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aparticularbandit · 11 months

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The Trap

Summary: “Do I look like I’m being tortured, super star?” Agatha gestures to the expanse around them, and as she does, different things pop up to fill it: a table covered with food, multiple bookshelves filled to the brim with books, an intricately carved four poster bed that looks feather soft. “You put me in a dream. I’m just lonely. You, on the other hand.” She smirks, and her eyes light with mischief. “You’re in pain, being actually tortured by a woman who is paying you just so much attention, and unable to really do anything about it.” She scrunches her nose. “Who’s in the better position here?”

Wandagatha Week 2023 Prompt 2: Body Swap

Wanda Maximoff/Agatha Harkness Rating: T.

AO3

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Unfortunately for Wanda, the curse – whatever it is, if there even is one to begin with – is not so easy to break. Maybe it’s simply that it isn’t easy for her to heal at all; even that little burst of magic that had previously come so easily to her sapped her of her strength for days, leaving her unable to speak even if she’d wanted. She catches it, though, the very clear disappointment in Agnes’s eyes when she doesn’t say anything the next day, when she’s barely able to chew the bits of ice she brings to her.

That’s it, then. If she wants to get better, then she has to focus on that, not get distracted enough to reach into Agnes’s all too empty head and expend her very valuable energy trying to get information from an evil witch who only wants to use it as a bartering system. Which also means she can’t poke back in and visit Agatha like she’d said she would. The idea of the older witch sitting in that little space with her arms crossed, lips contorted into a scowl (or a pout, if Wanda wants to make herself hurt by laughing), tapping one foot on that spot’s equivalent of the ground, growing steadily more annoyed when she doesn’t appear amuses her. Not enough to give her the strength to eat more than ice chips for a few days, but enough.

For now.

Agnes continues to dote on her. She rarely if ever talks about anything going on in Westview, although she mentions once with a halting laugh that it would be horrible if any of her other friends realized that Wanda was there. It’s the first – and only – time she mentions other friends, and it leaves Wanda wondering if the laugh was about someone finding out she was there or about the idea that Agnes has other friends. She could reach into her mind to find out; she doesn’t want to waste that strength.

Once, when Wanda gains the gumption to speak again, she meets Agnes’s eyes and asks, voice still rasping with disuse, “Why are you here?”

Agnes stops mid-sentence, stutters over her words, and lets her gaze drop, just the same as it had when she first sat on the edge of Wanda’s mattress. Her thumb rubs over the rag she’d been using to mop Wanda’s forehead, worrying the wet, soft fabric with the tip of her nail. “I…I don’t know what you mean, dear.”

Wanda’s lips brush together, not as parched as they were when she first woke here, but still cracked. She considers her words carefully before trying again. “With me,” she clarifies, hesitating before continuing, “without your…your friends.”

“Oh.” Agnes flushes a bright red, still averting her eyes. “You need me, hon. They….” One corner of her lips lifts in a feigned smile. “They’re fine without me. And you know, they’re used to me not being around.” Her gaze finally lifts, meeting Wanda’s, with that same somber sort of sad smile. She gives a little shrug. “You’re better company.”

Wanda doesn’t believe that in the slightest. She’s just a body in a bed that occasionally talks; the only difference between her and a body pillow is that Agnes needs to feed and water her; she might as well just be a body-sized plant at this rate. She licks her cracked lips and lies, “I’ll be fine, Agnes.”

Agnes searches her eyes, and the light in her own fades. “They say that, too.” She gently places her hand over Wanda’s, careful not to clench her fingers or pat at all, trying her best to avoid causing her pain, and then goes back to what she was doing. “You’re talking, so,” she hesitates, “does that mean you’re ready to try food again? Maybe some pudding? Jello?”

Wanda is sick and tired of Jello, but she nods anyway.

It isn’t until Wanda is able to sit up in bed on her own on a regular basis, until she can eat more than smooth textured food like mashed potatoes, pudding, and the many, many flavors of Jello that she dares reach out to Agatha again. (In the interim, Agnes learns three things: 1) Wanda likes dark gravy with her mashed potatoes; 2) Wanda likes french vanilla pudding best; and 3) Wanda will only eat lime, watermelon, and strawberry Jello – and she’ll only eat the strawberry on a good day, otherwise it makes her already dry lips pucker in a way that, oddly, the lime does not.)

Wanda hasn’t been testing the rest of her magic, finds that on the odd occasion when she stretches out towards it that unbidden it has started stitching her body back together again, much to her initial regret. Now, she only wants it to stitch her together faster so that she can get out of here sooner.

Still, when Agnes finds her sitting up, her face lights up. She brings a tray with two bowls of soup – something still easy to eat, so that Wanda doesn’t choke, and a second bowl for herself, so that they can eat together – and sets it on Wanda’s lap as she settles on the mattress next to her. “Feeling better today, hon? Or are you just happy to see me?”

Agnes’s attempts to flirt still make Wanda uncomfortable, even as, on occasion, they bring a warm flush to her cheeks. “Better,” she croaks out, and she places a hand carefully over Agnes’s. “Hold, please.”

She doesn’t know why she says please. Maybe it’s just the habit of what she’s heard from sitcoms over the years, of characters stuck doing jobs in call centers and having to move one caller from them to someone else. It certainly can’t be that—

Agnes freezes, just as before, and Wanda keeps her hand over Agnes’s as she mentally reaches out and within her.

It’s easier to find the spot in Agnes’s mind where Agatha resides now that she’s been there before, and Wanda floats toward her without near the insistence that she did before, hoping that doing so in this matter might preserve some of her energy and not drain her quite so nearly as it had before. As before, she finds Agatha waiting for her, wild hair pulled back into a mussy half-bun, sitting in a high-backed chair padded with violet velvet, a cup of tea in one hand. Agatha glances up lazily toward her and then returns to her cup of tea and…is that a book?

Wanda’s teeth grit together, her jaw clenching. “How are you conjuring all of this? You shouldn’t have any magic, let alone enough to do—” She gestures to the trapped witch, to the fireplace with a still roaring fire behind her. “How?”

Agatha gives another infuriating shrug. “Not sure, doll.” Then she holds up one finger. “Now, if you’ll give me a minute, I just want to finish this chapter—” She waits for what feels like a ridiculously long time to finish the page, turns it, gives it a quick skim and a nod, and then closes it on her other finger before conjuring it away entirely. Then her lips curve into a near wolfish grin. “You came back. Honestly, hon, I didn’t believe you would.”

Wanda wants to say something about keeping her promises, but she hadn’t promised anything. In point of fact, she had fully intended to never come back, but…. “I needed someone with a little more bite than your,” she struggles to think of a word to describe Agnes, and failing to think of one supplies, “other. person.” She conjures a chair of her own and nearly collapses into it, rubbing her forehead. “I can only take so much of her.”

“That’s the point, hon. Wundagore wants you to suffer—”

“I don’t care,” Wanda groans out. “We had a taste test of Jello. Every kind of Jello and every kind of Jello pudding so she could guess at what I liked. Do you know how horrible some of that is?”

Agatha snorts. “I can guess.” That wolfish grin never disappears. “At least she isn’t making it from scratch. Then your suffering would never end.” She gives Wanda a wink.

Wanda is suddenly glad that Agnes doesn’t have near the knowledge that Agatha does. She was glad before, of course, but she’d thought that where she hadn’t given the woman specific commands, she would draw on Agatha’s mind to fill in the rest. At least this isn’t something that made it through. She sighs again. “You’re supposed to be suffering,” she whines, frustrated. “Why aren’t you suffering?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Agatha glances around the black, blank expanse around them, broken only by the flickering shadows cast by the fire. “It’s very calm in here. You could do with this sort of vacation, hon. Get your mind screwed on straight.”

Now Wanda snorts. She covers her lips with one hand, gives a little bemused shake of her head, and then glances up with sparkling eyes. “You want me to stay in your torture cell.”

“Do I look like I’m being tortured, super star?” Agatha gestures to the expanse around them, and as she does, different things pop up to fill it: a table covered with food, multiple bookshelves filled to the brim with books, an intricately carved four poster bed that looks feather soft. “You put me in a dream. I’m just lonely. You, on the other hand.” She smirks, and her eyes light with mischief. “You’re in pain, being actually tortured by a woman who is paying you just so much attention, and unable to really do anything about it.” She scrunches her nose. “Who’s in the better position here?”

Wanda doesn’t want to consider it. She doesn’t trust Agatha to be telling the truth. She has to be lying. Has to be. Agatha never tells her the truth about anything. At least…not the whole truth.

And yet she came here the first time to ask her for information.

She’s not going to think about that.

“Sounds like I need to make a better torture cell.” Wanda glances up, meets Agatha’s eyes, and refuses to give her the smile she knows the other woman wants. A smile means she’s making a joke. She isn’t making a joke. She’s taking notes.

Agatha holds her gaze, lets it flick away only once, and then brings it back. Her eyes move so quickly that Wanda doesn’t know what she’s looking at and honestly finds that she doesn’t care. Then Agatha rests her head gently on her head, a smug smirk lifting one corner of her lips. “Sounds like you made a perfect one for you, hon.”

Wanda tries not to think about what Agatha said.

She tries. Really really hard.

But most of her days are spent either alone or listening to Agnes’s chatter – and there’s only so many times she can listen to Agnes talk about the same things without tuning out. Every now and again, Agnes tries to draw her into conversation, but more often than not, Wanda feels too exhausted to talk – both from how much effort it is taking to heal and from how much she does pay attention to what Agnes is saying before having to stop.

And the thing about empty days and needing a distraction is that her mind returns to what Agatha said. Returns to the idea of her perfect torture cell. And returns to the thought that wherever she has locked Agatha is not nearly as horrific as she was led to believe it would be.

Agatha’s lonely, sure, but maybe, if she had to deal with Agnes’s chatter from the outside, if she was stuck in bed waiting to heal the way that Wanda is now, that would be a bigger torture for her than the empty blank corner of her own mind where she could conjure whatever she wants. She certainly wouldn’t be able to conjure anything out here.

And maybe, if Wanda plays this right, she’ll get that nice, empty corner of space to sit and think and do whatever she wants while Agatha is stuck out here being forced to—

Wanda tries not to think about what Agatha said.

She tries.

But it keeps coming back, and she can’t keep herself from thinking about it, and the more she thinks about it, the more one corner of her lips creeps up into a smug smile.

It takes more time. More time and more of ignoring Agnes and more food and more sipping at the straw that she places at Wanda’s lips and more conserving enough energy that she can cast another spell, and it takes significantly more time than the last time, takes significantly more time because the amount of magic she will need to cast this spell is significantly more than just pausing Agnes and reaching into her mind and digging in deeper, which is something Wanda’s been able to do since the inception of her abilities, it’s nothing, but this—

This is more.

But eventually, eventually, Wanda has it. Enough magic. She’s sure of it. She can cast this spell, and she’ll be able to sit safe and sound until she’s better, and Agatha will be stuck feeling the weight of her words. Are there risks involved? Sure there are. But Wanda isn’t thinking about the risks. She has thought about them, but the day in and day out of being somewhere she hates gets to her, and then the risks don’t look as risky. As bad.

And the potential benefits? Well. Sometimes the potential benefits are all that Wanda can see.

So one evening, when Agnes is tucking her into bed, fluffing her pillows, and remarking about how proud she is of how far Wanda has come, Wanda reaches out, loops her right thumb and finger around Agnes’s left wrist, and casts. A thin scarlet cord ties their pinkies together – loose at first before cinching so tight that Wanda feels like her pinky is going to snap off entirely.

Then everything goes blank.

Wanda tries to blink.

She can’t blink.

Wanda tries to move.

She can’t move.

Wanda tries to breathe.

She can’t breathe.

The screaming tucked away in that corner of her mind engulfs the entirety of her as she looks down at her own body out of Agatha’s – Agnes’s – Agatha’s eyes, but she can’t scream.

As she – as Agnes looks – Wanda’s body glows with a bright scarlet light. Then her lips curl into a smug smirk that looks wrong on her face because it isn’t her look, it isn’t her at all, it’s—

“Oh, hon,” Agatha says in her voice, “you really shouldn’t have.” She slowly sits up in bed – how she is able to move so easily when it still caused Wanda varying levels of pain to do exactly what Agatha is now doing – because Agatha doesn’t just sit up, she stands, slowly brushes one hand along her arm, and then snaps her fingers, shifts her clothes with another shimmer of scarlet, and then lets out a soft, relaxed sigh. “You really are easy, buttercup.” She taps Agnes’s nose once.

It’s supposed to send me back now, Wanda thinks but cannot say, glaring at Agatha with all her strength, knowing that Agnes is making no such expression. It’s supposed to put me back when I’ve healed. Why isn’t it putting me back?

Agatha gently cups Agnes’s face, brushes a thumb along her own sharp cheekbone, and meets her own eyes. “I’ve got your power now, doll, and you’re just….” She chuckles. “You’re just a doll.” Then she presses a gentle kiss to Agnes’s forehead. “Don’t get my body into trouble while I’m away, dear.”

Away?

“Oh, what’s the old saying?” Agatha stops at the bedroom door and glances over Wanda’s shoulder easily enough. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She gives her a wink. “Be a good girl, Agnes.”

As soon as Agatha says her name in Wanda’s tone of voice, Agnes jumpstarts. “Wanda?” But by the time she tries to focus on that impersonator, Agatha is gone, teleporting away with a cloud of scarlet smoke.

Wanda screams after her. Wanda tries to beat along the inside of the corner of Agnes’s mind where she’s been trapped. Wanda wants to conjure her own magic and make everything right.

Agnes ignores all of this and instead sets about cleaning up the room that had been Wanda’s so-called cell.

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