Moon Phases (Agatha Harkness X Fem!Reader)

Chapter XXIX.

Your mind transported you back to a haunting memory, and one of you would do anything to truly forget it.

You were younger back then, in terms of general age but not physical age. After all, you had stopped showing your true age on your face centuries ago, having settled to project only one age.

Back then, you were innocent... until you weren't.

You could still remember that night all too well.

A wooden shack in the woods is now lying destroyed and barely has any part of it standing. Beneath its collapsed metal and wooden beams and pipes, the bodies of men lay. All of them died before the heavy objects fell on them, and if one of them had survived, they would make sure to finish the job.

In the middle of this destruction was you, sweating and panting heavily. Your body shook from shock and exhaustion, your clothes wet, torn and sticking to your skin; blood visible on new wounds from places items had passed through the clothes.

Your hair stuck to your face, the sweat rolling slowly to the side of your temple. You did not even look up, feeling the faint light of the new moon casting its supernatural glow on you as if you were all that mattered to it and nothing else.

Suddenly, you sensed a new presence forming, coming from your very own shadow.

By instinct alone, you turned to face them, white magic glowing in response, ready to defend you until the end.

Your bright white eyes locked in dark ones, and you found yourself facing another woman... no... another witch.

She kept her distance from you, eyeing the bodies carefully.

"Not a bad job," she said, her face visible while most of her body was covered by a dark green cloak.

You frowned, trying to understand where she fits into all of this. You had not heard her approaching or sensed her until the last moment. You knew she was a witch. You could sense your magic reacting; it was a first for you.

Back then, had you not been tortured for days on end. Had you not been sleep-deprived and starved, you would have thought of those questions better and realized there was a very obvious answer to all of them.

But at the moment, you ran on adrenaline, threatening to collapse once it would all pass.

"Who are you? Where did you come from?" You demanded to know.

"I was close by," she replied, intentionally skipping to tell you her name or anything else about her. "I thought I should join the party, but I guess I was too late." she shrugged her shoulders, unfazed by the murders she had just witnessed.

"There was no party," you argued, finally letting your gaze settle on the bodies around you. "They are dead... they should have stopped... but they didn't."

Your voice trailed off, and yet your emotions seemed to have been switched off. All you could feel was still your blood in your mouth and the feeling of power running through your veins.

Any remorse or empathy had disappeared, and you stared at them with darkness lurking behind your white eyes.

You had warned them, begged them to stop. You had repeated so many times you knew nothing of a coven close by, a lie.

You knew of it, had visited it, and were not going to give it away to those cruel, sadistic men. They caught you during a full moon, and you had tried to resist, to reason with them, but they were persistent.

Either they liked to torture you or knew you were lying... but they didn't stop.

The days passed, and the moon changed phases, along with your control. Your emotions started to fade, the torture and wounds fueling you familiarly but also fearfully.

Your pleas and words became warnings and threats. They didn't listen, and when you finally had enough, when the sea stopped being gentle, you stopped holding back.

The result lay all around you, yet you somehow felt unsettled at the feeling. You had never taken a human life before, or any life for that matter.

Do no harm

That was your mojo, your chosen path. You had strained away from the emptiness that came when the moon shifted phases... until now, when you had no choice.

"Timor mortis morte pejor." This mysterious woman said, snapping you from your trailing thoughts. "The fear of death is worse than death."

Her words finally drew your full attention to her. Your head tilted faintly to the side, and your eyebrows frowned, small creases forming on the space between them.

Her words confused you, feeling slightly out of topic, yet not so much. But her words also surprised you, as did the fact that she chose to quote something in Latin.

Honestly, it had been too long since you heard someone use the ancient language outside of a spell that was.

Your expression seemed to amuse the woman, who, unbeknown to you, had been watching you for a long time, waiting for the perfect moment to intervene and approach you.

Now that she had it, she could not help but smirk. "How about we get you somewhere better? Get you all cleaned up? Maybe get something to eat?" She asked, her suggestion as tempting as free candy to an unsuspected child.

You hesitated and glanced down at the bodies. "What about them?" You asked.

To your surprise, the woman waved her hand dismissively. "They will be fine. It's not like they can go anywhere. " she chuckled with her own joke, a humour you could not relate to at that moment. Then, she extended her hand towards you. "Come with me,"

You took slow steps towards her, partially hesitating. Could you so blindly and openly trust a witch that you just met? Especially in your state?

You thought of declining her offer, just walking the opposite way, but your body needed rest and food. Your magic was not enough to hold you, and sooner or later, you would collapse. You knew that with certainty.

The mysterious woman waited patiently with her hand outstretched, waiting and studying you.

In the end, you dared to place your bloody hand in hers, and you gasped as you felt her magic react with yours in a sudden way that caused faint sparks of pain to be caused for both of you.

You held the need to withdraw your hand, and she didn't seem to be affected by the momentarily shot of quick acute pain. Instead, she seemed enthralled by it.

Your magic was reacting to hers, and she knew why. She had suspected such a reaction and wished to explore it more.

On the other hand, you did not know why this happened. Back then, she was nothing but a kind stranger who helped, nurtured, and even guided you.

Back then, you didn't know you were trusting the personification of death itself... back then, you did not know what you were getting into.