Title: they call it creeping.
Fandom: The Originals/WandaVision.
Characters: Agatha, Klaus, Elijah, Mephisto.
Prompt: Favourite.
Rating: Mature.
Length: 1.9k.
Content warnings: WandaVision spoilers. Violence, manipulation.
Author’s notes: I have no idea what I’m doing. This is set in a murky place for The Originals and pre-WandaVision. Also written for trope_bingo’s "Little dialogue" prompt. Title is from The Black Robinson Synthetic Orchestra’s "An Unhealthy Obsession."
Summary: Before Westview, there’s New Orleans.


Before Westview, there’s New Orleans.

It howls for her.



.



At first, she is a woman without a map. The streets are simple, even when they’re crowded. Magic flitters everywhere, soaking the buildings and the pavement. She travels to Lafayette Cemetery and breathes it in, tasting it on her tongue like the richest melted chocolate.

Her fingertips flutter in the air above a smooth gravestone, hearing the magic beg to her. It’s an old song, one that she’s heard many times over her years.

Then she feels a tug, a push at her shoulder. The spirits, invisible to her eyes in the broad daylight, push at her violently like a mob. Agatha remains standing tall, feet planted firmly in the dirt.

"Ancestors," she says with a laugh. They push their magic into her, trying to shove her outside of their border. Agatha stands tall, able to withstand the storm of their spells. "What a joke. I’ll be back for you lot. I’m going after the big cheese."



.



A little fly had once buzzed in her ear and promised her the world.

Agatha told the fly she already had it in her palm.



.



He’s more handsome than the picture the rumours had spun around and around and around on their wheel.

The bar is dark, bustling with supernatural activity. Magic calls to her from each body that passes by, a werewolf here, a vampire there. Agatha’s come to quickly know what their magic tastes like. Wolves have a sharper bite to them while vampires’ magic tended to sit a little richer on the flat of her tongue.

She stands by the pool table, ignoring the man who’s trying his best to woo her. Watches her prey with a sharp, unblinking eye.

His shoulders are broad and his nose has a sharp slope to it. She watches from a corner in the bar, hidden by shadows and the smell of liquor. His nose seems dulled, and if it’s not dulled, not sharp at all. Perhaps the fairytales of the big bad wolf were not true at all.

When she approaches the bar, she smiles brightly. "Hi," she says, spine growing taller as his eyes turn to her, scanning over her body. She wears a purple dress. "I’m Agatha."

He smiles wolfishly. "Klaus."

When he holds out his hand, her palm kisses his. She can feel the magic thrum beneath his skin intoxicatingly.

She can wait.



.



It’s a lot harder to get to know him. That’s fine; Agatha’s played a harder game than this.

After all, she’s always the cat chasing the mouse, even if that mouse is a wolf.



.



The fly appears again like an unwanted suitor. Agatha tries to brush it away violently with the sway of her hand.

"Go away," she says, purple vines grow from the tips of her black fingers. Forming a fly swatter, she hits the fly violently.

It comes back to sit on her shoulder. When the voice that sounds as supple as skin promises her a crown, Agatha replies, "I’m listening."



.



Rebekah isn’t her way in. Elijah is.

Orchestrating a scene where she needs a rescue, he rides in on his white steed and protects her with a hand in the chest of the vampire who’d been set on tearing into her throat. The street is soaked with blood.

"Thank you," she says, hand on her unbroken chest. She peers down at the body of her attacker and keeps her lips open in shock. Breathes as hard as she can. She can see the way her fright works its way under his skin.

"Are you okay?" He tugs a white handkerchief from his breast pocket and steps closer to her.

When he wipes the blood smeared across her cheek, she knows she’s got him.



.



When Mephisto applauds her, Agatha remembers how good it felt to be posed centre stage. She has always thrived in the spotlight with all eyes on her and all magic pelted into her chest like it could tear her apart.

It’s been a long time since she’s felt like the star in the show. Her mother’s crown getting closer and closer for her fingertips to reach.



.



She doesn’t mind the way Elijah kisses, like a hero from a romance novel. His hands are always so gentle when he holds her. Sometimes Agatha thinks she’s human.

Then she remembers humans are weak.



.



Agatha finds her map.

Vincent Griffith is a kind, powerful man. She decides, as she sits with him at a table as Camille O’Connell walks away, that she won’t hurt him. No; while her coven had thought her to be an abomination, she recognised power when power deserved to be recognised.

He tells her that the Mikaelsons are a curse upon New Orleans. Vampires linger in every nook and cranny of the city, and that nothing is safe, nothing can be safe. "Witches like us," he says, leaning closer to her and hushing his voice. "We need to stick together. We can’t be intimidated anymore."

The fly sits on the shell of her ear, whispering for her to goad him to attack her. Agatha lifts her hand and brushes him away.



.



Given how many parties these idiots host, it’s not that hard to orchestrate her way in. All she has to do is emind a witch of the pain Klaus has caused her and just light the match.

Staying far away from the alleged wolf king, she dresses in a sleek purple gown. Hiding away from the guarded eyes of his knight, Agatha manages to be the only ghost lurking in the shadows of the Mikaelson death house.

At midnight, she watches from the sidelines as a woman dressed in bright red becomes a beacon of anger. She yells, screams Latin, and throws her hands up to call upon spirits that hardly care.

Agatha stands in front of Klaus like a shield, arms held wide as the magic pelting from the woman warms her belly. It burns her in the best of ways, seeping into her skin. She relishes in the gasps of shock and the screams of horror as the witch’s skin dries and grows gaunt.

The witch drops dead on the floor.



.



Purposefully, she hides from him.

Watching him from her hotel room, she smiles as the wolf tries to hunt its prey. She hears stories for weeks that he’s growing angrier by the second.

Vincent tells her he’s looking for her.

"Why?" she asks, smiling into her phone. She tries to sound shocked and offended, even going to great efforts to plant her hand against her chest.

"He’s angry," he says, and then tells her to be careful.

Good, she thinks but doesn’t say to Vincent. Grow angry. She can taste the magic coursing through his veins even more now.

The fly buzzes in her ear, sits on the shell of it, and seems to sing happily.



.



When Agatha allows Klaus to see her, it’s with a flourish of her hand. The Abattoir is a dank, depressing little home, but that doesn’t surprise her at all. Aren’t all wolves very sad, lonely creatures?

"I hear you’ve been looking for me," she says.

Klaus stares down at her from the railing, hands gripping the pipe tightly. Tossing himself over it, he lands loudly on his feet. He isn’t intimidating when he stands tall nor is he scary when he approaches her.

"I want to know how you did that," he says.

Agatha runs her tongue over her teeth. "Magic."



.



It’s easy to get Elijah off her tail. Put the She-Wolf in danger and he’s putty in her hands.

Sometimes she wishes men weren’t so predictably boring.



.



Klaus kisses rougher than Elijah. He holds her like he wants to rip her apart. Agatha laughs against his mouth, tearing at his hair, feeling the magic of his body sing for her.

She hardly cares that he gets satisfaction out of her singing for him. Lying naked beneath him, she lets him lick away at her, thinking that he’s marking her as his own. She drags her nails against his back until she draws blood. Her fingers blacken as she absorbs the magic kissing her fingertips.



.



Agatha soon realises her draw to New Orleans is much bigger than a family of overgrown immortal children. There’s a girl.

All she needs to do is get rid of that She-Bitch and she’s on her way to the jackpot.



.



Turns out, the most powerful baby in New Orleans is only a hub for magic.

After offering to baby sit for Klaus, she promises to ward the Abbatoir with spells so powerful a long lost and old enemy of his will never be able to penetrate it. Fortunately for her, she wards it against him, too. The fairytales always warned her about wolves and young girls.

Hope doesn’t hold her little hand out and blast her with power. She sleeps in her crib, softly wrapped in her blankets. The carousel above her head whirls slowly in a circle, tendrils of purple magic spinning it.

Agatha sighs, fly perched within her thick black hair. "Looks like we’re going to have to wait a few years, Mephy," she says. He buzzes angrily on the shell of her ear, feet growing as sharp as pincers. "Ow, don’t get testy. 'Mephisto' is a stupid name for the stage."



.



Perhaps she shouldn’t have angered him, or perhaps she should’ve done better at keeping the peace.

Mephisto comes in a swarm of locusts, terrorising Bourbon Street. He hunts for magic; she watches as the locusts hit doors and magical barriers, unable to sink through the borders to devour and devour and devour.

He tries to smash his way into the Abattoir, but it remains warded and overly defended. Eventually, the locusts drop one by one, their bodies broken and stiff.

It would be a pathetic, tragic end for her if she didn’t feel magic bubbling with toil and trouble all the way in New Jersey.



.



Her house of cards comes tumbling down somewhere around the point in the play where the heroine meets her most promising and important obstacle. Klaus tosses her across the Abattoir where her back hits and breaks the wall.

She remains in the broken clutches of plaster and wood, a frame of his sister broken by her left shoulder. Agatha can only laugh. Lifting her hand to her bloodied neck, she only cackles harder.

"You dog," she says loudly, lips curving upward. "If you wanted to bite me, you should’ve just asked."

He approaches her, feet sharp and heavy. He stands over her like a shadow, intimidating in the thickness of his shoulders but laughable in the way his lips purse and his eyes glow gold. "Stay away from my daughter."

"You can’t protect her forever," she singsongs. "The devil’s got plans for you."

"I’m the king of hell!" he roars.

Agatha laughs. "Oh, sweetie," she says, chuckling. Elijah appears, looming over his shoulder. Both men look at her with deeply furrowed brows. "You don’t know what hell is."



.



When she realises she can’t drain Klaus of his magic, she does one better. Packs him in a cage and brings him along to her trip to New Jersey.

Before she steps through the bright, burning red hex, she smiles down at him as he snarls.

"Hello, Señor Scratchy," she says, dragging her fingers between his long, floppy ears.

At the thought of his family coming after her, Agatha cackles, howling loudly at the full moon and steps through the hex for the next instalment of her adventure.