Chapter Text
Sophie knocked once on her father's study. Hoping that he'd answer, but also dreading it.
"Come in."
She did.
If that's my father and he's also your father.... wouldn't that make us sisters?
'Shut up. I need to talk to him.'
Sophie had taken to thinking directly at Agatha instead of speaking aloud, to prevent any more oddities. It made communication a bit easier, a bit more casual.
"Hello father," Sophie closed the door behind her. Unsure.
Stefan smiled at his daughter, but she noticed that he didn't seem happy, young, like when he smiled at Agatha in the memory.
"Sophie, what brings you to my neck of the woods."
Agatha giggled. Sophie didn't.
She inhaled deeply, then smiled at her father, crossing the room. "Did I have an older sister named Agatha?"
Stefan's fixed smile slipped. "I-I'm confused."
Sophie hopped onto the arm couch, toes barely touching the floor. Agatha was tall, Sophie thought, Agatha would be able to touch the floor.
"It's a simple question father, did you have a daughter before you had me? Was her name Agatha?"
He took off his glasses, "Did your mother tell you?"
Sophie wasn't quite sure how to feel about this. A part of her was thrilled that the bond between her and her guardian angel was strengthened with sisterhood. Another was bitter because no one told her. And another was peeved, because her father showed more softness, more genuinity, more vulnerability when she said Agatha's name than he has ever shown Sophie.
She ignored the jealousy.
"Agatha did."
Stefan ran his fingers down his face, releasing a ragged worn out sigh. "Impossible. Agatha... Agatha died, Sophie."
No endearment. No 'princess'.
Some vindictiveness surged in her, powerful and ugly.
"I know. Agatha is here. In my head. She is with me. She is my guardian angel. She-"
"Don't lie about things like this," his voice had gained an edge, one she had never heard from him before.
Agatha was quiet in her mind and Sophie desperately wished Agatha would say something that would show her father she was telling the truth. She hopped off the couch, already sick of it, buzzing with restless energy.
‘Say something’, she thought angrily, ‘why won't you say something-.’
You'll only use my words to hurt him. I don't want you to-
‘I HATE YOU!’
Silence.
"I'm not lying," Sophie continues. "She shows up in my dreams. She had short black hair and big buggy brown eyes. She was skinny and had bony elbows and knees. She hates-."
"Who told you all of this? Tedros?"
Sophie stomped her foot angrily, ignoring the jolt of pain it sent up her leg. "No! Agatha told me! She also told me about Callis! And when I told Miss Callis she ran away-."
"Miss Callis left because she wanted to pursue a deeper, more intense schooling-."
Sophie talked louder, over her father. "Agatha loved all sweets-."
"Sophie Woods, for the love of God-"
"Agatha was smart. A prodigy. Her favorite game was chess."
"Stop."
"Agatha's favorite color was black because-"
He stood up from behind his desk, slamming his hands down, eyes aflame.
"WHO TOLD YOU ALL OF THIS?!"
"AGATHA! SHE ALSO TOLD ME THAT EVERY THURSDAY YOU'D TAKE HER TO THE PARK TO GET ICE CREAM- CHOCOLATE FUDGE, EVERY TIME. AND-" Sophie realized that it was hard to breathe and that was due to the fact that she had been yelling at the top of her lungs and her nose was clogged with snot. "And," Sophie hiccuped, " and you always got Vanilla. B-but halfway through you guys would switch ice creams- a-and w-why did you never take me?-"
Stefan was pale.
Sophie knew why.
Agatha had confided to Sophie that nobody knew about their ice cream escapades.
"You can see her?" He was looking around Sophie, like Tedros had, but far more frnatically. As if hoping that if he looked hard enough he could see Agatha too.
"In my dreams," Sophie said.
Stefan stumbled out from behind his desk and fell to his knees before his daughter. Cupping her face with his hands. "That's it?"
There was a manic look in his eyes. Desperate.
Her father had only ever been placid and gentle, unmoved by even her most hysterical fits. This was a complete switch.
It terrified her.
"Y-yes."
"You aren't lying to father, now, are you Sophie?"
Don't tell him.
Agatha didn't sound scared, but she did sound crushed. Sophie did not understand.
"No."
"Is..." Stefan, as if finally realizing his behavior, fell away from his daughter. "I'm- I'm sorry, sweetie. Ah," there was a hardness in his eye that he was trying desperately to hide, (it was the angry jealousy inside him. He has been hounded with the loss of his daughter for years. Why her? Why Sophie, who has never suffered a day in her life? Why?!) "I'm so happy you got to meet your big sister." Stefan smiled, the smile that he always smiled. Closed mouthed and neat. So unlike the young messy one he gave Agatha in the memory.
"Why didn't you tell me about her?"
Stefan let out a long breath then got comfortable on the floor, he patted the spot next to him. "Sit, Sophie."
And why don't you call me 'princess' too. I look more like a Princess than she does.
Agatha didn't say anything.
Sophie sits, grimacing as she settled onto the cold floor. Stefan takes her hand, a rare gesture of affection.
"Agatha," he swallowed, ducking his head to inspect their hands, Sophie's small white ones and his tanned large ones. "My A-, your sister turned 16, last week. She was a summer birthday," he met her eyes, and Sophie was hit with the sudden urge to cry. "Her death was so sudden, we loved her so much. Me and your mother, we did. It was terrible. And...your mother, she was there to see her die."
Sophie wanted to ask how she died but she felt that the question would end their conversation. Besides Agatha, who was still quiet, probably didn't want to know how she died.
"Va- Your mother didn't want to talk about it. She was traumatized. She cried when she found out about you. Fearing you'd have a similar fate. That's why we don't talk about A-Agatha. Even after all this time, it's still too hard."
"Is that all?" Sophie took her hand back and stood, looking down at him, dry-eyed once again. "You should have told me."
She turned to leave when Agatha finally spoke, Can you please tell him that... he deserves to move on?
Sophie ignored the request and left the room. "Goodnight father."
Tomorrow it would be her birthday. She would turn eight. She thought she'd be more excited than she was. But Agatha was restless in her head and she could concentrate on little else.
'Will you settle down, Aggie.'
Something is wrong, the girl voiced, sounding stressed. Something is going to happen. I feel it.
'You can't feel anything, you don't have a body.'
I don't need a body to feel.
'Fine, what's wrong?'
I... And the anguish in Agatha's voice could nearly be felt in Sophie' own chest. I don't know.
She's beautiful, Agatha said, but it sounded nearly like an insult.
"Mother?" Sophie said, hesitant, watching Vanessa from the door of her room. Watching Vanessa, a vision of golden summer beauty, apply more makeup than she needed for being around the house.
"Yes, love?"
Did you hate Agatha?
All signs pointed yes.
But if she found out so would Agatha.
Sophie didn't want to hurt Agatha. Not really. Agatha didn't do anything wrong. But Sophie still needed to know.
"Are you gonna spend my birthday with me?"
Vanessa smiled, "What a silly question! Of course! You're my daughter."
Agatha didn't say anything for the rest of the day. And Sophie didn't try to get her to talk.
Agatha was right, Sophie realized, something was wrong.
She had taken this path so many times. Walked the worn road, pushed back the hanging foliage, to reveal the cliff with its moss covered edge.
(The familiarity of everything struck remembrance into them. They remembered- everything. Both. For Agatha it was like a missing piece, a memory connecting a broken chain of events, a flash fire of trauma. For Sophie it was like watching a movie. A horror movie. Where the beautiful mother shoves her trusting daughter off a cliff.)
Vanessa was grasping Sophie's hand, Sophie was dragging her feet. And Vanessa was saying something to Sophie, no doubt confused but Sophie kept struggling.
Not Sophie- Agatha. Agatha had wrestled control, Agatha was the one speaking. Using Sophie's body to resist and scream.
"NO! NOT AGAIN! PLEASE!"
Vanessa froze, letting go of Sophie's hand. Backing away. "Sweetie, what's wrong-?"
"Don't push us," Agatha, Sophie, both of them begged. They were begging together. Both scared, and hurt and angry. "Not again!"
"What are you going on about-"
Sophie had taken control, "YOU KILLED AGATHA AND ARE PLANNING TO KILL ME TOO! WHY?!"
Then Agatha, "Please, mum. Not again. I can't go through that again- Mum-."
Vanessa saw it then. Agatha .
(She saw Agatha in the pathetic peasant way her eyebrows met at the top, furrowed so intensely. The way Sophie's body was uselessly frozen in fear. The way Sophie was looking at her the way Agatha used to, filled with hope, fear, and wariness of being hurt. She hated that look. She hated that even after everything she worked hard to do- she couldn't fully rid herself of Agatha.)
Her ugly firstborn. The one she offed at this very spot
Agatha, who already caused everyone so much grief..! And she was back haunting her darling Sophie!
Her poor Sophie was suffering..! Was Agatha possessing Sophie? What if Vanessa pushed Sophie off the cliff- would it knock Agatha out of her? It should. There was no other way. And truly it was the perfect place. Quiet. Secluded. Beautiful. Dangerous. The perfect spot.)
Vanessa advanced on Sophie, who was shaking. Her body is overwhelmed by the two spirits fighting for dominance. Sophie, finally wrestling control, ducked away and ran towards the path, screaming.
Both girls saw the look in their mothers eyes. And Sophie, who didn't care for useless second chances, only wanted to be as far away as possible as the woman who killed Agatha. Who was planning on killing her.
She kept running until she ran smack straight into a thigh. She looked up, faltering when she saw it was her father, who must have followed after them, and said, " Run ."
"Where's your mother?"
"She-"
"Sophie!" Vanessa called, sweet as she walked the trail. "C'mon Sweetie, you are not okay. I'll help you but-"
Agatha, now in control of the body, whimpered. She hid behind his legs.
"What's wrong?" Stefan demanded, his daughters panic manifesting in him. "Why are you hiding from your mother-?"
Agatha, still in control, looked up. "She killed me. She pushed me off a cliff-"
"What nonsense!" Vanessa interrupted, smiling wide and radiating manic energy. "How could I kill you, Sophie."
"My name is Agatha!"
Vanessa's eyes filled with tears, the shadows of the trees casting patterns of light and shadows over her face. "Who told you about-"
"YOU KILLED ME-"
Sophie wrestled control. Desperately, she searched for an excuse, she forced herself away from behind her father and presented herself humbly, feeling somewhat safe under the watchful eye of her father. "I- I... Mother, I don't like this place."
Vanessa stepped forward, wrapping Sophie's stiff, small, body in a perfumed hug.
Sophie noticed that Agatha hadn't stopped screaming, except it was faint. And if Sophie concentrated hard enough on her mother, it can be mistaken as the distant roar of the wind.
Stefan didn't wrap his daughter up in a hug.
I know. Agatha is here. In my head. She is with me. She is my guardian angel. She-
These woods.
My name is Agatha!
He hurries after them, watching the convincing way Sophie melted into Vanessa, something suffocating snarling up his throat.
At home Vanessa and Stefan were arguing. After hearing Vanessa's recall of the events Stefan thought that Sophie should see a therapist. Vanessa was insistent that it was just the creepy aura of the place.
Stefan relented, agreeing to not send her to one.
He had lied.
A few days later, under the pretense of introducing Sophie to an old friend...he brought her to Dr. Sader.
("Don't tell your mom. This is our little secret."
"Like you and Agatha with ice cream?"
"Yeah...just like that.")
Dr. Sader was very good at his job.
And she told him everything.
And Sader believed her, since he had a voice inside his own head, though she was more demonic and nosy than angelic. (She was called Evelyn, and she was killed in a tragic automobile accident.)
Sader, good friend of Merlin, made a phone call that night.
"You haven't called on me in a while. I was quite close to stopping by to see if you had died."
"I'm afraid this isn't a social call, Professor."
"Merlin." The old man corrected, "you're old yourself Dr. Sader, call me Merlin." A pause, "good news or bad news."
"I'm afraid-"
"Right," grumbled Merlin, "you never been one to call about good news." A sigh, "who do I need to investigate now?"
"The Woods family. The little girl, Sophie. Just turned eight. She'll need a protection charm. The mother...it was a case of filicide."
"Right." The jovial man was finally serious. "Anything else I should know?"
"The case is not unlike mine. Sophie, the younger girl, has her deceased sister co-inhabiting her head. My guess is because she was betrayed in her last moments she couldn't accept her death so she lingered and since Sophie was born so soon after she was just pulled to Sophie. She lost memories when she joined Sophie, could be self-preservation or a consequence of the merge. The dead sister, Agatha, is powerful, she can take over for a while if she pleases and she is a constant in Sophie's head."
"How does the Sophie girl take having her sister in her head?"
"Very well. She’s convinced it's some guardian angel business."
"Ah..."
"She needs to be set free. The spirit- er, Agatha might be fine now but she'll grow miserable or wicked soon. She has done well for the past eight years...but now that she has recovered her memories...she's bound to..."
"I know," Merlin said, "what of the mother?"
"Find evidence. Frame her. Kill her. I don't care. Put her behind bars. All of that after we find a way to free Agatha."
"Is that how you talk to your elders?"
Sader laughed dryly, "You are the one to insist we drop honorifics."
Merlin was silent for a moment, and when he spoke he sounded mournful. "I was beginning to think that the world was going quiet."
"I was too, old friend. I was too..."
"Old?! Says the man who can't make it up a flight of stairs!"
"Asth- ma. Asth- ma!"
Lately, Agatha has been feeling off . Not necessarily bad but...faint. If there was a proper way to describe the feeling she would use that term.
She just didn't feel the same.
Talking to Sophie was becoming unappealing. And when she did want to talk it required more energy than she was willing to expand.
Agatha didn't feel much of much.
So that is why she couldn't muster up the will to care when Sophie sobbed about her mother's crime.
Why she couldn't talk Sophie out of confronting Vanessa. (Though, God, she wanted to. Speaking was hard and it seemed worthless since when did Sophie ever listen to Agatha?)
Why, when Sophie asked desperately, to Agatha, after talking to Vanessa, whether or not she was crazy.
("That crazy lady had tried to convince me that I was seeing things! That I was sick! Can you believe that?! She said that you aren't real, she said that you aren't actually talking to me but that I made you up in my own head! What bullshit!
... Agatha? You haven't said anything in a while... Agatha. Agatha?! AGATHA?!!")
Agatha didn't say anything.
Though it felt hollow it didn't feel much else.
The only times Agatha would feel something was when she saw Vanessa. Something fiery and hot. Something that filled her very being with an inconsolable ache.
Something that had her thinking of blood and revenge.
Something that she felt could only be satiated with Vanessa's death.
At first, Agatha wished she saw Vanessa less. She would rather be numb than filled with such ache. But the ache soon seemed more like a calling, a carnal desire. It felt like a mission that would grant her the something she was missing.
Agatha didn't necessarily care how it happened. Vanessa could fall down the stairs, drown, have a deadly seizure.
Agatha did appreciate the irony of Vanessa being shoved off a cliff, however.
She didn't feel much besides the need to quench her thirst for vengeance.
Something was wrong. She knew that. Objectively. But also, she didn't really care what was wrong anymore.
Agatha was dead.
So why was she even here? Shouldn't she be elsewhere? Somewhere less bothersome? Shouldn't Sophie be living a normal life without Agatha in her head?
This was ridiculous.
There was no reason for her to care anymore.
"Sophie?" Tedros kneeled in front of her, looking at her with concern. "What are you doing?"
Sophie looked up, eyes glassy. "Teddy, what do you do when you're tired?"
Tedros took her hand and pulled her from her hunched position on the floor. Sophie was trembling from the cold but the second she got under covers she felt like she was going to be choked alive. Like the covers would attach themselves to her and glue to her body like second skin.
"I sleep." He murmured, scooping Sophie up the way she liked- the princess carry. "Wanna try it?"
Sophie shakes her head quickly.
"Why not?"
"I keep getting nightmares."
He dropped Sophie onto her bed playfully, then sat down beside her, sobering when that failed to elicit a smile.
"About what?"
"Agatha."
She snuck a peak up at him and sure enough his entire demeanor shifted.
His eyes had gone serious, steely.
"What about her?" he asks carefully.
"She... She keeps dying. And she says weird things. It's not my Agatha. This girl is always angry. That’s only in my dreams. She never talks anymore."
"She used to talk a lot?"
Sophie nods emphatically, " All the time ."
He huffs a slight laugh."That sounds like her."
"But not anymore. Yesterday, I pushed Hort down from the rock climbing wall-
"You shouldn't have done that."
"-And Agatha didn't say anything. She used to yell at me."
Tedros hugged Sophie close to his side wordlessly, and as kids often do when they are upset, she fell asleep. He lay her down on the bed, tucked a light blanket over her, and brushed some of her fair hair out of her face.
He looks out the window of her room, he pointedly doesn’t think of when this used to be Agatha’s room, or how he would play with her on the floor. He doesn’t think of how kind and happy she was. Instead, he hurried and knocked on Stefan’s office.
Stefan’s hands trembled and he dialed a number he had memorized out of fear for Sophie.
At her next appointment with Dr. Sader, the following day, she told him everything.
"It's progressing already. We need to quarantine Sophie."
"She's just a kid, Sader," Merlin says in his long suffering way.
"A kid hosting a seriously unstable and powerful sister in her head, Merlin!"
Merlin hummed, "can't we just... kill Vanessa?"
"And that's less extreme?" But Sader sounded tempted.
"She killed her kid, Sader."
" Death is too kind and we aren’t sure if that would truly be enough to satisfy Agatha." Sader says consideringly. “Besides, that might scar Sophie.
"As if locking her up won't?"
Knock knock.
"What was that?" Sader asked.
Merlin peeked out his peephole, "An old friend. I will call you back.”
Sader protested but Merlin had already hung up.
Merlin opened the door, smiling warmly. “Tedros."
"Merlin,” Tedros offered a tight smile. “It’s a pleasure."
‘What brings you to my neck of the woods?”
Tedros pushed the door open and let himself in. “I trust you are familiar with the Woods family?”
“How come never comes to me in times of peace?” Merlin grumbles but follows his estranged godson indoors.