Chapter Text
In a damp, disgusting alley was where the princess of hell was curled up, cowering. The red dots on her cheeks drowned in rivers of tears, trembling knees pulled up to her head as she shivered beneath the carnage.
She thought she was doing the right thing when she left the palace. When the unmistakable cry of a child being slaughtered rang through the walls, as terrifying as it was heartbreaking; she stormed out into the open, as though she could do something to stop the horrific violence slashing through the Pride ring.
Maybe if she was brave enough she could have stood up to them. She’d rushed outside with a fire in her heart that was immediately doused by the blood raining down from above, spilled by shining angel blades that sliced indiscriminately through the flesh of her people.
So, she ran away. Unable to bear the sight of the slaughter, nor the stillness of the palace her father had instructed her to wait at, she ran as far as her legs would carry her through the crimson-soaked streets until she came upon a concrete overpass.
Beneath it was a rank, graffiti-plastered, urine-stinking alley, a hotspot for criminal activity between the street above and the river of factory wastewater below, but in the midst of the chaos it might as well have been the Golden Gates. Charlie wiped the tears from her eyes on the sleeve of her tuxedo and collapsed beneath the bridge, the shadows offering little comfort despite their sympathetic blanketing.
It wasn’t fair. These souls were already tortured enough; living in Hell was supposed to be the final punishment. Getting eviscerated by a mask wearing psychopath wasn’t part of the deal.
As another howl of agony echoed through the grey pillars around her, Charlie held her head in her hands and sobbed for every soul departing her realm at this moment. It was like the mother of all survivor’s guilt: yes, she would live. Every time. That was why it was up to her to do something.
But before she had time to consider the options, the sound of a soft wing beat alerted her to an angel’s presence. She sniffed the next few tears away, the watery image of an exorcist pooling into her peripheral view.
“Fuck off.” It was all Charlie could manage, barely loud enough to be heard by the target standing several feet away.
“Those are your last words?” came the reply. The angel stepped an inch closer, her spear pointed in Charlie’s direction. “Might want to reconsider.”
Charlie felt two pricks in the top of her head as her frustration threatened to boil over. She looked fully at the angel now, her displeasure apparent in the flicks of her pointed tail. “Look, I am really not in the mood for your games. So please just, get out of here.”
The angel once again moved in Charlie’s direction, the tip of her spear glinting in the red light of the pentagram above. Her wings were outspread and fully raised to their very feather-tips, cornering Charlie like a lamb before a wolf. “This is no game.”
She wore the typical angelic armor: silver leg and arm guards with a matching belt that hugged her waist, molding her dark dress snug around her figure. A cloud-like series of markings billowed up from her chest to her mask, which was adored with the signature ‘X’ over one of the eyes and huge, intimidating horns.
These horns were not like demon horns, no. Charlie couldn’t help but compare them to her own: these horns were thick enough to challenge a bull, and curved upwards to the angel’s black halo like a reminder of her supposed purity.
As haunting as she was, Charlie did not seem at all fazed in her answer. “You must be new to this whole thing. I’m Hellborn? Not a sinner,” she explained with far more patience than was deserved. “Also I’m Charlie Morningstar so, again, fuck off.”
“That supposed to mean something to me, maggot?” the angel spat, eyes narrowing.
The angst in Charlie’s heart was crushed by an overwhelming, unfamiliar anger as she rose to her feet, the concrete practically splintering beneath her. “You are really starting to annoy me.”
To Charlie’s bewilderment, the angel actually smiled. “Good,” she giggled, making the princess’s skin crawl. “Maybe you’ll actually put up a good fight.”
The next few moments happened almost too fast for Charlie to register. In a flurry of feathers and holy metal, the angel’s spear missed slicing off Charlie’s ear by a fraction of an inch.
A ‘woah’ escaped Charlie’s lips as she dodged the attack, eyes widening at the sight of the deadly weapon so close she could see her panicked expression begging for help in its reflection.
Before she had time to answer, retaliate, anything, the angel withdrew her blade in preparation for another assault. Instinct took over: Charlie’s legs pulled out beneath her on their own accord and she was sprinting away faster than she ever had in her life.
What the fuck was going on? She’d only ever been approached by one of these things once, and she immediately backed off once Charlie made her hellborn status known: the fear of divine punishment flashing in the angel’s eyes before she flew away.
This bitch clearly had no such qualms. Charlie was normally the pragmatic type, but something told her that the dark storm cloud rolling towards her couldn’t be reasoned with. Despite this, the shaking image of a massive support beam was gaining size in her vision, there was no way past it, and climbing out of the alley would take too long. End of the road.
“Shit,” she panted, realizing her severe lack of options. Time for some diplomacy. In a final stretch of her exhausted lungs, she put some distance between herself and her pursuer and finally whipped around to face her, hands outstretched.
“Wait, please!” she yelled, steeling herself when the angel continued her stampede. “Adam will kill you!”
Finally, the angel stopped, dust rising from her heels as they skidded against the concrete below. Time seemed to slow as the two regarded one another, the sounds of the extermination above suddenly quiet in the wake of Charlie’s heavy breathing.
“How do you know Adam,” the angel spat. It was more of a demand than a question.
Oh, he only emotionally abused my mom and got cucked by my dad!
“Umm, doesn’t everyone?” Charlie laughed nervously.
The angel held her spear in one hand by her shoulder, the other outstretched like she was taking aim at Charlie’s head. “Answer the question,” she snarled.
“Ugh, you guys are so edgy,” Charlie moaned dramatically, feeling some of her usual pep return now she wasn’t being chased down like an antelope through the savanna. “Fine, if you really wanna know, Adam’s my mom’s ex.”
“Lilith..?”
“Yes, exactly!” Charlie beamed, clapping her hands excitedly at the prospect of finding an excuse for this genocidal motherfucker to leave her alone. “Lilith’s my mom and Lucifer’s my dad so you should really-“
“You’re Lilith’s little brat,” the angel growled, inching closer once again. “I can’t believe it.”
“Well, you better!” Charlie announced, her cheerful demeanor betrayed by her terrified eyes, glued to the advancing spear. “I’m not kidding. You need to chill out or Adam will be pissed.”
To Charlie’s horror, the angel only laughed: it was a sick, twisted sound, rivaling that of an amused Overlord watching a snuff film. The scraping of her spear on the ground as she walked Charlie’s way was only slightly less bone-chilling. Only just.
“I may not be able to kill you, but Adam never said I couldn’t hurt you,” the angel seethed, an evil grin curling her mask where her mouth was.
Charlie felt a bead of sweat roll down her now lightly flushed face. “Umm, okay?”
“I’m going to make you suffer, Charlotte. When I’m done with you, you’ll be begging for the mercy of my spear in your chest.”
Charlie gulped, an inexplicable heat rising in her cheeks. Why’d they have to make these angels so… hot?
“Uh, I know you meant to sound threatening and all, but this is hell and um,” Charlie stammered, twisting a lock of hair around her fingers. “That sounds more dirty than scary.”
The angel briefly paused: was that a hint of colour under her mask? But a scowl returned like clockwork and Charlie only had a moment to dodge the spear stabbed in her direction once again.
“Silence, you wretched thing!”
Here we go again. This time, Charlie was ready. From the tip of her fingers shot a burst of coloured lights, not unlike fireworks, phasing the angel just long enough for Charlie to punch her spear out of her hands into the river of sludge below.
Both beings watched the weapon splash into the waters, already disintegrating in the chemicals before it was washed away forever, leaving them both unarmed and finally equals in combat: which it seemed it was about to come to.
“My spear!” the angel shrieked, her gloved fists clenched tight. She turned to face Charlie, who awkwardly mirrored her form to give the impression she’d done this before. “You’re gonna pay for that.”
Charlie didn’t have time for a smart quip of her own, as she suddenly found herself dodging the clumsy blows of the angel before her, so blinded by rage that even the usually pacifist princess had no trouble avoiding the hits.
It wasn’t long before an opening was detected, and Charlie wasted no time knocking her opponent over with a sweep under her legs, unfortunately falling with her as the angel dragged her down.
They struggled for a while, frantically pushing and pulling at each other like amateur wrestlers until Charlie found herself pinned by the other girl, who straddled her hips while trying and failing to hold her arms down. The angel’s grip was poor, weak enough that Charlie was able to reach up to her mask, ripping it off in an attempt to catch her off guard.
It did the trick. But not just for the angel.
The jostling stopped, both women staring at each other with no barrier between them. Charlie was looking up at an undeniably gorgeous face: she had large, soulful eyes, one of which was shielded by a curtain of silver hair from Charlie’s awestruck gaze.
She was both round and angular; plump cheeks like pillows tapering down into a strong jawline and sharp chin. Her mouth hung slightly agape in her surprise, pearly white teeth poking out from behind jet-black, perfect lips.
Charlie could never have guessed from behind the mask she would have such darling features: for a moment, it was like only the two of them existed, the only sounds were their own labored pants, and the thundering of Charlie’s heart as it damn near leapt out of her chest.
Why was she like this?
“Stop staring at me!” the angel barked, and this time her blush was undeniable. Charlie allowed her wrists to be pinned, feeling them bruise between the angel’s firm grip and the ground underneath. The subtle softness in the woman’s glowing red eye above her was a comfort to the pain.
Charlie’s entire body relaxed beneath the angel as though she wasn’t in immediate danger. She couldn’t stop the next words that came out of her mouth. “You’re beautiful…”
For a split second, Charlie identified a brand new emotion on the angel’s face, one she wouldn’t be surprised if she’d never felt before. But just as quickly as it appeared it was shoved away by anger, confusion, and hatred: all an angel was capable of these days, it seemed.
“Your kind are vile,” she forced herself to say. Charlie could see the confliction in her eyes, felt it in the way her body tensed on top of hers.
“My kind aren’t the ones flying down here to kill us,” Charlie started, searching the angel’s one unconcealed eye. It was so large she could get lost for hours. “You know it’s wrong, right?”
“Shut up.”
“Please. You know it’s true.”
“I said shut up!”
The grip on Charlie’s wrists loosened, and she found herself held up by the front of her jacket; the angel’s hands twisted into it. They were close enough that Charlie could feel the angel’s breath on her face: hot and heavy.
“I’m just sayin’,” Charlie sighed, studying the angel’s features, particularly her lipstick. “I know you don’t want to kill. That’s why you’re here wasting your time with… me.”
She’d struck a nerve. There might as well have been a lightning bolt through the angel’s head as she glared down at Charlie. “You wanna bet?”
Before Charlie could answer, the angel flapped her wings once, twice, and suddenly they were airborne: the ground fell away and Charlie felt her body grow heavy like a lead ball as the angel dragged her into the sky, her hooved legs dangling far away from anything she could stand on.
“Woah, woah, shit! Fuck!” Charlie’s words were almost nonsensical: adrenaline pumped wildly through her entire body, denying her other senses besides survival instinct and intense fear.
The sight of the slaughter shrank to tabletop size, knights taking pawns all over the board. Charlie breathed in and out deeply like there was a finite amount of oxygen: fearful she may pass out if she didn’t. In only moments, terra firma was hundreds of feet away, her fate entirely in the hands of this angel who held her, and the strength of her jacket’s stitching.
“Okayokayokay,” Charlie slurred, desperately clawing at the angel’s hands. “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot, can we talk about this? Maybe on the ground before you drop me to certain death?”
The angel couldn’t have been more deaf to Charlie’s pleas, her wings beating rhythmically as they hovered at helicopter heights above the Pride ring. She held Charlie with her arms outstretched, giving her no chance to grab anything but the silver gloves she was held by.
“Please, you can’t do this,” Charlie begged, unable to stop the tears from flooding her eyes. “I know you’re better than this.”
Charlie watched the angel’s attention shift from her to another angel passing by, wiping blood from her sword. “Lost your spear, Vaggie? That’s unacceptable.”
Vaggie.
“I’ve got this, Lute. Don’t worry.”
“You’re lucky I’m not reporting this.”
The other angel descended to the ground, presumably to find her next victim. The angel that held Charlie; Vaggie was her name. The word slipped silently from her lips right at the moment she let go.
Charlie was falling. Not quickly, rapidly. Her hair flew up around her in a blonde whirlwind as gravity yanked her down in cruel desire, limbs flailing upwards like red ribbons.
Even though her screams could surely be heard in the next ring over, they were mute compared to the rushing of wind past her ears as she tumbled through it like an anchor in the deepest ocean. It whipped against her back, then her face as she somehow turned to face the ground, which was rushing towards her like a freight train.
Godammit. Where was the king of hell when you needed him? Her dad had all those fucking wings and not one of them was being used to save her. Was this really how she was going to die? Being dropped by an angel just because she couldn’t handle the sexual tension between them? What a rip off.
Charlie closed her eyes, but her tears still floated upwards, flowing like a leaky faucet. She braced for impact.
But instead of hard asphalt, it was a swing of momentum that hit her like a truck, her head flinging downwards while her body, somehow, was suddenly moving in the opposite direction.
When the shock subsided, Charlie opened her eyes to the sight of the ground scrolling along as though she was being carried somewhere. When she felt the two gloved hands holding her torso, she realized that was indeed exactly the case.
She didn’t dare look up. This bad tempered angel was liable to change her mind at any minute. If it was really her. She opened her mouth to make sure. “…Vaggie?”
“Not a word. They’re watching.”
Charlie scanned the air whooshing past her. It was true, the angels were scattered everywhere like the most authoritarian army on Earth. And she knew how much humans liked that shit.
For once, she shut her mouth. As strange as it felt obeying the will of an exorcist, even she knew when she was truly out of options.
Together, they flew for what could have been a few seconds or a few hours, Charlie couldn’t keep track. It was only when the sight of a tall, vintage building came into her view that Charlie finally snapped back to reality.
“Over there, fly there,” she instructed, as loud as she dared with Heaven’s army everywhere you could look. “Trust me.”
“Trust you?” the angel seethed, and Charlie felt metal-coated fingers digging into her tummy like spikes.
“Please, you can’t fly forever. I bought it recently, it’s abandoned, we can hide there.”
The angel said nothing, but changed her trajectory with a few hurried flaps of her wings. When they arrived at the decrepit building, the angel crashed awkwardly on the roof, clearly inexperienced in landing with a passenger.
Despite this, both women were relatively unharmed as they sat beside each other behind a large, unlit neon sign, probably once used for proudly displaying the name of the club or hotel or whatever it once was.
Safety, for now. The pair were still for a moment, panting from the fatigue of flying and exhilaration from almost dying, respectively.
After a few moments, Charlie found her voice. “Thank you for not killing me.”
When the angel did not reply, Charlie turned to face her; grateful to see she was too exhausted to scowl for once. “And, I’m sorry you lost your spear.”
The angel laughed. Not wicked evil laugh, no, a genuine laugh. The sound was like an audible rainbow that delighted all of Charlie’s senses, a well deserved moment of joy in this otherwise biblically shitty day.
“I didn’t lose it,” the angel chucked, her previously tough exterior all but melted away. “You threw it into that fucking river.”
“You were trying to kill me!” Charlie announced like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know, let me kill you?” the angel laughed. “I’m fucked now, when Adam finds out, I’ll be…”
Charlie watched her smile fade, the violent scene in her mind playing in her one visible eye like a movie screen. “Is that why you saved me? So he wouldn’t be like, double mad?”
“I don’t know why I saved you,” the angel admitted, hugging her knees to her face not unlike Charlie had been doing when she’d found her. “I don’t know.”
Even with her knees covering her face, Charlie could see the faintest of blushes on the angel’s bare cheeks, quite possibly the cutest thing she’d ever seen. “It was Vaggie, right?”
Vaggie didn’t respond, but looked up at Charlie with the eye that wasn’t hidden by hair, something between curiosity and sheepishness crossed in her gaze. As the minutes ticked on, it was getting harder and harder to believe this was the same exorcist who was trying to kill her only moments ago.
Hard, but not impossible. At the end of the day, despite her beauty, she was still an exorcist. Charlie couldn’t let her guard all the way down just yet.
“I knew you weren’t like the others, Vaggie,” Charlie started. “I knew you were different.”
Vaggie’s eye narrowed in skepticism. “Oh yeah?”
“First of all, all that talk about making me suffer? Super over the top!” Charlie teased, her heart swelling at the sight of Vaggie’s obvious embarrassment. She was all bark, no bite. “And I could see you didn’t want to kill me.”
“Yeah, because I can’t. You’re hellborn.”
“No! Because you know it’s wrong!”
Vaggie scoffed, looking up to the pentagram above. “Even if I do. What choice do I have?”
None. But it shouldn’t have to be like that. Charlie knew it, and she wanted so badly for things to be different. She had some ideas, farfetched, of course, but it was why she’d bought this very building they sat on in the first place. There had to be another way.
Vaggie wiped a singular tear from her eye, and Charlie couldn’t help but wish it was her doing it instead. She wanted to comfort this angel, how crazy was that? Diplomacy, she thought. Or maybe something else.
“All of us, it’s what we have to do,” Vaggie continued, distracted by something in the sky. “We all have to answer to- him.”
As she said the last word, she nodded in his direction. An angel shining brighter than the rest of them, growing from a gold speck in the distance to a clearly identifiable figure, flying closer and closer. Adam.
“Shit,” Charlie cursed, her hairs standing on end. “What do we do, what do we do, what do we do?!”
“We? You don’t have to do anything,” Vaggie sighed, slumped over in defeat. “You’ll be fine. This isn’t your problem, princess.”
Charlie frowned, mulling the words over. It was true, heaven’s affairs weren’t her domain. But they weren’t in heaven now. She considered the options. There weren’t many. She could think of only one that might spare Vaggie the punishment that awaited her.
“Okay, I’ve got it!” she exclaimed, grabbing Vaggie’s arm. “I’m gonna pretend to have captured you. That way, it’s not your fault you lost your spear!”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Vaggie spat, yanking her arm away. “That’s even worse.”
“You’re gonna have to trust me,” Charlie assured her, deja vu flicking her in the head as Adam’s form grew larger in her peripheral.
“Again. Trust you?” came the angel’s predictable reply. Barely half an hour wasn’t quite enough time to change, clearly.
There was no time to work on that now. Charlie breathed in, uttered a quick ‘sorry’, before throwing her weight behind the angel, one hand holding both of Vaggie’s wrists behind her while the other clamped around her mouth, muffling her protests.
“Sorry! Sorry! You’ll see, this’ll work!” Charlie assured the squirming girl in her arms, tapping into her unholy power in order to prevent her escape. She allowed her horns to extend for the approaching Adam, showing him she meant business.
Finally, the fucker was in earshot, no shortage of abuse already flowing from his ugly mouth. “Well, well, well, what do we have here? Hey, if you guys are getting into some girl on girl shit, don’t leave me out of it!”
Charlie felt Vaggie scream something into her hand, Adam’s name probably, but it was unclear what meaning was behind it: annoyance or a cry for help. “Adam,” Charlie greeted instead, gripping the girl in her arms tighter.
The first man plopped his robed body down on the rooftop, making a tutting noise with his mouth. “You know, this just makes me sad. You let yourself get caught by a demon, Vaggie? What are you, fucking stupid?”
Vaggie’s muffled complaining ceased, and Charlie felt her body finally relax in her grasp. Charlie did the talking for her. “That’s right! And-and I broke her spear! And-“
“Save it, sweetie, I’ve had enough of this shitty town and its shitty people,” Adam dismissed her, reaching down to grab Vaggie by her halo.
Charlie didn’t resist when Adam yanked her away. She heard Vaggie wince and wondered how badly it hurt.
“I’m sorry, Adam,” Vaggie stammered, cowering like a puppy. “It won’t happen again.”
“Yeah, no shit babe, or else you’ll be doing my laundry every day for the rest of your miserable fucking life,” Adam threatened, squeezing Vaggie’s neck in one hand as he spat into her face.
It took incredible amounts of strength for Charlie to keep herself from reacting. She bit back an onslaught of choice words, knowing it would only make things worse.
So instead, Charlie grit her teeth, pain stabbing through her lower lip as her fangs sunk into it. She watched Vaggie’s expression cool into robotic stoicism, only a faint glimmer of hope in her eye. Yet, Charlie could sense she was changed.
Adam gave the call to retreat, the angels rising in all directions. “Bye, Vaggie,” Charlie whispered to herself. Vaggie couldn’t possibly hear her from where she was now hovering in the air, but something must have registered, as a solemn ‘bye’ was readable falling from her lips.
The sky was polluted with departing angels now, both masked and without, but there was only one Charlie was focused on. She watched her slip away with a heavy heart: but a determined mind.
When it was finally over: when Hell’s version of quiet finally settled across the realm, Charlie looked down to the rooftop she was standing on, tapping a hoof. This had been a good spot to hide. Maybe that’s what she’d bought it for.
The hideout hotel? Something like that, maybe. She’d have to think on it more.
——