha kneel in front of you on the other side of the barrier.

"No honey" she said she "you were more than I deserved"

"Then why do you want this?" you asked

"Because it's not your fault that everything turns out the other way around for me, Y/N" she sobbed "I know you are not happy. It is not fair that you pay for my mistakes, love"

You looked at her through your tears and wished you could hug her, kiss her. Feel her.

"I was happy Agatha" you said

"And you'll be again once you forget me" she said, but you weren't having it.

"I was happy before you left" you almost screamed "I was happy when I woke up with you, when you kissed me, when you took me by the hand, when you patiently explained your magic to me. You make me happy"

The witch just looked at you and sobbed even louder. This was too hard for her, she hated seeing you like this and she hated that it was her fault, that she was hurting you. For a moment, she was tempted to change her mind, but she had made up her mind. You deserved better.

"Fight" you said "fight. You can stop this, you already broke one of the seals, you can break the rest. I know you can Aggie, please" you begged.

Agatha knew you were right. She was powerful enough to break the seals that held her prisoner in her own mind. It would take her time, months, maybe even years, but she could do it. But she was sure that you would wait for her as long as it took. And that was exactly what she didn't want. She didn't want to stop you, she didn't want to steal more time from you. She wanted you to move on, to live, to be happy even if she was not by your side.

And she was tired. Very tired.

"From fighting without succeeding now my feet have gotten tired, love" she told you, asking for your forgiveness with her eyes.

"Please" you whispered, but she shook her head.

"Go on without me" she said for the third time "from here I will ask that your life go better"

"No" you sobbed "I don't know how to live without you, Aggie" you confessed

"You will learn" she assured you "you will find someone else who will teach you to do it"

"I don't want someone else!" you screamed

"Love, please. I don't want you to get hurt" she sniffed, resting a hand on the barrier that separated you.

"And what do you think you're doing right now, Harkness?!" you growled "You say you don't want to hurt me, but you're sticking daggers in my chest! You say it wasn't your intention, that you want me to move on, well you would have thought about it when you looked at me with that damn smile that made me tremble, or before you stole the kiss that made me feel like I was something special "You hit the wall hard, scaring her" You didn't want to hurt me, you wanted to kill me! "

Agatha felt her heart break even more with every word that came out of your mouth. She wanted to hug you, kiss you, tell you that you were special, that she loved you. But someday you would thank her for this, even if you couldn't remember her.

"You have to understand" she whispered "You already suffered with me, you only deserve love from now on"

"Tell me who gave you the right to want to save me" You screamed, looking into her eyes "You couldn't hurt me more than this" you whispered, feeling the anger move away and transform into pure sadness "if I'm with you it's because I want to be, Agatha"

The witch couldn't hold your gaze and with a wave of her hand, the barrier disappeared. You gasped when you almost fell on your face, but she managed to catch you. No, no, no ... she could control it?! She could let you kiss her, hug her, and she hadn't done it before?!

But she was doing it now.

Agatha lifted your chin and kissed you firmly, erasing the anger you had and, for a moment, the sadness as well. That kiss gave you hope, that she had reconsidered, that she was going to keep her promise and come back to you.

The witch tried to put all of her emotions into the kiss. She wanted you to know that she loved you, that you had always been the best thing life gave her and that she would do anything for you. Anything.

Even let you go.

You gasped as you felt her vanish in your arms. You were waking up.

"No, no, Agatha, no, don't do this to me" you begged her, scared. You tried to hold on to her, but you were losing her.

"You have to live" she whispered, giving you one last kiss

"No! Agatha, please!" you screamed, everything around you was fading fast. You looked at her while she smiled sadly at you "... I love you" you whispered

"I love you too" she said before disappearing.

_________

You gasped when you woke up. Hot tears rolled down your cheeks and you quickly wiped them away with your hand. You looked at it, confused.

"How weird" you said "I must have had a bad dream"

Although you weren't really sure what you had dreamed of, you couldn't remember it. But it wasn't strange, was it? People often forget their dreams.

You shrugged as you fell asleep again. You didn't feel the engagement ring disappear from your finger.

____________

Meanwhile, somewhere in an abandoned town, a woman smiled as she removed a ring from her finger. She wasn't sure where it was from, but she did know that she didn't need it anymore. She kept it in a box that she left to the bottom of a forgotten drawer.

She paid no attention to the tear that rolled down her cheek. She had been crying a lot, she realized. It must be the allergies.

____________

Agatha sighed and whispered, knowing that no one would listen to her. Not Agnes, not you.

She dreams of worlds where she doesn’t quite belong, of realms that threaten to swallow her up, and sometimes they do. Sometimes she sees herself in a reflection but it is not her. Flakes of humanity fall from her until she is trapped in a form that is not her own, falling from her until the last sliver dissolves and she is someone - something - else.

But other times there is someone dear, someone close to lead her back. She takes his hand and lets him guide her through the maze of temptations and dead ends until her feet land on solid pavement and she is home. She looks back to her companion, but he is already vanishing.

She wants to reach out, to hold onto this friend for a little longer, but something instinctive always makes her pause. For the silhouette she sees is not quite human. Between glove and sleeve there is a sliver of ginger fur, the same fur that covers the sharp ears, and angular, feline eyes glimmer into hers. And she knows that she is as much in danger of losing herself to this companion as she is to the worlds that lure her in.

She lets him go.

For years she has woken to these strange dreams, and for years she has dealt by loosening the sense of otherworldly loss and danger onto her stories.

She never quite gets it right, but she keeps trying.

But now the stranger, companion, friend who leads her out has a face. She supposes she had already given him on in her art, but that had been akin to sketching a relative who had passed when she was only a toddler. It had never felt quite right, but now his face is clear and sharp, and every time she finds it harder to release him.

Until one dream, she doesn’t.

She wakes that hazy summer morning and knows what she has to do.

She doesn’t know how to find him - he gave no directions, no way back to him - but there is a stubbornness in her bones borne from years of sensing that there is something more just beyond her reach. Only now she has proof. She has a mystery. 

And she follows it.   

The irony is that her stories clutter up her search. If there were ever any evidence for a Baron von Gikkingen, it has long been buried beneath the fiction of her Duke van Jikkingen, and at first she curses the misdirection she herself has planted. But then she realises that maybe they aren’t misdirection at all. 

Maybe it’s the way. 

For her depiction of Baron wasn’t quite right - but it was close enough. It was close enough to bring him to her door in search of answers for the woman who had captured him in fiction despite never laying waking eyes on him. And maybe the rest of her narrative holds some truth, if not all. 

So she picks up her earliest manga - the one that had been closest to her first dreams - and follows it. She journeys back to her hometown - the place she had always pictured when she drew - and starts from the Crossroads. There is no Muta to be seen, but it’s only a starting point anyway. She ducks down a side alley, pausing only for a moment when she finds her way blocked by a rise of low roofs, and scales them with a reassuring ease of muscle memory. Across a tin roof and over an iron railing fence, down another alley so narrow that she has to twist to ease through, and then she comes to the final opening.     

“Why are you searching for him?”

She turns. 

The figure before her isn’t Baron. It isn’t even the white cat or crow that sometimes accompanied him in her stories. What she sees instead is a tiny golden harvest mouse with furred wings curving over its back. Its voice is strange; not a squeak or a flutter, but a thing of creaks and splinters. “I’m sorry?” she asks. 

“Why?” it repeats. “Why do you follow him still?”

“Still?” she echoes. 

“You are happy!” it snaps. “Happier than you ever were before! So why are you here? If you keep chasing after him, it will only bring you suffering!”

She looks at the creature. “I rather think I get to be the judge of that, don’t you?” she asks, and steps up through the archway. 

Across the threshold, the air is somehow different. Strange, but not in a way that unnerves her. She inhales, and it settles her in a way she has only felt in the corners of her dreams. 

“Miss Haru?” Caught up in the moment, she had not noticed the double doors of one of the smaller houses open, but now she sees him standing in the entrance. He blinks suddenly. “I apologise. Mrs Haru, I believe? To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

“Tell me,” she says. “Tell me who you are.”

He tilts his head in a way that is maddingly familiar. “As you wish. I am Baron Humbert von-”

“No,” she says. “Tell me who you are to me.” 

And so he tells her. 

He tells her of the origins of their friendship; of the schoolgirl who came to his doorstep with tales of rescued princes and kings overeager in their gratitude. He tells her of how she found her way back to the Bureau years later, not as a client but as a visitor. A companion. A friend. He tells her of the hours, days, years they spent in each other’s company, until suddenly she was gone. 

There are things he doesn’t share, of that she’s sure. There is a grief in his gaze that makes her wonder whether their friendship stayed strictly within the boundaries of platonic, but it’s not her place to ask. There’s the sense that no matter how much she learns, she can never bring things back to the way they once were. 

That even in the finding, something vital has been lost.

“Well then,” she says. “Let’s go find some answers.”  

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