Chapter Text
There was a flash of gold, followed by an all-engulfing blackness as if all light had been sucked out of the world. A sharp pain tore through her face, twisting her reality beyond recognition. Vaggie was writhing helplessly on the ground, a slave to the biting pain, and she tried to blink, but half of the world remained obscured.
She couldn’t comprehend what she saw on the ground in front of her, any rational thoughts subdued by shock and agony. It felt like someone had torn half of her face off.
Vaggie registered words being said to her, words as sharp as the blade that had struck her, dripping with venom.
“Sinful filth like you has no place in heaven.”
A heel dug into the side of her head, pressing her face to the ground, and at this point, blacking out against the harsh concrete seemed like it would be her salvation. Someone pulled her wings, and before she knew realised what was happening, the world exploded in pain, ripping violently through her body, draining out of her in pools of gold.
The horrifying sound of her bones cracking rang through her ears, louder than the cacophony of screams from the hellish battlefield raging near-by, and yet it sounded so far away. Pain had become everything, and it was too much, her head was bursting and her body felt like it had been ripped into pieces.
She could make out the figures that had done this to her turning away as darkness tried to take hold off her mind, and there was a single thought she was able to form in her head before slipping away into nothingness.
She had fallen.
The world was red when she awoke.
Her line of sight had been cut in half and agony was still coursing through her body, but somehow, Vaggie found the strength to lift her head. She blinked at the dark crimson sky and her heart sank. Even in a state where she could barely think, a foolish part of her had still hoped to find herself in a soft golden glow upon opening her eyes, up in the sky where she belonged, but no, she was still here.
In a panicked hurry, she tried to get up, wincing and gnashing her teeth together through the biting pain. She struggled to find balance, nearly toppling over like an anchor was strapped to her throat and as she tried to take a step, her body nearly gave out, crashing into the brick wall of the nearby building.
Vaggie let out a pained hiss as she tried to steady herself, trying to balance her weight so that she’d remain upright and not sink head-first toward the ground once more. She couldn’t risk blacking out again – she was not safe here, and even though by some miracle no one had wandered into the alleyway where she had been attacked yet, it was only a matter of time before a demon found its way here. How could she defend herself if she could barely stand?
Fragile. That’s how she felt. Like a statue falling over, moments before it hit the ground and shattered into a million tiny pieces. She was vulnerable and surrounded by thousands of enemies – enemies who’d recognise her uniform and her wings and instantly identify her as one of the exorcists, as someone who had slaughtered countless members of their kind.
Vaggie felt bile rising in her throat at the thought of what the demons would do to her if they found her now. She had always believed that angels were invulnerable to any at all attacks – yet here she was, bleeding, shaking, disoriented, torn apart by pain after one of her kind had turned against her. Who could say whether or not a sinner could harm her in this weakened state?
She glanced up again and noticed a detail that made her tense up in horror. The red sky was clear. It was clear, not blackened by the countless wings of her fellow soldiers and the sharp glow of their angelic weapons.
How long had she been unconscious? Had the bells rang out while she’d been lying there, signalling the end of the battle? Despair clawed at her heart. If the extermination was over, then all angels were gone, then the portal back to heaven was gone, then there was no help. She was alone, nothing but the flicker of a fading light surrounded by darkness.
She had to get out of here.
Vaggie scanned the sky and saw a small faint light from far, far away, cold and distant like the moon in the human realm. That was Heaven, the cruellest star in a blood-coloured galaxy – in her line of sight, yet out of reach. How far away was it? How long would she have to fly until she reached it? Maybe it would be futile, maybe there was a barrier that kept sinners from reaching these golden gates, maybe she wouldn’t even be let in, but she had to try.
Her shoulders tensed up as she tried to lift her wings, praying to find enough strength to take off and fly as far away from this wretched place as she could, but nothing happened. She didn’t feel anything in her back except pain.
Her wings.
Vaggie’s eyes grew in horror, the most agonising memory of Lute’s attack came back to her, how she had grabbed her wings, and then – and then…
She reached behind her back with one hand, desperately trying to feel them, clinging onto some faint irrational hope that maybe this hadn’t really happened, maybe she’d feel feathers, but there was nothing. Her wings were gone.
Vaggie felt herself sinking to the ground, tearing her mouth open in scream of agony as the realisation that she was trapped here seeped into her mind. Her heart was racing, confusion and panic pulsing through her body. She closed her eyes, or rather her eye, trying to shut out the truth in front of her, trying to pretend this was all a nightmare and that she’d wake up in Heaven safe and sound the next day.
But it was futile. Even when she tried to block this hell out from her visions, it was all around her, permeating the air with a scent of brimstone, blood and decay, echoing in screams and sirens blaring in the distance. There was no escape; this was real. She was an angel with no wings, abandoned and disgraced by Heaven, stranded in a realm of infinite torture and depravity. She wouldn’t get out of here.
Vaggie screamed until her throat was sore, her voice strained by pain and despair, and then rage began to seep through, clouding what was left of her vision. She couldn’t even blink without being faced with the reality of what happened to her, what they had done to her; half of her eyesight was destroyed by her comrade; a betrayal that was burned permanently into her line of sight.
She had shown mercy to the enemy, to a child, and the forces of Heaven had cast her out like a dirty sinner. Humans could go wrong and end up here, that’s how it was supposed to be. But Vaggie was an angel, or she used to be, and she had fallen for doing everything that Heaven was supposed to stand for.
It felt like she was standing at the edge of the world, tip-toeing on the side of a cliff as all of her old beliefs were crumbling. She couldn’t trust what she knew or what she felt, not anymore, and the ground under her feet was shaking. Heaven had left her to rot in hell, had punished her for all eternity for refusing to kill. There was a cruel irony to it.
Now she was here, breaking free of what she knew, of what she used to think about Heaven, shedding the skin of a loyal soldier who followed orders blindly for the sake of a greater good. The realisation was liberating, filling her with more deep rage that gave her the strength to get up again, but it did not change her helplessness. No matter how much she cursed Heaven, how much she wished harm upon them, how much she wanted to find Lute and rip her wings out with her bare hands, she was still stuck here.
Forever.
Hell is forever, that’s what Adam always used to say.
As Vaggie gripped the wall of the nearest building for support, taking a few shaky steps, she realised that she had no idea what she was supposed to do now. Live here? Where even was here? She knew a couple things about Hell, that it was overcrowded and filled with dangerous, deranged and blood-thirsty individuals, that it was a place of eternal punishment born from an angel’s disobedience, but all of that was on a much larger scale than her existence. Where was she supposed to go? She had no one and nothing, no comrades, no wings, no hope, just an ever-so threateningly looming eternal damnation. And she was injured and weakened, even with her supposed angelic invulnerability.
A trained soldier at heart, Vaggie tried to come up with a plan. She had to, there had to be something she could do, some next steps to take, somewhere to go.
Get somewhere safe, find a place to stay. Survive, she thought.
Those objectives were simple enough, and yet they didn’t do much to ease her despair. Somewhere safe, in Hell? That was doubtful, and besides, she had no idea how things worked around here, how she was supposed to find a place to live. Nor did she have any idea on what to do about her injuries. She highly doubted there were hospitals down here, and every question that popped up in her mind about her plan chipped away at the sliver of hope she was still clinging on to. Maybe she was going to spend the rest of eternity on the street, wandering aimlessly amongst the most down on their luck sinners, living in the constant danger of being attacked by the blood-thirsty degenerates that occupied this realm.
Vaggie’s hands were trembling. She had never felt so lost, so hopeless before. Tears began to form in the corner of her eye and exhaustion made it difficult to fight them off, but she refused to cry. She was in pain and had lost everything, but crying now wasn’t going to help her survive. Instead she tried to think about Adam and Lute, she envisioned them sitting up there in Heaven, laughing down at her. No, she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of crying, of showing even more weakness.
She glanced up at the red sky once more, trying to steady her breathing. Why couldn’t Lute have just finished her off here instead of leaving her to suffer for all eternity? It would have been so much easier.
Vaggie rested her head against the wall and sighed deeply. She needed to rest badly. Exhaustion was crawling through her, numbing the piercing pain and trying to lure her to close her eye again, but she had to get somewhere safe first- Who was she kidding? This was hell; nowhere here was safe. Especially not for an angel. If any demon saw her…
Vaggie’s eye widened as she stared down at herself. Maybe she didn’t have wings anymore, but the armour she was wearing would certainly give her away. If she was going to survive here, she had to get rid of it. She stumbled through the alley behind two overflowing dumpsters and began to strip off the outer layers of her uniform, hissing in pain when her movements caused the fabric of her clothes to rub against the wounds on her back. Underneath she was wearing a simple white dress, and dressed like this in a place like Hell made her feel even more vulnerable, but it was a necessary evil. Wearing angelic armour here would be like painting a target on her face.
She used her last strength to through her uniform into the trash can and then looked around for her spear. The first thing she noticed however was the blood splattered all over the ground, shimmering in an unmistakeable golden colour. Vaggie’s hand instinctively reached for her cheek in disbelief. She hadn’t even realised she had bled this much. She tried to wipe away the bloodstains on her cheek and around the eye Lute had carved out, then saw her very eye on the ground in front of her.
Her legs were shaking as she bent down to pick it up and she hesitated before touching it. It looked surreal, almost like it had never been on her face in the first place. With trembling fingers she picked it up, trying to ignore how it felt in her hands and quickly threw it in the trash. Right now wasn’t the time to freak out about half of her eyesight being gone, she could deal with that later, right now she had to survive.
Honestly, Vaggie wasn’t sure what surviving meant anymore. Could she die here? She'd always been told that her kind was indestructible, but Lute had proven her wrong, otherwise the ground wouldn’t be covered in her blood right now. Maybe it was possible to hurt an angel when Heaven deemed them unworthy, when they were sauntering on the edge between sin and virtue. She didn’t know if that meant that sinners could also hurt her now, and she wasn’t keen on finding out.
She took the angelic spear, its familiar weight in her hand a tiny source of comfort, and wanted to trudge on, to find a place to rest, but her legs felt like they were made out of stone. She was too tired to move forward, too tired to even try. What a pathetic sight to behold she was right now, one of Heaven’s best soldiers, now half-blinded and too exhausted to walk straight.
She dropped the spear behind the trash cans, not even bothering to check if it was visible or not. What was the point? She had lost everything, and nothing would bring it back. There was no hope for her. She was a soldier with nothing to fight for and she’d been thrown out like a broken tool. It was already over, it had been over when Lute first attacked her. Maybe she should just stay in this alley and rot or wait until some demon found her and finished what Lute had started. No path in Hell would lead her anywhere.
Vaggie sank to the ground and didn’t bother to try and get up again.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed or if she’d been asleep or unconscious, but she noticed a shadow looming over her.
Vaggie tensed up, knowing she didn’t have the strength to fight back, and braced herself for the attack, but nothing happened. Hesitantly, she opened her eye.
The first thing she saw was the bright red glow of a pair of eyes, and then the figure standing over her bent down and she recognised that it was a woman, a young woman with pale skin, rosy cheeks and long blonde hair flowing over her shoulders. Vaggie had never seen a face as beautiful as hers, and that should have absolutely not been her priority in this moment, but it was the first thought that her mind was able to come up with. Was she a sinner? She didn’t look like she was. Vaggie would have mistaken her for an angel if she had seen her in a different place. Was she even real?
The woman’s eyes were wide with concern and she reached her hand. Vaggie screwed her eye shut and felt her body tense, unsure of what she should expect. The last person who reached for her face had been Lute and she’d…
Warm fingers lightly grazed her cheek, touching her with a softness Vaggie wasn’t familiar with. She didn’t really understand what was happening, her mind was still hazy from pain and exhaustion, but the stranger was wrapping her face with something. She felt it covering her skin, but wasn’t able to see it as it only covered the area where her eye had been ripped out and remembering the injury, Vaggie realised what that woman was doing. She was bandaging her.
Why? Why was she doing this, and who was she? This was still hell, wasn’t it? A million of questions in Vaggie’s mind went unanswered as she found herself to weak to open her mouth and say something. This stranger was helping her, a fallen and wounded exorcist angel, who had been left to rot and suffer by her own people.
Maybe it was a dream, it had to be. There was no kindness like this in Hell, there couldn’t be. She was dreaming, or perhaps hallucinating, even if the gentle touch on her skin felt as real as the blade that had struck her.
The woman finished wrapping the bandages around her missing eye and Vaggie glanced up at her, a small smile forming on her lips. Everything she had known, everything she had lived and fought for was gone, and she had fallen as far down as she could, there really was no “worse” from here. There was an odd comfort in that.
And yet, whether this was a dream or actually the reality, someone had helped her, reached out for her with no intent of causing harm, patched up the wound Heaven had left her with. At least, in her dream. It was too good to be true.
The woman gave her a shy smile, brushing a streak of hair behind her ear. Her smile was like warm sunshine, a comforting light in pitch black darkness, and Vaggie wanted it to be burned into her memory forever so she could cling to it for dear life, so she had something to hold onto in this hell.
Stay with me, she pleaded silently as her consciousness began to fade once more. She was a fallen angel in Hell, but maybe, just for one moment, she was saved.