Chapter Text
♫
Hell had good bones, that was what her mother always used to say to Charlie, back when she was small, back when she was scared of things that seemed monstrous. There hadn’t been much even then that had terrified her, given how the Sins were all honorary aunts and uncles to her and all of them could be scary in the wrong context, but children weren’t always consistent with what scared them. She could want to climb all over Satan one minute and then want to hide under a chair because a Sinner had a funny head the next.
It was impossible to shelter a child from the reality of Hell. Charlie was comfortable with spilled blood before she was comfortable with the consistency of tapioca pudding. There were only two ways of handling that level of awareness in your youth- become desensitized to it or get upset by it. She was a sensitive soul and so if she saw two Sinners tearing each other apart in the street on a family outing, it would take every ounce of effort from her parents to keep her from throwing her tiny body into the fray and beg them to stop fighting.
She was sure her weird emo phase was directly in relation to always being stopped from doing more than crying out why and getting ignored every time. It might have extended past junior high if Lilith hadn’t sat her down and repeated the same phrase she’d repeated over and over before: Hell has good bones.
But then she finally elaborated on what she meant by that.
“I know it’s scary sometimes and people can be cruel, but these are our people and they deserve to be loved and protected even when they don’t act like it. They have the freedom to do whatever they want here. When you have freedom to choose because no one is going to punish you if you don’t behave a certain way, it means more when you choose compassion.”
And that had stuck with her. Heaven operated on the belief that bad actions led to worse punishments. How can they truly call themselves righteous when they fear divine wrath if they stray from that path? Wasn’t it worth more for a person in Hell to strive to be better when there was no promise of a reward? Charlie had taken it a step further- what if you had the choice to remain in Hell and risk death for the sake of your whims or do better and embrace Heaven? Wouldn’t those souls be more pure, more deserving, more worthy? Why did damnation have to be eternal?
And the Hazbin Hotel was born from that. An option, a way out, a choice that had a promise on the end of it, because, unlike her mother, a part of her was maybe grounded in the same wariness as her father that people wouldn’t choose to be good if there was no reason to. Heaven was an enticing carrot.
Maybe she’d grown beyond that, but if the Exterminations came again even with Adam gone, souls would still be in danger and only getting them into Heaven would save them. It was a contradiction that left a bitter, frustrating taste in her mouth. The longer Heaven stayed quiet, the more she wondered if Heaven was even deserving of her best, most redeemed souls.
But, good bones or not, Hell was Hell and it wasn’t always a place for the kind-hearted, but at least, as she walked through the streets, it was a little different today. The storm had brought a lot of people together, moving in crowds to assist shops that hadn’t been prepared for a monstrous acid rainstorm, rather than looting them; comforting one another over losses. Unlike in the wake of an extermination when there was power grabs and turf wars constantly, a natural disaster seemed to bring everyone together in some sort of unifying camaraderie- after all, exterminations only affected Sinners, but weather was trouble for everyone.
Charlie hugged her arms close to her body and took in each little bit of quiet kindness, driving back the still-prevalent brutality. For every kind gesture there were still ten more people committing criminal acts in the background, but it was easier to ignore them than it had ever been. She wasn’t seeing the world through those rose-colored glasses she wielded to keep herself moving forward, but rather seeing a world that had turned a little brighter when she’d looked away from it for a second.
She’d done a full circuit of the main block in the shopping district when someone called out “hey” to her. She braced herself, prepared to be smiling and cheerful even if there was at least a small chance that she might turn and get brain matter or rotten food or worse splattered across her face, and then turned to see a small band of Sinners, none of them with a single unifying trait, beyond that they looked a little tired that suggested being used to Hell and how it worked.
“You’re the princess, right? The one who runs that weird redemption rehab hotel thing?” The one who had spoken was a neon green purple polka-dotted lynx of some kind.
“That’s me!” Charlie offered before her wariness got the better of her and she pressed her fingertips together, awkwardly. “Um… Why?”
The lynx exchanged looks with her group who urged her on, shyly. “Is it safe? We heard some Goetia was causing problems and killing Sinners and whatever, and you killed them for it, so, like, was that a fluke? Or would you really kill anyone who messed with the people in it?”
Charlie’s throat bobbed. She thought back to her conversation with her father and twisted her fingers together. “It… wouldn’t be my first choice, honestly. There’s nothing wrong with gentle, yet firm, communication!” She was losing them and her heart sank as she saw the fear and worry in the eyes of the quieter Sinners. Fuck, they looked so scared.
She cleared her throat and stood up straighter. “I wouldn’t let anyone harm anyone under my protection. It doesn’t matter how I do it- it wouldn’t be tolerated. Period.”
A wave of relief washed over the Sinners behind the neon Lynx, who nodded. “Tight. It seems like there’s nothing for people that don’t wanna end up in the pockets of some Overlord or another but can’t really keep up with shit on their own. Your place could change things, though.”
She left with her group without another word, all of them chattering away in lowered voices that Charlie couldn’t catch, but when they glanced behind to see if she was still there, it wasn’t with the jeering or giggling she was used to. It was… Hopeful. Like they were looking at her not as a punchline to some cosmic joke, but as a lighthouse that they might bring themselves to shore by.
A breath punched itself out of Charlie’s lungs, followed by a shaken giggle. She turned on her heels and ran as fast as her sensible shoes could carry her back to the hotel, wheezing as she collapsed against the door to fling it open. “Vaggie, holy shit! I have something-“
She nearly tumbled facefirst onto the lobby rug when she saw the entire hotel in the foyer, halfway through decorating and shocked at the sight of her, huffing and puffing. She struggled to catch her breath. “What-?”
Pentious screamed, “ABORT! ABORT! WE’VE BEEN MADE, MEN!” And tried to extend himself as far up on his coils as he could to start to tear down a banner that said ‘we love you, Charlie’ in her father’s elegant scrollwork. Baxter, currently on a ladder to secure said banner, was yanked fully off of it and left dangling from it, kicking and screaming at Pentious, while the rest of the hotel scattered like rats to try and hide various other decorations placed among the usual trappings.
Charlie blinked. “Uhhh.”
“Charlie!” Lucifer bounded up to her, spinning her around so she wasn’t facing the chaos. “You’re back early! We weren’t… we weren’t expecting you. Haha… You look a little out of breath, sweetie. Maybe another stroll- hair of the dog, but for exercise? You know?”
She gently pried his hands off her hip. “Dad, what’s going on?”
“Nothing! Can’t a bunch of your lovely friends throw a party that has nothing to do with you at all?” He paused, horrified. “Wait… Wait. That came out wrong. It has everything to do with you, but you can’t be here for it… Yet! Yet. It’s, uh-”
“It’s fine, Lucifer,” Vaggie finally cut in, face buried in her hands. Charlie lifted an eyebrow at her and watched her face turn bright olive-yellow in real time. She did sardonic jazz hands to try and cover it up. “Ta-daaaa.”
One by one, the hotel’s residents and staff began to peel away from their balloon bouquets and plates of cookies and other assorted party favors, leaving Baxter still dangling from the banner, helplessly. Charlie stepped forwards, eyes wide.
“This is… For me?”
“Well, you’ve done a lot for us, toots,” Angel shrugged, pulling out a ream of paper from inside of his jacket. He slapped it with the back of his top-left hand. “We’ve all written up stuff to tell you how much you’re appreciated. Vaggie wanted us to read it out loud, but that ain’t happenin’, so here you go.”
Charlie took the papers reverently. Most were simple things, compliments, things they liked about her and the hotel, anecdotes that showed how much her actions meant to them. Angel’s was at the bottom- multiple pages of kind words with at least half of them scrawled out. He tapped his foot as she scanned the pages, clearly embarrassed and anxious, and when she finally finished, she flung herself at him, crushing the papers between them.
“I love you guys so much,” she wept into his torso. He patted her head and back and slowly the rest of the crowd- well, most of it, anyway. Alastor, Vox, and Velvette kept a respectful distance, but that was to be expected from them. It didn’t even bother her that, of the three, only Alastor had contributed to the letters and his looked like it was meant to be some sort of flex on her father than a sincere note.
No matter what else happened, no matter who tried to undermine it, this hotel was her home and these people her family, and even if nothing else about it worked the way it was supposed to, it was still hers to protect.
And she would do that, with everything she had.
✖
Despite the hiccups in what had, at the time, been a rather foolproof plan even by updated standards of “fool” and “plan” in regards to the hotel’s residents, Charlie embraced it as if it had gone off without a hitch. The burned cookies and awkward decorations and the lopsided cake that had been rushed to the oven and frosted before it had even had a chance to cool had been received with her usual optimistic delight and Vaggie didn’t know how she could have expected anything different. Charlie saw the bright side of everything- including chaos.
Eventually, the crash had to come, but it was a pleasant crash- the hum of too many positive emotions and too much sugar lulling Charlie towards the bedroom for the promise of the first good night’s sleep since the party. Vaggie followed in her wake, the ring box weighing her down with every step until even Charlie’s residual happy feels began to ebb in the face of what she believed was something wrong.
She stopped just shy of the door to their room. “Vaggie? You’re not upset because I showed up early, are you?”
Vaggie balked, cheeks flushed again. “What? No! Honestly, if you showed up any later, someone was bound to pop off and wreck the whole thing before you got there, so… Your timing was great.” She rubbed her arm, awkwardly. Her back itched like she was desperate to let her wings out and cocoon herself into them to hide.
She settled for changing the subject. “So, um… What did you want to tell me? When you busted in, that is. You looked like you had something, uh, real important to say.” Fuck, she was biffing this. How hard could it possibly be to get down on one knee and ask the girl she loved to marry her?
Evidently, pretty damn hard.
“Oh! I almost forgot.” Charlie bridged the gap between them, reaching for Vaggie’s shaking hands. “There are Sinners out there that are taking the hotel seriously- they think it’s a safe place to protect them from the Overlords.”
“We have two Overlords and two ex-Overlords on staff, though,” Vaggie wrinkled her nose.
“Yeaaaah, I know, and… We’ll have to breach some, uh, contract etiquette with Velvette and Alastor… And Vox, for that matter, but don’t you see, Vaggie? People are actually taking this place seriously. Maybe we can’t save souls and send them to Heaven or maybe we can, but if we can’t, we can at least be another option besides selling your soul or doing things you don’t necessarily want to do. And…” She hesitated, considered her words, and then nodded. “I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think if this many people are against me and this hotel, then that means I must be doing something right.”
There was a time when Charlie would have seen that argument as giving up, that having someone dislike her and her plans was unfair and cruel and obviously she was doing something wrong to not be immediately embraced by all of her people. Vaggie, a rebel in her own right, understood better than most, save for perhaps the King and Queen who had been the original blueprint for that kind of rebellion, that the scariest thing for those in power was an idea that challenged how they did things and made them realize that no, it didn’t have to be that way. That was a choice and desperate souls didn’t have to make the one that benefited them most.
But Charlie had believed in the strength of her convictions and Vaggie had been swept up in them, because even if things weren’t exactly the way she wanted them, she had hope that they would still land on something that worked. Compromise. It all came down to compromise and making the right choices even when the wrong choices were easier, even when people told you that what you knew in your heart to be true was wrong.
She gripped Charlie’s hands tighter and dropped down to one knee like a knight before a queen.
Charlie giggled, not quite getting it- well, why would she assume it wasn’t some dramatic act of subservience when she’d behaved that way for years? This wasn’t even the first time she’d done this- two days after she Fell, she’d dropped to her knees and swore fealty to her because it was the only way she knew to repay her for her kindness, because she thought that was expected of her. Just like that time, Charlie tried to pull her back to her feet. “Vaggie, what are you doing? Get up, you goober.”
Vaggie remained, reaching into her pocket to wrap her hands around the soft velvet of the box. Now or never. “I kinda expected to have a big speech planned for this, but… fuck it. Here we go.” She closed her eye, exhaled, and then, practically vibrating with nervous energy, she whispered, “Charlie… Will you marry me?”
The ring came up- a simple thing, purchased at a pawn shop, not because she was broke or because she couldn’t find anything better, but because Charlie loved things that were lonely and abandoned. This ring had belonged to someone once, been pawned off and tossed around for Heaven knew how long, and now it had a new home on the princess of Hell’s finger. It and Vaggie had a lot in common.
Charlie exhaled. She stared at the ring, stared at Vaggie, stared at the ring.
And then she lunged at her, toppling her onto her back onto the hall carpet as she smothered her with kisses. “Yes, yes, yes! A thousand yesses! Vaggie, I love you so much.”
It took a concentrated amount of effort for them to get off the floor and into the bedroom to consummate this engagement properly. Their distraction meant they failed to notice the single red eye that opened up in the wallpaper and watched every move they made.