#the real horror being in heaven everyone is as cold and hard as the glistering gems and metals around them

[radiosdevil]

ooc: Will admit, one thing I don't like how canon was handled was that Charlie didn't know Vaggie was a former Exterminator before hand. Mostly because it doesn't make sense to me. Like, Vaggie must have the scars on her back from when her wings were viciously ripped off. It's one of the things for this AU I keep in mind all the time, how the placement of wounds or scars or damaged clothes could easily be seen as in Hell. Plus we know Charlie and Vaggie sleep together so you're telling me Charlie never noticed while Vaggie was getting changed or was asleep turned away from her? Vaggie never stopped using her spear as her weapon, it's literally the same one she had as an Exterminator. Did Charlie never think to ask about where a sinner got it when we can assume that those weapons are highly prized and more powerful demons would be doing everything they can to get their hands on them? What about trauma from what was done to Vaggie? Both what we see on screen when Lute and Adam brutalize and abandon her and what we can suspect about how awful Heaven really is?

Hell, even how they met? A common sinner with those injuries after an Extermination when they would have been easily killed? It's possible someone to survive with them, sure, but given how bad she was and out in the open with the swarm of Angels that come down seems really unlikely. (For the record, I don't think that kid Vaggie wanted to avoid killing herself made it.) Vaggie also never fully give up her training either so she'd have the advantage when it came to protecting Charlie. Again, did it just never come up? It's possible but I would think Charlie- even if she didn't want to press on things Vaggie didn't want to talk about- would have brought it up or at least mentioned what she was thinking.

Personally, it would have been more emotionally impactful if Charlie revealed that she already thought so or knew. She just knew Vaggie didn't want to talk about it, or knew how much trauma and damage had been done to Vaggie but she mistook it as guilt and from her fall like her dad had been struggling with. Charlie was horrified not at Vaggie's past but the realization that Adam and Lute- people in theory Vaggie should have been able to trust at least a little- were in fact the ones who left her in the state Charlie found her in when they first met. That no one else in Heaven even came looking for her or even recognized her when they showed up. There's no positive bonds or love in Heaven. That Heaven truly was as awful as her dad and Vaggie tried to warn her about and that even with the amount of proof and good faith she showed them, they never deserved even a fraction of it.

Again, to me, that would have been more impactful and devastating than what we got. Or maybe that'll be what's revealed in the next episode or so but... Yeah, just my take at the moment.