Chapter Text
Hell is an awful, terrible, no good place to be. Charlie knew this like she knew the cracks in the pavement were there because people had died to bullets and blades, the way she knew the extermination had wiped out a sizeable chunk of her populace without rhyme or reason, the way she knew that everything that went down in this wretched city was in some way her or her family's fault.
The extermination had finished for this year, and she was walking the streets, seeing Demons' corpses that had been left like fallen leaves on the pavements. The blood flowed through the streets, and she could not cry about it anymore. She couldn't find the energy to cry. Heaven had taken so much from them, and for what—overpopulation? She didn't believe it.
But something was different. There was a feeling on the back of her neck, like a warning sensation in her wrists. Her hooves carried her down the street one left, one right, forward. She didn't know where she was going, but she followed her instincts because she had her entire day to waste, and why not walk into danger—it wasn't like it was actually going to be dangerous for her?
Princess of Hell, they called her, they scoffed behind her back, but she knew she was stronger than anybody else so she didn't need validation. She didn't need them. Dad didn't want her, Mum walked out, what the fuck did she even need anyone for anyway? She could do everything herself.
And it was an alleyway, it was a fucking alleyway. Why would she need to go to an alleyway? Charlie looked into the darkness like a foreboding warning screaming stay away to all that passed. Well, at least a bit of a walk was good exercise and she could continue her stroll from where she was. She didn't have any specific direction she was aiming for anyway. However, just as she was turning to leave, she caught sight of something white, something gold.
On the stone, there were a pair of wings, tattered and bloody like liquored ichor. They were angel wings, she didn't think angels could be hurt. That wasn't normal, that wasn't okay. Something was very, very wrong.
Charlie looked up, really looked at the alleyway, the space between the dumpster, where golden blood was slowly smeared to an angel at last. Where its wings once stood tall and proud on its back were now bloody, shattered stumps. It had been stuck down here, with them, with the fucking wretched bits of the Earth that didn't deserve the holiness of Heaven. Heaven abandoned another angel to the scum and the scraps.
"Hello,"
Charlie called, not expecting an answer and obviously received none. Nonetheless, she walked down the alleyway, careful not to tread in the blood and get it on her hooves.
Just behind an overflowing dumpster that smelled like blood and rot, she found a person—an angel curled up like a child, her legs pressed to her chest, shoulder-length white hair that looked more practical than aesthetic. But the most striking feature apart from the tattered wings and the blood was one of her eyes was missing. A dark void where the organ once occupied, gold oozing from the injury.
Charlie looked at her, and she stared up at Charlie. Her one eye was big and frightened like a much younger soul. Charlie couldn't explain the feeling... of something in her chest. An ache that didn't hurt, a push that didn't drive her. But the feeling reminded Charlie that they were just staring at each other. It could've been minutes, could've been years. She wouldn't have known, but right now she needed...
Charlie didn't know what she needed.
"Hey there, angel," she greeted in a soft, friendly voice, the one that she used for close family, friends, and people that she needed to give an impression of kindness to. It was tinged with warmth and softness that she hadn't felt in years. It made her look sweet and kind, unlike the Princess of Hell everybody would whisper about. Charlie was a chameleon ready to fit in anywhere. She could change herself to fit the specific requirements of the situation, yet still, she felt like she was failing somewhere, somehow.
But this angel looked at her like she was their salvation, though it made something hungry in her chest gnaw at her ribs and beg for love, for light, for curiosity, for something she didn't really know. Charlie pushed it down. Later. She could examine this shit show later.
"How about you come home with me?" she asked kindly, and the angel looked apprehensive, but as the streets began to fill with the cannibals looking for the corpses, the sound of cries and screams rose. It was early in the morning, but it would only get louder and the angel apparently knew or at least she suspected the worst.
Stay and be eaten or go with Charlie and enter a completely unknown situation, it was a lose-lose and the enemy you knew was always the preferred one, but angels were reckless—they didn't believe themselves to be able to be hurt. This one obviously suffered injury, losing her wings and her eye. That was a curiosity.
"I'm not afraid of you," she said because she had to. It was a mind game now. One that was filled with a field of mines and threats; if you go wrong in this game, you die very quickly. Charlie knew this game as well as she knew the cracked city streets, as well as she knew her way through life. She had been playing it since she was very young, after all.
"If you're not, you're stupid, but I can work with that," she spoke back because she wanted to, because she had to. The angel blinked at her once then twice, a single eye now her only way of communicating. She smiled. This angel wouldn't know what hit her. She was dancing with death, and Charlie hadn’t had a good partner in so long.
o0O0o
Smuggling an angel through the city shouldn't have been that easy, but really Pentagram City after one of the exterminations was always going to be quiet and slightly eerie. Charlie guided the angel that she still didn't know the name of through the streets, though the woman was preoccupied with her own thoughts.
Maybe that was helpful, seeing as she didn't realise exactly where Charlie was bringing her, though she did use a sprinkle of magic just to be able to get there quicker and without her travel partner catching the eye of the few cannibals they passed. The angel had no idea where they were going.
Back at the palace, Charlie deposited her new ward onto the kitchen table. Nobody had been in their kitchen for a while apart from Charlie herself. The shadow housekeepers flitting around, unnoticing of their new guest, never really needed to use the space. Charlie pulled supplies from one of the higher shelves. A medical kit dropped on the counter, well equipped for all forms of emergency. In silence, she wrapped the stranger's wounds, patched up the split skin on her back.
She wiped golden blood from clear skin and wondered how one was able to damage an angel so thoroughly, who left an angel down here to rot.
It was nice, peaceful and kind of sweet, though Charlie knew that there was no such thing as tenderness in Hell. Once the wound wasn't golden anymore, once her guest had collected her thoughts slightly better than when they first met, Charlie climbed onto the counter across from the now fallen angel. The small kitchen island allowed her to be about eye level with her new house guest and gave a respectable distance between them.
"Well," she began, because she didn't really know where else to go. The angel just stared at her, her eyes distrusting, her body language closed off, but she was healed and safe, and obviously grateful for that. "My name is Charlie," she introduced herself with nothing else to say. The angel stared at her for a long few seconds, flickering recognition like a bonfire behind her singular eye, then a drop to confusion, her brows furrowed, her nose scrunched minutely. Then there was an intense fear like she had once again fallen, like she had lost her wings and her eye again, like she was doomed, before all expression smoothed over, and she became a marble statue once more.
She was beautiful, features carved from stone, lips, her singular eye bright with distrust and power. It was intoxicating, really. Charlie wanted to curl into her, wanted to be cradled in her hands. She also wanted to control her, a deep ache in her soul made her want to control this powerful beast. Carved from stone, muscles like a centurion. She would blame the Hellborn in her, the beast of longing spawned from want.
A few seconds passed. Charlie waited for a response, for an acknowledgment, for anything really. She knew convention required a name; however, few sinners obeyed any formal social order. Her father liked it that way and thrived on the insanity of the pits, but that was what she got—a normal sinner's resonance. She supposed, in retrospect, the angel would never behave like a sinner.
"Vaggie," the angel said. A name for the fallen.
Charlie blinked, then nodded and turned around to the kitchen. "Would you like a cup of tea?" The question was forced. What else was she meant to ask? It was difficult, it was a time of tension, uncharted waters. She didn't know how to react to this kind of situation. Hell was not one for pleasantries or niceties; few would give a name, fewer still give a real name. Nicknames were the norm, but Charlie could feel the power Vaggie bestowed with just her name. Charlie had no idea how to proceed, so she once again fell back on social convention and turned on the kettle.
Vaggie watched as she was sat on the tabletop, her lips pursed, as if she also was unsure what she was meant to respond. But Charlie set out a mug for her anyway. The popping of the kettle as it boiled filled the air between them.
"Why did you save me?" The question came unexpectedly, though Charlie should've expected it nonetheless. Why did you save me? Why didn't you kill me? What do you want from me?
There were a thousand answers, each raced through her head. Why did she save this poor angel, this fallen soul, this person who had definitely killed many of her sinners? Why would she save a traitor of genocide, a monster like that?
Was it pity? Was it spite? Was it a deep desperate yearning that she could barely suppress on most days and on others ran rampant until it swallowed her soul?
The kettle whistled, telling her that it was done, and she turned around to pour the hot water into the two cups. "Sugar? Milk?" she offered instead of giving answers, and the angel, Vaggie, wrinkled her nose slightly.
"One sugar, please," she answered with an even voice.
Charlie let the tea steep, then added in the milk and sugar. She liked her tea milky without sugar. It seemed Vaggie was her opposite in that. Her father always liked to add two sugars and milk to his tea, and her mother never had tea.
She carried the mug back over to the girl, handed her the cup, then took her own and sat back on the countertop. Her pet servants Razzle and Dazzle drifted through the kitchen, their soft faces and maintained fur an oddity in a space like Hell. Vaggie looked intrigued by them but didn't ask what or who they were. Charlie supposed she deserved something for the restraint she demonstrated. Charlie supposed she had stalled this long enough.
"My name is Charlie," she spoke again, and Vaggie's attention was back on her. Her one eye flashed this time with challenge, not fear. Charlie wasn't sure if she was flattered by her bravery or concerned for the woman's mental health. "Do you know who I am?"
She asked anyway, though from all of the dramatic reactions, she knew that the angel had a clue. Vaggie bit her lip, then sat tall. Charlie could imagine her wings spread out behind her, a halo on her head. Instead, she had short hair and haughty features, like a bird of prey.
"You are Princess Charlie Morningstar," she said with an unwavering voice. It was impressive. Charlie softened her features best she could and smiled, eyes sparkling. She’d always been told her eyes were her best feature. So much like her father's, but for years, she always despised the resemblance. Recently, though, she had found herself appreciating the fact that she looked so little like her mother.
"Well, you're perceptive," she threw the poor girl a bone. The way it made the angel's face light up just slightly fed that creature deep inside her chest: yawning desperation and protectiveness, a broiling beast that she was ready to turn on anyone that hurt what she saw as her own.
Why was this angel hers? Angels did nothing but kill her people. Why was this angel hers?
She hadn't answered the question because she didn't have an answer. She didn't know why she picked up that angel from the street corner. She didn't know why Vaggie was sat in her kitchen with a cup of tea and the opportunity to ask her questions.
Charlie had spent years struggling against the tyrannical hold Heaven had over Hell. The hypocrites in the sky always wanted to drag down the sinners of Hell as if they hadn't suffered enough. Overpopulation was a lie. Heaven's fear was the reason they were so desperate to cut down the sinners.
Why was this angel in her kitchen?
"I should've killed you," she said conversationally, and it took a second for Vaggie to realise what she was saying. The angel sat up straight, her eyes flashing with fear and a stubborn determination to fight. It was a curiosity, a beauty like a caged animal that still wanted to be in the wild. Charlie wanted that caged animal to be her pet. She wanted Vaggie to want to be hers.
"I don't exactly know why I didn't," she continued anyway. Her voice was soft and airy. She held the mug of tea closer to her chest, warmed by the hot air lifting from the cup. It was slowly wafting up, tickling her nose.
Vaggie was brave, she was so very, very brave as she asked, "Why didn't you leave me?" Her voice was cold as stone. A woman carved from marble couldn't be more perfect than Vaggie was right now.
"I can't have one of Heaven's hypocrites running around now, can I?" She said the words with a sharp sort of grin, half animalistic and predatory, half sad and lost. The sudden change in tone and the sudden shift in posture all told a story of something deeper under the surface. Charlie just couldn't be bothered to hide it. This angel had nothing; it didn't matter if she knew what most of Hell already understood.
Vaggie, however, took her sadness as anger and went on the defensive. "What did you just call me?" Her voice was sharp and harsh, accusatory, ready for an attack. Her single eye flashed dangerously.
Even a grounded bird had talons sharp enough to cut, and Charlie supposed Vaggie was a cornered beast with nothing to lose and no home to return to. Even so, she wanted to live, didn't she? Or maybe not. A game, this was all a game.
"A hypocrite," Charlie said without hesitation. She watched the muscles in her face tense and then relax. She watched her hands curl around the cup of hot tea before slowly loosening.
"Why do you say that?" she asked. Look, she was talking, not just attacking. Maybe Charlie picked this one right? Maybe Heaven disposed of her for having a brain instead of a heart.
"Heaven sends down you angels to kill us all a second time," Charlie said with a blasé wave of her hand. "I'm pretty sure there's a commandment somewhere that says you shouldn't kill." Vaggie's eyes followed her hand's trajectory. "You angels get to stay in Heaven, even though you are harming people who are already suffering."
There, she said it in a very concise, easy-to-understand, no-messing-around way. Even the thickest of Heaven could comprehend that simple argument, though she felt like she'd been screaming it for years, and nobody had listened.
"Oh," was the small, timid response she received. "I didn't know you felt that way."
That was interesting, curious, a new response Charlie hadn't expected.
"How did you think I felt?" she asked because curiosity struck at her chest. Vaggie frowned down at her cup, a thoughtful expression across her face.
"I'm not really sure. They don't really want us to think about it."
Charlie tipped her head to the side, like a curious dog. Vaggie was turning out to be a much more interesting guest than she had expected her to be. A thoughtful creature. One whose face held decades of knowledge, one whose lips spilled the sweetest of words.
"I suppose they didn't really want you guys to think about much," Charlie admitted, pointing to her, giving her space to move into the conversation at her own pace, letting her feel like she was in control. "We in Hell are very often silenced, after all." Vaggie looked up at her.
"What do you mean by that?"
Curious creature. "I've been trying for years: meetings, petitions, conversations. Nothing gets through their thick heads." She spat her words with a bit too much venom, but she thought she could be excused for the time being.
Vaggie looked at her, really looked at her, not with suspicion, not cautiously, but with something else. Interest or intrigue. And evaluative, calculating, curious, invested. Decades of knowledge, centuries of experience. Vaggie was quite possibly close to Charlie in age.
"What are you gonna do about it?"
The question was like honey, like soft, chiming bells. The words fell sickly sweet, and dripping with potential, a feeling of victory spread down her spine into the tips of her hands. Charlie hadn't felt this way for years. Victorious, before the battle even began.
"I've noticed a pattern," Charlie began, her audience's rapt attention all on her. "On Earth, change is only created when the people in power are scared." Pictures of warfare flashed across her mind. Countless sinners had come to her with their plights, thousands of sinners had died for their causes, some gruesome, some accidental, cut down by the powers that be.
The warfare she witnessed, the warfare she really cared about, was the conflict experienced by the people of the nation. War that was not described as war. Battles that were local, that were private, that were crushed by military in their own people's countries. Overwhelming power, dictatorships, the works wrung suffering from people.
She hated the sinners that were condemned to Hell for fighting for their causes. She celebrated the people who managed to climb their way up to Heaven through suffering and strife to reach the kingdom of God for their cause. She knew it was a coin toss. Why did no one else see it was a coin toss, whether you would get up into Heaven or down here with the broken and forgotten?
"You can't scare Heaven," Vaggie said, crushing the pictures of fire and smoke she could see behind her eyes. But for once, Charlie didn't mind someone breaking into her fantasies. In fact, she appreciated it as she looked over at her new ward. Vaggie, a fallen angel.
"Not on my own," she conceded again. But Vaggie looked frightened and interested.
"Who would help you?" she tried to ask first, then backtracked. "No, wait. How will you get people to help you?" Charlie smiled. It was obvious Vaggie was already ready to swear herself to Charlie. Maybe it had been obvious since she entered the kitchen.
Charlie knew the ways of Hell, of contracts and soul bonds, of people owning people.
"I said I should've killed you when I first saw you," she began again, and Vaggie's eyes were fixed on her. "But everybody's told you, you can't kill an angel. You must run if you see one."
Vaggie now looked anxious, distrustful. Her face was painted in caution.
"But I think you know," Charlie continued, "that's not exactly true."
Vaggie shook her head slowly, once then twice, calculated, cautious, careful. Charlie could feel the tension bubbling beneath the surface. The rope that was about to snap.
"When the axe falls, whose side are you on?"
Vaggie looked at Charlie with a new kind of awe, a power-hungry, vindictive kind, an animalistic, bitter kind.
"What would you ask of me?"
Charlie grinned wide and proud. She had not expected this picture to be painted, for this dance to conclude with her and her new angel eye to eye.
"A contract, my darling."
Just a contract.