You brought the flames and you put me through hell (TW: Hanging, Suffocation, etc.)

[ghost_holder]

She comes to that forest sometimes, what's left of it. Though she's not particularly studied in ley lines or corpse roads or whatever they're called, Aggie's still spent long enough time in a place between places, as a thing between being and not being. She's no magician, no dreamer, but Aggie can feel its pulse sometimes. There's a road that powers through Darrow and if she listens carefully, Aggie can hear it. Or she could. It's been quiet and weak for months now. Not dead, but emptied down to the bones.

Its heartbeat is stronger tonight, the moon heavy and red in the sky. There's a chill in the air that has nothing to with cold and Aggie swears that the forest is calling out, searching for its now-missing caretakers. Their house in the countryside is still a trek, but she needs to get out and see. What good is all her power otherwise?

What she sees isn't all that encouraging. Even for winter, the place where the forest should be feels particularly barren. There's no sense of magic, just cold, just absence. Aggie starts to wonder what she expected and turns to leave, only to stumble. She falls–swings–backward, dragged back by a rough length of rope that tightens around her neck. She can feel its weight, knows its short fall.

Witch. Devil. Hanged by the neck.

Frantic, Agatha scratches at the rope at her neck but like some living creature, it seems to only get tighter. Fear lights up her skin and crackles like lightning. All the power she's held back, that has threatened to break loose since that demon appeared, bursts forth and Agatha forgets how to be. The girl that she's become burns away and the Witch of Blithe Hollow, all rage, fear, and crackling energy comes forth.

The sky turns red and the witch screams.

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[formicine]

Blue shouldn't be out, probably, but she can't sleep, even tucked into her bed in Chelsea Cloisters. She's started to redecorate the apartment as though she's going to stay there a while, but she keeps sitting down and looking at one thing or another, all suffused with reminders.

So she goes out. Her feet, traitors, take her toward Cabeswater, or what Cabeswater used to be. A swollen, reddish moon seems to tremble in the Earth's shadow; if Persephone were here she'd be saying it was a good night for -- something. The trees, such as they are, are bare.

Then there's a scream, and energy and light bursts forth in a green-yellow crackle-glow that she recognizes -- never in this amount, but the color --

"Aggie?" Blue's already running, pushing herself further into the trees, and her eyes go wide; the teenager, only transformed, alight -- she's half-suspended by a rope, her hands at her throat. "Agatha," she breathes, as though she herself is being choked, and grabs for her, uncaring of what exactly she could be subjecting her own skin and body to. Her first thought is just that she has to put some support under her, even though Darrow's strange magic is perfectly capable of creating a noose that doesn't care how weight works. She wraps her arms around Aggie's waist. "You're gonna be okay, I've got you," she promises, breathless.

Above her, the sky lights up.

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Agatha looks at the girl-person-stranger-friend in front of her and recognition flitters through her only to be burned up like a butterfly in a firestorm. There's too much anger, too much pain, around her, in her. All she notices is that the girl in front of her has her own hands at her bare throat and it reminds Agatha of how much power she has, how she can so easily turn that stupid rope to dust. She lurches forward, unmoored, and the rope falls away and through her suddenly intangible body.

"IT'S NOT OKAY. IT NEVER WILL BE."

[formicine]

Her arms slide through Aggie suddenly, but at least the rope -- the noose -- has fallen away, and Blue stumbles back. "No," she says "no, it's not okay," realizing what has happened. Or at least, a little of what has happened. There's a part of her that's latched onto the noose, like some woodcutting or black and white picture of the worst parts of history, but come to horrible life because it was her life. Despite the ridiculousness of focusing on that when Agatha has turned into some all-powerful terrified-angry energy being in front of her, it's where her mind is stuck.

The wind tears at her hair, freed from its clips, and lightning cracks across the sky. She says, "What they did to you, they can never make that right, no one can. But they're not here, Aggie."

Blue tries to think of what it had felt like, holding Magnus' hand, the night of the earthquake. It's not something she'd ever want to repeat, but what Aggie looks like now -- it looks like some visual representation of the power she'd felt flooding through them both when Magnus had nearly killed Alec. When she had nearly killed Alec.

She doesn't want Aggie to be responsible for something like that. Not after everything she's been through.

If she can siphon that off, just a little, maybe... Be a mirror in a mirror.

[ghost_holder]

She doesn't care about logic. Is beyond caring. The thing that occupies the form of Agatha Prenderghast is all emotion, all churning energy. So long, it's been confined to one tiny body and now that it's loose it wants to crackle and burn and destroy and make sure that she never feels pain again. It wants to hurt what would hurt her.

Something tugs at her, at her power. She pushes back, trying to defend against that foreign ability. Lightning jerks down from the sky, frenetic and crackling, and strikes the ground between them.

"STOP IT."

[formicine]

Blue feels the electricity before it strikes, but not with enough time to realize what it means, all the hair on the back of her neck standing up at once, an odd feeling like dizziness. The lightning bolt throws her backward, or maybe she does on instinct; thrown to her elbows with a hand thrown in front of her face, she can't tell. Her heart is hammering so hard in her chest that she can't breathe.

She should run.
She can't run. She can't let Aggie do this, not when she's seen her face describing the things she'd done.

"I'm not leaving you here," she yells back. "They were afraid, and they hurt you, and and I know you're afraid and angry, and you have every right to be. But I'm not leaving you alone and I'm not letting you destroy this place." Darrow, but also Cabeswater. Even if it's a bunch of bare, empty sticks, it's still a mark of a place magic was once alive and well.

She can feel stubbornness, determination, maybe even power root her. Probably also slight insanity, since Aggie could very well kill her, but she's heady with it. "You can be angry at me, if you want."

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"WHY NOT? EVERYONE ELSE DID!" Her form flickers, splits, blends back together. For a moment, Agatha has two faces, two bodies. One snarls in rage and lashes out; the other hunches over, horrified at what's happening. When they rejoin, all she can think about is how she was left. Betrayed. Abandoned. Three hundred years, all alone. That hurt, that loneliness surge and the snow melts beneath her and old grass shrivels, turning dry and brown.

She refuses the words, the attempt to placate her. Again her form shivers and morphs, incapable of holding itself to one shape anymore. "YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M FEELING. YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED." No one does. No one understands.

[formicine]

"Because I love you," Blue says, "and I care about you, and the people who abandoned you were assholes." She watches, horrified, as Aggie splits, shatters into angry and terrified and rejoins. "You have people here. Krem, and Gannicus, and Tim, and Billy..." She tries to get up in the wind, the sheer force of the transforming green girl-energy in front of her. "The boy you talked about from back home. People care about you."

The grass dries; under the electricity Blue can all but envision it bursting into flame. "You're right," she says, desperately, reaching out for Aggie with both hands and with her mind if only to try and attract her away from sheer destruction. "You're right, I don't know. I can't. But you can tell me. You don't have to do this alone."

"Aggie, please."

[ghost_holder]

She doesn't shout anything then. Aggie pauses, remembers the people that are being named, her spectral eyes growing huge at the reminder that she's loved. It makes her form shiver and shudder but she doesn't lash out. In all of that anger, all of that impossible-to-control emotion, a little channel winds through her, making just enough room for sadness and regret.

The storm only gets worse above them, the sky ever-redder. A crackle of lightning turns the world flash white for a second and Agatha startles, her form splitting again. This time, both faces are sad and scared, returning to itself.

"IT'S TOO MUCH." Everything. All this power. All the loss and the hurt. It's too much and she's tried so hard to keep it under control and now that it's out, she just can't.

[formicine]

She shudders and splits like a station that can't hold its signal; this time her eyes are wide, and sad, and young. Blue is reminded that no matter how many centuries older Aggie is, and how much growing she's done, she's still a child. She was killed when she was one.

She can feel tears sting her eyes, fearful and close to the surface with loss, but also just deeply sad and scared for Aggie. "Let me take some of it," she says, reaching out and trying, her best, to imagine herself a mirror. A tree, breathing in Agatha's power and sinking it into her roots, breathing out calm. "We can share it."

Sinking all that power... into Cabeswater.

"We can put it into something else. It won't make everything go away, I know that, but we can get through it. You can. I won't let you get lost in this, I won't leave or get scared. You have to trust me. Please."

[ghost_holder]

Her fear shifts again and even in that glow, that fierce energy, the eyes that look out at Blue are definitely Aggie's and she shakes her head. "IT'S TOO MUCH. YOU CAN'T." It's still difficult, keeping together a single train of thought, trying to focus herself down into one person, one body, instead of multitudes, but she still knows that much. She knows that if she can't handle it, what makes it safe for anyone else?

Aggie shudders. And the forest breathes.

"YOU CAN'T," Aggie repeats with new understanding. She can't and Blue can't, but the ley line can. The forest can. and she has so much to give.

[formicine]

"I'm the daughter of a tree-light and a witch," Blue says, with more confidence than she probably should have. Right now she's sort of a tree and she's breathing in power.
But also, Blue Sargent is just sort of stubborn. "I can take it."

Then, because she sees the understanding start to flicker in Aggie's eyes, she nods. "Okay, maybe I can't, but I can channel it to Cabeswater. That's all I'm able to do, to channel power, I can -- I..."

She falters, and steels again.

"I used to be able to help Adam, that way. I can do it for you. And those assholes would hate it," she adds, gaining a little bit of confidence. "Taking all that hurt, and all that loneliness and pain they caused you, and making something magic with it? It can be beautiful again, Aggie, we can do it together."

[ghost_holder]

"Beautiful," she repeats in a voice that doesn't quite howl and echo. It still contains the possibility of multitudes but now the legion is knitting itself back together, pulling back toward being Aggie again.

And Aggie remembers a forest. She remembers sitting at the base of a tree with her mother, the shadows and sunbeams making patterns over the legs and arms as they read fairytales together. She remembers that place and its beauty. She remembers the forest, the one that pulsed with life and dreams and so much magic.

She's afraid, still, of letting go of too much power but she wants that beauty again. She's done terrible things and she's done amazing things. Aggie lets out a thread of power and prays, for the first in a long time, for something amazing.