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Vaggie never liked to admit it but she was mad. Not necessarily at Charlie, but just mad and grumpy in general. She didn’t mean for all that shit to go down at the rally. She just wanted to help. Doing hotel duties all by herself was getting extremely stressful and she just wanted to spend time with her girlfriend. She didn’t really think through the whole “intimidate” Vox plan.
The whole week was already so frustrating. Vaggie just wanted to help Charlie’s dream come true, but Charlie wouldn’t listen to her advice. It made her feel unheard and neglected. So when Charlie got upset with her, she felt like she needed to defend herself, now leading to this.
Vaggie grumpily walked beside her girlfriend as they mutually held irritated expressions. They were going to the Carmine industries to talk with Carmilla about siding with Vox. Vaggie was somewhat hurt by Carmilla agreeing to do something like this. She kind of thought of her as sort of the mother she never had. But enough of that. She really didn’t want to mess up things for Charlie again so she walked in front of her.
“I’ll do the talking, she listens to me,” She said. It came out a bit more passive aggressive than she wanted it to. This started a bit of bickering between her and Charlie. However, she didn’t expect for Carmilla to overhear them. It was a bit embarrassing.
Once Carmilla made herself known, they immediately tried to get her to explain herself. But they didn’t work together on it and it all came out sloppy and unprofessional. Vaggie knew if they kept this up, there would be no chance of changing her mind. So she let Charlie take the lead.
“Carmilla, this is not what my mom would have wanted,” She started, “Heaven doesn’t want to hurt us anymore,”
“How do you know heaven is no longer a threat, especially now that Vox just declared war,” Carmilla retorted.
This time Vaggie knew she had to step up. Charlie wasn’t being very assertive and assertiveness was what helped last time.
“We don’t. But we just found out the hotel works! Why start a war now?” Vaggie stressed.
Carmilla scoffed and climbed down from the railings she stood up upon. It was obvious that they didn’t understand. But one thing confused her. Why was Vaggie so obsessed with others getting into heaven if it’s heaven that casted her down here?
“You started this war,” She leaned down, pointing a large finger in Vaggie’s face, “Why do you still insist on heaven being the answer when you know first hand what they are capable of?!”
As Vaggie heard these words and processed them through her brain, she was suddenly reminded of her time in the barracks. Every step she made had to be a careful strategy or she’d pay. She remembered a couple times in the early morning, when she’d still be a bit sleepy. If she didn’t stand up straight, Lute would backhand her across her face. It was normally like this with everyone. But Vaggie soon realized the other punishments weren’t.
If Lute or Adam was ever angry or frustrated, their energy would be taken out on her. Many times after everyone’s gone to bed, she’d be in Adam’s office, being kicked and thrown around like some rag doll. But she could never fight back. If she did, they told her she’d be sent down to hell to rot with the rest of the sinners.
It had been easy at first to hide it from Charlie. During her first 5-6 months of staying in hell, she was a traumatized mess. She would flinch whenever Charlie raised her hand, or moved too fast. Nightmares would plague her sleep almost every night. And the phantom pain was one of the worst. But then her brain slowly started blocking off memories of her army life. Within a year, all she could remember about Heaven was her fall and a couple vague, unimportant moments.
With memories flooding back, Vaggie could feel her heart start to race. She prayed that it was just a bit of a flashback, nothing too big, but then it went deeper. A feather from her wings brushed up against her back, reminding her of the heavy set of appendages that were once ripped off of her.
And suddenly, she was thrown back to the extermination day. Lute had cornered her, sabre out and ready. She flew towards her face, the tip of the dussack-like sword landing in her eye, pulling it out of her face. Images of all the golden ichor sprayed everywhere made Vaggie nauseous, even though it was just a memory.
Her heart started pumping faster and her breath was caught in her lungs. She couldn’t be having a panic attack, not now! It was just a flashback, why was she panicking? She didn’t feel like Lute was going to come back or that she was in much danger. But that simple memory sent her body into panic mode.
“Vaggie? Hey, what’s going on?” Charlie asked, a bit anxiously. Vaggie couldn’t pay attention. She stared off into the floor in front of her, gripping her shirt, trying to stop herself from digging her nails into her skin. The memories were painful and she didn’t understand why her body was acting like this. She needed to be professional, god damn it! Now Carmilla isn’t going to give them a chance and it’s gonna be all her fault and Charlie’s gonna be mad at her again-
Then instead of the floor, she saw Charlie’s worried face. She was kneeling down in front of her and gently removed her hand from her shirt, taking it into her own. This managed to snap her back into the present, but didn’t calm her down. She looked up frantically and saw Carmilla was gone. Shit.
“Where-” she took another gasp of air “Carmilla?”
“Don’t worry about that right now, she went to grab something,” Charlie assured her, “In the meantime, can you focus on my voice?”
Vaggie nodded, hyperventilating and still shaking slightly. Charlie cleared her voice and in a soft, soothing tone, started to sing.
“You’ve already done so much~ so many lives you’ve changed~ so many souls you’ve touched~” Charlie sang in a gentle quiet voice, “And in the end, if it’s only me you’ve saved, there’s something i’ve been dying to say~”
Charlie’s beautiful singing voice distracted Vaggie for a quick second. The army and the abuse seemed all but forgotten as she looked into her girlfriend’s eyes, remembering her life now with Charlie. While her heart still raced and her breathing still heavy, her head started feeling a lot less light now that she was getting a bit more air back into her system.
“You need to know I love you more than anything~”
As Charlie finished up the song, Vaggie could see in her peripheral vision, Carmilla’s angelic steel tipped shoes. She was about to react when something frigid was placed around her neck. The freezing cold sensation made her jump, her heart feeling like it was lurching forward. But after that…it was fine. She felt herself start to come down from the panic attack after a minute or two. Her heart slowed down and her breathing became stable.
“There we go~ you feel any better?” Charlie asked.
“Y-yeah. What was that?” Vaggie questioned. She wanted to know what on earth managed to practically restart her system. Carmilla then grabbed the item off her neck and showed it to her.
“An ice pack. My girls often deal with attacks like these and the ice pack trick usually helps,” Carmilla stated.
“Thank you, Carmilla,” Charlie said, looking over to her while still facing Vaggie. It wasn’t too common for Vaggie to have panic attacks, at least, not brought on by what seemed to be a flashback. Usually, it was Charlie that had them but she mainly had anxiety attacks rather than panic attacks.
“However, this incident does not change my mind. I hope you understand why I need to defend my people,” Carmilla said. While looking a bit hesitant, Charlie nodded. She tried to ally with Heaven to protect her people afterall.
“I understand. We’ll get going. Thank you for your time,” she told her, putting a hand on Vaggie’s shoulder.
The two walked out of the building together and the front of the building from which they came. Charlie didn’t want to rush into getting home, afraid that might stress Vaggie out, and suggested that they just chill on a bench nearby for a couple of minutes.
They sat in silence for the most part. While guilt of ruining the meeting lingered, Vaggie still was feeling quite shaken up from those memories being brought up all of a sudden. She normally could barely remember anything from her exorcist days but this one simple confrontation brought it all back up.
“Did… did you have a flashback?” Charlie decided to ask.
“I- I think so. It was like a cluster of flashbacks from my time in the army. It was weird because I could barely remember my time in the barracks for 3 years,” Vaggie explained. It was true. After about 6 months after falling, her brain started blocking off memories from the barracks. Sure, she’d remember a few things like eating dinner in the mess hall, or commanding soldiers, but they were all mostly vague. Even her fall started to become a bit blurry.
“Well, how about we do some more research on that later? It sounds like it could be a form of dissociative amnesia or PTSD…” Charlie suggested. She wanted to help find a way for Vaggie to process these feelings and memories healthily.
“Alright, I think I’ll be okay with trying that,” Vaggie agreed. Charlie gave her a reassuring smile and leaned in, pressing her lips against Vaggie’s.
“Let’s get back to the hotel. I haven’t been the best girlfriend lately and I think we deserve to have some quality time together,” She said, a hinting tone in her voice. Vaggie smiled. She did miss being able to spend quality alone time with her. After that hellish meeting, they both needed a way to relax.