Chapter Text
As expected of the princess of hell, Charlie had lead an unusual existence.
For the first fifty years of her life she didn't leave the castle, she hadn't been permitted, Mom and Dad had kept her in the vast grounds, enacting a stunted continuation of childhood long after she had physically grown up, for fear that she'd be tainted by hell's harsh residents.
'There are bad people down here Charlie.' Lilith had told her, gently brushing her daughters hair. 'Perhaps you think you know what bad people are capable of, but I promise that you don't, not yet, and, for as long as possible, I'd like to keep it that way.'
It wasn't like Charlie was completely isolated, Mom and Dad invited people over, of course. Sometimes it was the seven sins, other times the von Eldritch family, one time they even invited over a gaggle of Ars Goetia owlets to stay for a month, to keep Charlie company, they said, it was super fun! But! She might have enjoyed it more if she hadn't felt just a little bit patronised by being granted only the companionship of child demons decades younger than her.
Other than company. She wanted for nothing.
Anything that her heart desired was granted to her upon request, seemingly materialising from nowhere. Her stuffed animals were brought to life as faithful companions with a snap of her Dad's fingers, a theme park was constructed in her honour, exclusively for her, she told her Mom that she liked to read and suddenly their library was the most expansive in hell.
She spent a lot of time there, lying on a golden chaise longue, kicking her legs, engrossing herself in worlds different from her own. Places where everyone had hope despite their circumstances, where even if there was sadness along the way there was always a happy ending.
Her favourite books had been written by human souls on earth. There was a certain novelty, an optimism, in human writing that just wasn't there in anything written by sinners or hellborn.
Charlie liked humans, she decided, despite never having seen one in the flesh.
Their knowledge that their time on the beautiful earth was finite and their obliviousness to everything that came after meant their words carried a certain weight that those of hell's residents did not. It was beautiful!
Charlie had read two novels by the same sinner, one written before her death and one written afterwards. The difference in attitude between them was stark. It made Charlie cry, to see that her people seemed to lose their spark as soon as they fell.
No one in hell, in her home, wrote books with happy endings.
But why?
Why couldn't there be happy endings in hell too? She wondered. And so it all began.
-
The first time Charlie went outside by herself, she realised the way people viewied her, when, almost immediately, a sinner knelt down on their knees at her feet praising her, an equally devout crowd expanding around them.
She hated it, she didn't want all of these new, potential best friends to see her as so far above them, so, Charlie knelt down too, made eye contact with the sinner, gave them a big hug and loudly declared:
'Ohmygosh! That was so nice of you! You are so freaking sweet!'
In a flurry of paparazzi, suddenly she wasn't some intimidating idol, some amalgamation of the two most powerful beings in hell, instead, she was just ditsy princess Charlie, Charlie the laughing stock, the antithesis of everything her family was meant to stand for.
And, despite the booing and the jeering and the disrespect, Charlie found she liked that much better.
-
Ever since Charlie convinced her Dad to magically transform her crayon drawing plans into a real hotel she'd been so, so, sooo excited at the prospect of making her lifelong dream of rehabilitating sinners come true!
She'd spent long nights mapping out enough colourful activity plans to last an entire year, all that she needed now were sinners to test it on.
And therein lay the problem.
Everyone was so cynical! Charlie supposed it was to be expected of sinners, they were in hell for a reason after all, but, she was astounded that given how much they seemed to hate it down here, it seemed like no one was even willing to try to get out.
Herself and Vaggie had been scouring the pentagram all day and almost every single sinner had laughed in her face at her proposal. It was really bumming her out.
Vaggie told Charlie she had a good personality. She was bubbly and likeable and enthusiastic so why wouldn't anyone hear her out?
And then she saw someone, leaning dramatically against against a street lamp, blowing heart shaped plumes of smoke from a cigarette and winking at the creeps that leered around the street corners, making himself altogether too susceptible to the looming eyes that followed him.
Perfect! An ideal candidate. Thought Charlie, ignoring the look Vaggie shot her that begged: 'Please do not invite a prostitute into this car.' As the driver pulled in.
-
One of the first things that Charlie realised about Angel upon his moving into the hotel was that he did drugs, a lot of them.
Drugs, Charlie knew, would be a definite no no if he wanted to get into heaven.
He wasn't subtle about it either, alongside it being one of his only two topics of conversation he also left bottles, syringes and baggies all over the hotel.
Mostly, Charlie didn't address it at first, while it did make her uncomfortable to see and was something that would absolutely need to change in order for her project to work, she wanted to give him some time to settle into the hotel before she got too assertive about her rules, anything worth having takes time so they say!
However, she knew a hard boundary had to be enforced when due to Angel's casual negligence about the drugs KeeKee managed to eat a suspicious pill that he left out and went insane for a couple of hours, levitating and shapeshifting sporadically from key to cat and back again every few seconds, much to Charlie's distress.
Something had to change.
'Hi Angel! Would it maybe be okay if we had a chat?' Charlie had chirped, rocking back and forth on her heels, fighting to keep the passive aggression out of her voice as he stumbled through the door at 2am the next morning.
Charlie and Vaggie had been waiting, a disorientated but otherwise back to normal KeeKee in Charlie's arms.
He just looked at Charlie incredulously and tried to sidestep them to get to his room, Vaggie moved to get in his way.
'Stop. We need to talk. You can't just take drugs in the hotel. This building is supposed to be a safe place for self improvement not a damn crack house! You left your trash around and the cat ate it! You realise how messed up that is right? Charlie was crying, she thought KeeKee was broken.' She said, gesturing to the sleeping cat.
Charlie laughed awkwardly in deflection at that, but, internally thanked Vaggie for having the assertiveness to voice what she was thinking.
'Lemme just-' Angel slurred, trying to shove past Vaggie. 'Tomorrow, okay?'
'Angel, I know it's bedtime buuut we've kinda been up all night waiting for you to get back to talk, soo could you, just, um, work with us? For one sec?' Pleaded Charlie.
He just gave her a guilty, panicked look and tried to push past them again.
Just when Vaggie opened her mouth to start yelling, Charlie noticed Angel list sideways, eight eyes rolling back into his head.
'Shit!' She squeaked and moved quickly, setting down KeeKee to grab his arms to keep him upright before he could hit the floor. Her grip awkward due to his height.
'Ah geez.' Said Vaggie, muttering something in Spanish as she helped Charlie lower him to the floor, looking him up and down to check for injuries before adding. 'Get his legs up on the couch, I'll go get some crackers and juice, he'll be fine.'
Charlie did as she was told then worried her hands together, it was really hard to know what to do in situations like this. She didn't like feeling like there was nothing she could do to help. She needed him to wake up so everything could be okay again.
'Angel.' She said, shaking his shoulder slightly. Next she tried peeling back an eyelid, that seemed to work because a moment later he was squinting up at her.
'Don't be scared Molls.' He mumbled. 'It's okay. I'm good, promise.'
Charlie knew that she should probably correct him, stop him babbling to whoever he thought she was right now. But she was curious, besides, invasion of privacy aside, it was important to know who the sinners were if she wanted to set them on the right track! Right?
'What do you remember?' She asked him.
'It's fine. Go back to bed. We got school tomorrow.'
Charlie decided to correct him then, whatever scenario he'd created in his mind was clearly stressing him out. He woke up properly after that and they sat side by side on the floor waiting for Vaggie to return. He wouldn't look at her but he did say:
'Sorry about your cat. I'll keep it out of the hotel.'
It was nice to know that Angel had cared about someone so much while he was alive. Who and where was 'Molls'? Wondered Charlie, and, was she someone that Angel would be willing to give redemption a try for?
-
When Charlie finished writing her apology notes, after the disaster that was her visit to Valentino's studio and the subsequent fallout, she had started on the lesson plan addressing 'boundaries'.
It was abundantly clear that all of them, herself included, could benefit from learning a thing or two. She shuddered in guilt at the memory.
'Alrighty everyone! For todays lesson I'm going to ask you all to draw pictures of yourselves!' She announced, hands on her hips.
'When you're finished draw a bubble around it, we're gonna call this the personal space bubble! Inside of it you can write the things you're okay with other people doing with you and the things you're not!' She added with a flourish, ignoring the groans and eye rolling as she handed out crayons.
Pentious finished first and showed off his drawing proudly, of course he did! It made Charlie happy that someone else seemed just as enthusiastic about redemption as she was. He held up a drawing of himself, Different parts coloured differently to illustrate the actions he was okay with, the drawing wasn't perfect but it was vibrant and smiley and Charlie thought it was perfect.
Maybe Niffty hadn't understood the task, as the piece of paper that she shoved in their faces didn't appear to be a drawing of herself but rather, the corpse of a fly, or, what was left of it where she'd impaled it with a sewing needle and smeared it's body on the page. 'Bubbles the Bug' written above it in green hemolymph.
'Bubbles learned what happens to bugs that get too close!' She giggled, grinning maniacally as she polished blood off the weapon.
Delightful.
Husk had just drawn a circle around a lazy stickman and written 'ask first' in block capitals, he looked pointedly at Angel as he held it up, who, to his credit had the decency to look embarrassed.
Angel himself had drawn a crude, anatomically accurate self portrait with arrows pointing to each part leading to a series of numbers.
'What do these mean Angel?' She asked, curious.
'They're my prices, duh! Say what you will about 'boundaries' but if he's got enough cash in his pocket he can whip out that dick and pop my 'personal space bubble' with it any day!' He replied, illustrating what he'd said with some obscene hand gestures.
'That's- eh- That's lovely Angel! Maybe we'll come back to that! But! The point of this activity, is how comfortable you'd feel with people who aren't paying you for anything, like... a stranger, or a partner, or a friend!'
'Trust me doll, it don't matter if they're a friend, they still gotta pay.' He leaned over the couch to look at Husk, smirking. 'Maybe not all of them.'
Husk shook his head, sighing.
'Ignore that bullshit princess, he knows what you mean, he's winding you up.'
Angel opened his mouth to argue but stopped himself. Something had changed between them for the better last night. Charlie wasn't going to complain. Progress was progress!
That didn't mean that Charlie didn't really, really want Angel to be honest about the types of physical interaction he was okay with outside of work.
She'd been overthinking all of last night about the fact that she'd hugged him without asking after everything she'd seen earlier that day. Maybe Angel was just a tactile person and hadn't minded but she found that hard to believe when even her one interaction with Valentino had left her a bit flinchy regarding being touched when she got back home.
'Okay!' Said Charlie. 'While it is sooo great that you know what you're worth, in, uh, monetary terms, how about you just tell us how you'd like us, the others in the hotel to treat you?'
'In a non-sexual way.' Interjected Vaggie when she caught him grinning.
'Sooo, you wanna know my platonic turn offs?'
'I mean! If you wanna put it that way, then, sure!' Chirped Charlie, ignoring Vaggie's facepalming beside her, Angel had a tendency to word things...interestingly but that didn't mean they shouldn't listen.
-
'It's weird, ain't it, all this mortality shit.' Said Angel.
He'd caught Charlie gazing up at the newly established portrait of Pentious for a little too long.
It was weird. Weird and upsetting. death had always seemed so trivial to Charlie, humans went up or down, sinners came back, family was immortal. Her only exposure had been through low ranking hellborn and of course, the exterminations, it had never been anyone she was close with until now.
Until now...
Maybe this unending pain in her chest, this persistent heaviness behind her eyes, this inability to sit silently with her thoughts were what made human writing so beautiful.
Maybe this was why they needed happy endings.
'Was it scary? To be alive, not knowing for sure that there was anything after?' She asked.
'Sure, but memories don't die, do they?'