It’s hilarious how Vaggie made herself a ‘sinner’.
How that linked her up with Charlie is such a weird, round about truthful way, even when she was lying by omission about it.
And how amazingly dumb it all makes Adam and Lute look.
Thousands of helpless souls killed by her, but she didn’t do anything ‘wrong’ until she wondered if what she was doing was right. The divine powers in her life only took her wings and condemned her to hell after she doubted their orders, their idea of justice, and quietly chose not to completely follow them.
“You fucked up” they tell her “your mistake” she “left the band” “tried for a solo career". It’s so pathetic. They're so butthurt over the idea of one of their own having a mind of her own.
It’s also so funny, because they spin her simple act of whispering “Go, run. Now!” to demon kid she’d been holding at spear point like it was big defiant move- which makes it into one- even though she never challenged them openly, or threatened them.
Hell, Lute’s “You always were weak” plus exorcist Vaggie always frowning while her murder sisters all grin with glee as they kill sinners- it paints a picture of Vaggie never having been as into exterminations as she ‘should’ have been. Too weak to be a proper exorcist no matter how good at killing she was, not just “the traitor” but also “the failure”.
And she was scared of that. She didn’t want anyone seeing her spare that child, whispered her words to them in a back alley, out of sight.
She was scared of what would happen and didn’t even fight it when Lute took her eye and wings- she was scared and no threat in any tangible way, but apparently refusing to do one single murder is enough to freak Adam and Lute the fuck out.
One woman. Doesn’t do exactly what she’s told. After who knows how many decades of being one of the “top girls” at murder, a “bad bitch” named after “the best thing ever”, and they still get spooked by that tiny moment when she wasn’t under their total control. Like it's such a betrayal to them, her daring to so much as think this level of violence isn’t justified actually, and for a split second act on that thought.
It’s an instant ticket to ousting her from the exorcists AND from heaven, while they fly the fuck off again.
“If angels can do whatever, and remain in the sky-”
and they do. After doing that to one of their own. They did that, to someone who was supposedly meant to be in heaven. They didn’t wait for divine justice- took it, and her eye, and her wings, and her halo, into their own hands and tore them away from her. Then happily, they spend the next three years up in heaven, slurping smoothies and doing more murder sprees.
until Vaggie comes strolling back with the princess of hell, there supporting her girlfriend and the idea that all the shit she did for so long really was and IS wrong.
oh and Adam and Lute are pisssssssed about it. They take her being there PERSONALLY, wanna solve it with VIOLENCE
She hurts them without even trying. Without even noticing they're there.
They're told to fix the princess of hell situation and they have no concept of forgiveness, of caring about sinners, so they guess (rightly) that Vaggie hasn't told Charlie about her past and bet (wrongly) that Charlie would never forgive her if she knew, and also assumed (rightly) that Vaggie would be terrified of that
But they don't get that she's scared of hurting Charlie. Of Charlie being hurt by her. It's a selfless thing. That's her whole PROBLEM.
Her running to hold Charlie after the reveal- her NOT breaking down when Charlie takes alone time in the aftermath, respecting that right up until she thinks Charlie's actively in danger- afraid FOR Charlie when the deal with Alastor is made, no crumbling that Charlie went to someone else for help, when being helpful to Charlie is basically her raison d'étre- agreeing to go alone to an overlord, after learning she can DIE and THIS OVERLORD knows how to do it- all this for the sake of Charlie's dream, their shared goal, their hotel. Their friends, resigned to despair in the hotel lobby, losing hope and maybe hours away from losing their lives
No shit she was never going to bow down to the blackmail?? It'd be like turning herself inside out. Charlie isn't just some "little hottie" or whatever, they're partners. They're in this together. Even when Charlie out loud doubts if that's true, it still is.
Lute and Adam don't GET what it means, that Charlie assumed Vaggie was a sinner already. That the thing she'd be hurt about was the lying, not the murder. She was scared of not really being loved by Vaggie- of everything else wonderful between them being a lie too, all that support and faith empty empty- she wasn't afraid of loving Vaggie, whoever Vaggie had been, she was afraid of who Vaggie might be now and that she'd never really believed in Charlie at all.
Charlie was angry at the thought that Vaggie didn't think she would've accepted her. The idea of not really being understood or trusted by Vaggie, that's what hurt.
And it goes against everything Lute and Adam are, Charlie actually caring about sinners while knowing what they've done- about an exorcist after finding out who they'd been- really trusting that people can change. Lute and Adam hear her say it and see her stand up for it and they just want her to shut up and die
again though, no shit she was going to stick with Vaggie after the truth came out, in the end. Once she had a moment to take a breath and step out of her head long enough for a reality check
Vaggie didn’t say to Charlie what she'd done or who she'd been. But she’s been and keeps doing what she can to follow that idea, unvoiced, from that day when she couldn’t kill a sinner- something Charlie didn't know about but now knows must have happened- A final death means no second chance and no worth as a person, but Vaggie didn’t think that, even before meeting Charlie she didn't think that.
She's always been on Charlie's side. They were on the same side before they ever set eyes on each other. All this time, for three whole years, and now she's off to go find a way to protect everything they've built together.
"-words are cheap, but actions, they speak the truth"
Charlie never really stopped trusting her. Maybe she wondered if she should, but even then, she had Vaggie go to Carmilla to find the key that might save them all.
"She killed an exorcist in the last extermination. She knows how they can be harmed."
"But… I- I didn't even know that was possible."
"If you did, would you have told me?"
So Charlie asked. A pretty painful thing to say- and she said it even as she sent an angel to go find out a way to hurt other angels.
She DID trust that Vaggie WOULD tell her.
The irony of all this happening thanks to Adam and Lute trying to keep it from happening, and all of it leading up to Vaggie getting back part of what they took from her, because now she doesn't need them or heaven to be an angel anymore.
Charlie has faith in her. Enough to send her off on an important mission even after Vaggie hurt her- and send her right to the person who end up helping Vaggie get back her wings.
“The rules are shades of gray when you don’t do as you say”
Vaggie’s new fucking wings are gray when Lute sees them. When Vaggie’s standing over her, sparing her life, her wings and that one, fucking unexplained stripe separating her from the other exorcists, all of it is GRAY.
That visual gut punch of, you’re. Fucking. Wrong. You’re wrong about sinners, you’re wrong about supposedly protecting heaven, you’re wrong thinking you can just DO this shit. That imagery of an angel who DIDN’T stay in the sky because she DIDN’T think being angel meant everything she did had to be right- who’s here in hell, trying to protect sinners from heaven’s slaughter-
And Lute wanted Vaggie to “correct” HER “mistake”? Vaggie’s???
That’s Lute, admitting that people in hell can get second chances and make up for what they did. Admitting that “Sinful filth” like Vaggie can be redeemed in some way, by following Lute’s version of what’s right.
But wasn’t her and Adam’s whole thing the idea of blowing your shot? Getting no other chance after it?
Oh yeah. Vaggie doesn’t believe that though. Not for sinners like her, not for angels like her.
She let’s Lute live. She does it to make Lute suffer, but there are a lot of ways to make someone suffer- an eye for an eye for example- and Vaggie chooses the one that doesn’t hurt Lute more than it has to, that leaves her alive, and leaves Lute’s suffering to be something completely of Lute’s own making (a HELL of Lute's own making, if you will) (Lute choosing to tear her OWN arm off to continue the fight-).
She's totally dismissive of the woman who was just going after her remaining eye like a dog after a bone.
Why is it that nothing Adam and Lute to do her matters?
Why don’t THEY matter to her at all?
Walking right past them, being so done with them up in heaven, not caving to the blackmail, only being worried about Charlie afterwards, not letting that crack in their relationship stop her from doing what she can for their hotel, Lute threatening to take her other eye and BLIND her just making her snark- even the vague threat to Charlie only gives Vaggie the oomf she needed to defend herself.
“Pathetic” she calls Lute. She’s right- they’re so pathetic, both them, Adam and Lute. They’re so scared of being wrong. So pissy over the idea of being less than great and perfect.
It breaks them. Adam’s last words are him having a meltdown in the face of not actually being hot shit. Where’s his respect, he wails, they should all be worshiping him! But they’re not. One of his random decedents stabs him to death because he would’ve done the same to her, and one of the last things he hears is Vaggie- the fuck up, the traitor, his former grumpy top girl Vagina- whooping with glee as he dies.
And Lute lives knowing that could’ve been her, too.
If it wasn't for Vaggie.
Being not all that didn’t break Vaggie. Finding out she was wrong got her to stop and think and change, not run straight on blindly into a fight that ends up with her (with HIM) dead.
Why does she go from terrified of Lute and Adam, to dismissive and annoyed and just all around not caring about them at all?
They gave up all her respect for them when they demanded the death of a child.
The father of humanity wanted a child killed. A helpless, whimpering kid, sacrificed to his ego and bruised pride, and for shits and giggles. His first lieutenant saw failing to do so as a sin worthy of hell. All this over a child. How could she ever take them seriously after that.
She came down from high and chased the child and held a blade over them on divine command.
Then, somehow, she saw the HORNS in her own shadow above them- even though she wasn’t WEARING her MASK, and she stopped.
She was her own messenger angel.
She chose to give the child mercy, and became the sacrifice herself.
Vaggie stuck it to the man. Didn’t steal that life. And, terrified of what would happen to her next, acted selflessly. The same thing that got her left behind in hell should have earned her place in heaven, according to Adam-
heaven was shit to her though. Made her into a soldier. Sent her to kill and kill and kill. Taught her trust on the battlefield- in heaven, of all fucking places-
Timeline wise we see her very first smile when she meets Charlie. When a stranger does- again- the bare minimum for someone else.
When she’s back up in heaven later she isn’t wistful, just angry, uncomfortable, annoyed. She isn’t happy there. It’s not home to her, like her and Charlie’s room back at the hotel is. Why should it be? What good did she ever find in herself up there?
Down here though, she's happy. Hell is where her heaven started. So I guess in the end, she did find what she’d earned after all. Or it, Charlie, found her.
When “The rules are shades of gray…”
Sometimes they’re wrong, and you have to break them.
People like Lute and Adam would rather crack under the pressure and die instead, but not Vaggie. They're out for blood. She's out for love.
Sucks to be them~
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There’s a cherry tree in the middle of the redwood forest.
False isn’t sure what to make of that. She shifts her grip on the staff in her hand, its pale glow reflecting faintly off the fresh snow. She’s come out here for resources—the vault altar is demanding logs, and these giant trees are an easy source—but the incongruous sight of an enormous, blossoming cherry tree sending pink petals wafting on the frozen wind…
She wonders if this is what fish feel like, when they see a lure.
“Hello?” she calls, her voice echoing off the trees. The world stands in permanent semi-twilight here, and the deeper shadows hide the mobs that will venture out come nightfall. A sneak of creepers is bedded down in a sweetberry bramble just on the other side of the clearing, and False tenses when the lead boar lifts his head, but he apparently doesn’t deem her worth stalking so early in the day.
There is no other reaction to her call.
False is of half a mind just to head back home and farm her own dang trees. It’s not like the vaultar is picky about the kinds of logs—she could just as easily grow up a bunch of birch and throw those in there. But that will take so much longer… not to mention she’s not sure if there are even enough saplings in her storage.
She unhooks her enchantment-glittered axe from her belt and pauses to mentally poke at her mana reserves. Plenty high. Whatever’s lingering near this tree, it can hardly be worse than what she deals with on the daily in the vaults. Overworld dangers are barely a challenge anymore.
The logic of that doesn’t change the uneasy feeling that buzzes over her skin though.
Venturing further into the clearing. False’s gaze traces up the trunk of the cherry tree, following its branches to where they terminate in lush bursts of pink and white blooms. A sweet smell drifts on the wind. She wrinkles her nose, reminded of compost piles and fermented spiders’ eyes.
The tree’s branches stretch long and low—a canopy of their own, heavy with flowers and dark, glossy leaves. The space underneath is filled with falling flowers and a fog of pollen, the air moisture-thick like a lush cave.
Lifting one hand, False catches a falling petal on her fingertip.
It sizzles as it touches her skin, stinging and buzzing like live redstone.
She hisses through her teeth, shaking her hand and letting the petal fall to the forest floor. “What the heck?”
Another petal tumbles past her face, and she watches it with narrowed eyes—right until it fizzles out of existence a few pixels above the forest floor.
“Glitch,” she mutters. “That’s… not good.”
Iskall needs to know about this—it could be a bug from one of the new updates, or it could be something deeper in the code, but either way: this glitched tree is a problem. She’s probably lucky it just stung her.
She reaches for her communicator, raising it to take a pic of the cherry tree.
“Oh, hi there, False!”
False yelps, spinning around with her axe ready to swing.
Gem is standing behind her, a wreath of cherry blossoms tangled in her hair and antlers, leaning casually on a tall staff of blooming cherry wood. Her smile is wide, and sap flows over her fingers, pale golden, dripping down her arms to leave dark spots on the faded denim of her overalls.
“Gem!” False lowers her axe. “Oh my gosh, you scared me. I didn’t know you were doing Vault Hunters.”
“Hm?” Gem raises one eyebrow, and for a moment her eyes flicker to red and then purple before settling back on green. “Oh—I’m not doing Vault Hunters, False.” Her voice is amused, almost chiding.
“Oh.” False feels unexpectedly small—which is impressive, considering she’s nearly half a block taller than Gem.
More of the glitched petals fall, resting on Gem’s hair and slowly melting into it like snowflakes. The brief moment of relief when False had seen Gem’s familiar grin is fading into something like the sensation of freefall.
“What’cha up to?” Gem asks, and her face blinks from one expression to the next like a bad video message. Her clothes are blue—no, green—no, bloodstained and grey—no, blue. They’ve always been blue.
False takes a step back.
“Uh, not much…” she glances up at the redwoods. “Just doing some… resource gathering. You know.”
“Cool!” Gem giggles, and stands up straight. False tenses, but Gem only spins around her staff and waves a hand at the glitched tree. “I didn’t realize this was an occupied server—are there many people here?”
There’s a buzzing in False’s skull, and she blinks rapidly. A muscle twitches under her eye.
“Um…”
“I guess it doesn’t really matter.” Gem lifts one hand and grabs one of the lowest branches of the cherry tree. She really should not have been able to reach that.
Swinging herself up with the lithe, effortless strength of a cat, she perches on the limb and stares down at False. The grin is gone from her face now, and she looks down at False with bright eyes.
“Etho’s not here, is he?”
False opens her mouth to answer, the words yes, of course he is, I can take you to him heavy on her lips… And with effort, she swallows them back.
They taste of sweet rot.
“Why... why doesn’t what matter?” she asks instead.
Gem stares at her for a long moment, expressionless. The flowers woven through her antlers are growing of their own accord, twining up to caress their brethren in the branches overhead.
Then she smiles broadly, flashing teeth that nearly glow white in the dappled shadows. “Oh!” she exclaims. “No reason! I’m only passing through, is all.”
“You’re not… you’re not sticking around?” False tries—and mostly fails—to sound disappointed.
“Naaaaah…” Gem stands and walks along the branch, as secure and balanced as if it were a stone floor. The flowers in her hair flow along behind her, sliding from the branches and falling like a cape down her back. “Worldhopping is easy. Staying in one spot is way harder.”
False watches the flowers move and swirl, their smooth, strange motion ensnaring her attention. The buzzing is back, too. Like bees, drunk on honey and sleepy in their hive.
“World hopping…?” she manages. “With admin commands?”
Gem’s laugh is as brilliant as a knife and as sharp as a spark. “False!” she crows. “You say the funniest things.”
False laughs. It seems appropriate. She isn’t sure why.
“Anyway,” Gem continues, fading into one patch of blossoms and reappearing on the other side of it. Her eyes are sprays of cherry flowers now. Her antlers are branches. “Anyway, cherry trees are all the same. They make it easy to get around.”
“That…” doesn’t make sense, False wants to say. But her lips are heavy, and coated in sticky sap. Maybe it doesn’t really matter.
“Oops! Behind you, False!”
Gem’s chirped warning is flaked in glee, and False turns around, as slow as if her feet are buried in soul sand.
The creepers she had seen—the entire sneak—are standing behind her, pink flowers blooming from their eyes.
“Oh no.”
The boar’s blinded head snaps toward her voice, hissing. He starts to aggro, bioluminescent streaks flashing from his snout to flanks in increasingly-swift pulses of light.
“See ya in season ten, False!” Gem cries out cheerfully.
The axe drops from False’s nerveless fingers, trailing strings of sap. She smells the inescapable stench of burning gunpowder, overlaid with rot.
“...Dangit.”
[FalseSymmetry was blown up by a creeper]
~*~
Jerking upright in her own bed, False swipes wildly at her face, trying to smear away tree sap that isn’t there.
“What the heck, Gem?” she exclaims at her empty base. Her voice falls flat, swallowed up by the sky that surrounds her builds. The clock above her head ticks impatiently, and she huffs in frustration, pushing up out of her bed. All her tools, gone—her levels, gone... and after all that she still needs those logs for the vault.
Grumbling, she starts pulling backup gear from various chests, trying to cobble together something that can get her back to the redwood grove before her items despawn—assuming they hadn’t all been obliterated by a second or third creeper explosion. She glances at the vaulter, and freezes.
It’s been completed. The crystal floats gently atop the stone pedestal, gleaming with an inner light.
And, tumbled at the base of the vaulter—abandoned, more than was needed to fill the crystal’s requirements:
Half a stack of cherry logs.
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