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“There’s the mall, just over there; it’s got a candy shop just inside it that is absolutely amazing. I go in there sometimes when I’m running errands for Sera and try whatever new thing they’ve come up with. There’s candies in every color imaginable! They’ve even got glittery ones!”
Emily’s chatter is bright and unceasing as she leads Charlie through the glittering walkways and sparkling buildings of Heaven’s main city. “And of course, you saw the zoo, but there’s also this really beautiful park nearby that’s got hiking trails for people to walk on, and one of them has an absolutely gorgeous waterfall just off the path. I don’t think we’ll have time to— oh, well, maybe if I fly you! Unless you don’t like being flown around? Some people really hate it if they don’t have wings.”
“Huh?” Charlie doesn’t even realize she’s been asked a question at first, too busy staring around herself in wonderment. “Oh! Flying. No, I don’t mind. Dad did it with me all the time as a kid, so as long as you don’t drop me…”
Emily laughs, ringing and musical. “I wouldn’t drop you, I promise. I really like flying, so I do it a lot.”
“I’d fly everywhere if I had wings. One of my friends at the hotel has wings, but he’s kind of sensitive about them,” Charlie says. “Anyways, that’d be really kind of you to do for me. All of this is. It’s really nice of you to take time out of your day just to show me around.”
“Don’t say it like that,” Emily scolds. “It’s really no trouble. I love talking to new people! And it’s a good reminder for me, too. Sometimes it’s easy to get used to this place.”
Charlie thinks she understands that. She’s trying not to get used to it. It’s not that she hates Hell. It’s her home, after all. Her kingdom, if you want to get really technical about it. But it could be better. Charlie knows it’ll never be the same as Heaven, but…it could be more like it. People could smile and laugh as they walk down the streets, sounds of happiness instead of the screams and wails that so frequently form the background of the average day in Pentagram City as it is now. Charlie smiles at a group of people having some kind of concert off to the side, a loose crowd cheering the unseen players on as they sing a cheerful tune in time to their instruments. She knows that Sinners could be like that, too, if they were only given the chance.
“Okay, I think the waterfall might have to wait until after the meeting,” Emily says, glancing up towards where a small, quaint little clock tower rises above the buildings. “But we can walk through the plaza to the courthouse. There’s a pretty garden there that you might like. Maybe you could take some flowers to take home! They don’t die when you pick them, you know.”
“Really?” Charlie smiles, thinking of maybe taking Emily up on that offer and picking a bouquet for Vaggie. “There’s a species of flower that’s really popular in Hell that looks like a rose with an eye in the middle.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Emily giggles, her wings fluttering in time with her laughter. “That sounds so interesting, though! I wonder if they’d survive here. Sera might be upset about it, but I think it’d be cool to see if I could get them to grow! Any flower is a good flower, in my opinion. Even if it’s a little creepy.”
“Maybe I could give you some.” Charlie’s brain is already making plans. “Hey, that might be fun! We could have a little seed exchange between Heaven and Hell! There’s lots of interesting plants in Gluttony. And the palace has greenhouses, so I could test seeds out there and see what helps them grow best.”
Emily beams, nodding along excitedly. “You’re right, we should do that! After court’s over, I’ll talk to Sera about it. We could probably even get some volunteers for it. Maybe we could have people write letters to each other with the seeds!”
“You’d really be willing to let Sinners write letters to Heaven?” Charlie asks, almost afraid to believe that she’s hearing what she thinks she’s hearing. Is Emily really on her side?
“Of course,” Emily says, tilting her head at Charlie like she’s being silly. “Sinners are human souls too, aren’t they? Even if they have done bad things?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Charlie’s words are so loud that a few people on the sidewalk look at her askance, and she clears her throat and lowers her voice before she continues. “When I talked with Adam, he…ugh. He just acted like everyone down there doesn’t even matter. But I can’t believe that. Just because they ended up down there doesn’t mean they don’t deserve empathy. So they made mistakes — haven’t we all?”
Emily’s expression has gone sober, her wings carrying her just a few inches off the ground as she floats alongside Charlie’s long strides. “That sounds like Adam. But I’m sure Sera will listen to you. She’s strict, sometimes, but she doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. Neither do I. I think that you’re trying to do a really good thing, Charlie. I can’t wait to help out.”
Charlie can’t resist — she throws her arms around Emily and hugs her tight, careful of her wings and relieved when Emily hugs back tightly. Emily is the first person in Heaven to really, truly, sound like she’s actually willing to stand with Charlie. Maybe this really will go okay.
Charlie squeaks in embarrassment and pulls away sheepishly when she feels Emily’s wings shift, realizing that she probably just committed some kind of Heaven faux pas. “Sorry! I just get…um…passionate about this.”
“It’s okay!” Emily says brightly, and she pats Charlie’s shoulder. “I like hugs. Anyways, I’m sure the court will hear you out. The whole point of grace is to help as many people into it as possible.”
“Right.” Charlie feels so buoyed by this conversation that she’s half-sure she will be able to fly on her next few steps. “I…I was honestly really worried. Um, when Dad got me this meeting, he didn’t…well, he didn’t seem super confident.” She sneaks a glance over to Emily, having fallen into step next to her once more. “Did you know him?”
“The Morning Star?” Emily asks. “Not really. I was… Well, it was a long time ago. Age is weird for us. I only kind of remember him. Sera knew him really well, though.”
For all of Emily's bubbliness and excitement, her careful tip-toeing around the elephant — or fallen angel, as it were — in the room seems well-practiced. Charlie hums, thoughts turning to the severe High Seraph and wondering what her relationship to Lucifer was like. Is she who he talked with to get Charlie this meeting? Charlie looks around again, suddenly realizing that this used to be where he lived, ten thousand years ago, before her, before Hell. These glittering streets, the arcs of light in the sky…that was what he knew. It’s not often that she thinks about Lucifer’s Fall, but staring at the beauty around her feels a little funny when she remembers that it’s the same beauty he was thrown from without a second glance.
She’s broken from her little reverie by the sound of Emily’s phone chiming. She looks over in time to see Emily pull it out, read something on her screen, and then frown.
“Something wrong?” Charlie asks.
“No, I just…” Emily huffs, then seems to relax her shoulders and looks up to give Charlie an apologetic smile. “Someone needs me. I really hate to cut this short, but…”
“Oh, no, no, it’s okay.” Charlie rushes to reassure her. “I understand. Trust me, I’ve been there. If I didn’t have Alastor’s help with the hotel, I’d be running around like a chicken with my head cut off.”
“What an interesting phrase,” Emily says, with barely-hidden amusement, and then she looks around. “Well, how about I walk you to the courthouse? I’m going there too, and you can just wait in the atrium for a little bit.”
Charlie’s sad to cut their trip short, but she nods understandingly at Emily. “Sure. Thank you again for taking me around.”
“Anytime,” Emily says, with another radiant smile. “And hopefully, you’ll be able to continue after the meeting. If you’re into gardening, I could go take you to the botanical gardens! Some people think they’re kind of boring, but I love them. All kinds of different plants. And maybe you could see how they compare…”
Emily keeps up a constant stream of bubbly chatter as they cut across a few streets. People wave or bow slightly as Emily passes, and Emily happily curtsies back or gives friendly waves in return. Her enthusiasm is infectious and Charlie's so caught up in it that she barely notices they’ve arrived until Emily’s waving open a set of huge double doors.
The interior of the building that she leads Charlie into is full of gleaming white marble with platinum and gold fixtures, the whole place bathed in multicolored light from stained glass mosaics set up high into the walls near the vaulted ceiling. Hushed chatters reflect off the smooth surfaces, groups of angels scattered around, many holding tablets or papers as they walk to and fro or sit and talk at one of the tables situated in strategic spots around the room.
Emily leads Charlie up the small flight of stairs to the raised main floor, hallways branching off in just about every direction. Some of the signs on the doors and walkways are in a language that Charlie can’t read, and it takes her a moment to realize why — Enochian, which she’s only ever heard from Lucifer, haunting lullabies that coaxed her to sleep when she was young. Most of them seem to have translations, though. Maybe only older angels speak that? She's about to ask Emily, but she waves to someone before turning back to Charlie.
“I’m down that hall. You’re okay with waiting here for a bit, right? It shouldn’t take too long, and nobody will bother you. They all know you’re with me.”
Charlie nods. “That’s fine. Thanks again.”
“Of course. I’ll see you soon!” Emily turns and picks herself a little higher up off the floor to fly gracefully down one of the halls, disappearing around a corner a moment later and leaving Charlie in the quiet bustle of the atrium.
Charlie wanders towards the wall first, looking over a few little pedestals with various artifacts on them: an antique, cracked harp and a small basket woven of reeds, not really taking in the writing on the plaques and trying to look inconspicuous. Despite what Emily said, she still feels a little out of place, her crimson suit sticking out like an open wound in this kingdom of pastels and shimmer. Maybe she should call Vaggie and see where she is… Vaggie probably wouldn’t be any more comfortable than she is, but hey, at least they could be uncomfortable together.
Charlie has almost made up her mind about that when she turns, looking over the room again, and her eyes catch on the floor-to-ceiling stained glass window that’s set into the back wall. She thought it was just a sunrise or something equally as bright and airy at first, but now that she’s on the main floor, she can see the whole thing.
Charlie drifts closer, barely remembering to watch where she's walking as she comes to stand directly in front of it. It fades from tones of blue and gold at the top to deep gray at the bottom, casting little beams of shifting light on the white marble floor. Near the ceiling, silhouettes are inlaid in crystal, fractal rainbows dancing through them when the light hits. The one in front is undoubtedly Sera, her halo and wings outlined in gold, which probably means that the ones behind her are the other Seraphim, their halos similarly golden and shining so bright that Charlie has to blink a few times to get the gleaming afterimages off the back of her eyes.
Just below the angels is an arc of spears, set in the same crystalline white as the background fades to gray. Six of them, all pointing down towards the figure cast in shades of red and inky black, outstretched wings and a shattered halo outlined in white as they try to claw their way back up from the darkness.
It’s not a sunrise. Not even close. It’s Lucifer’s Fall, because what else would it be?
That funny sort of sick feeling returns as Charlie recognizes it, depicted so lovingly in these pieces of glass, casting such beautiful colors. Charlie doesn’t really know the specifics of what happened that day. She asked Lilith once when she was younger, and Lilith hummed sadly and told her that she was thrown down first and never got Lucifer to tell her what, exactly, they did to him before they pushed him over the edge. Truthfully, Charlie tries not to think about it, but sometimes she finds herself staring out at Pentagram City from the balcony of the hotel and silently wondering why there’s a smooth crater in the otherwise endless spikes of Pride.
It doesn’t take specifics, Charlie thinks. Her and Lucifer’s relationship might still be a little fragile, their fresh start a little shaky, but she knows for certain that his Fall changed him, and not for the better. He said it himself: Heaven crushed him. Literally, it seems, if the twisted, awkward angles of his wings in this weren’t just a liberty taken by the artist. Charlie doesn’t even have wings, but her back still aches in sympathy at the thought. Even from her point of view, the outstretch of his hand feels desperate, and she shudders to think about what kind of person would watch an angel Fall as impassively as the Seraphim depicted above.
Charlie looks around herself, trying to see if anyone else is acknowledging what she’s looking at. No one is. Everyone else passes by like it's no more exciting or interesting than the wall that it's set into.
“Stunning work, isn’t it?” A voice asks smoothly, and Charlie whirls to see Sera, appearing as if from out of thin air. At Charlie’s look, the High Seraph smiles. “My apologies, Princess Morningstar of the Seven Rings. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It's…um, it's fine.” Charlie clears her throat, tugging awkwardly at the hem of her jacket and suddenly feeling like she's underdressed. “And you can just call me Charlie.”
Having someone call her by her title sets her on edge at the best of times, and it feels…heavier, almost, when it's Sera saying it, her voice taking on some ancient, unfathomable coldness around the words. Charlie’s skin prickles uncomfortably as Sera comes to stand next to her, folding her hands behind her back primly. Even just being next to the High Seraph has the hairs on the back of Charlie’s neck standing up and her horns and tail threatening to slip free of their glamor.
“There was a need for commemoration, of course,” Sera says, Charlie’s discomfort either unseen or simply so unremarkable that Sera feels no need to acknowledge it. “The plaque was added later.”
Charlie starts — she hadn’t noticed the plaque set into the floor at her feet before now. The first passage is in Enochian, but her eyes skip down a few lines and find words that she can read.
May all who hunger for Power and Pride heed this warning: by the Glory of the Divine was the Morning Star, Son of the Dawn, cast from the Heavens, to live without Hope.
“I often thought that there should be a matching one above the doors for your mother,” Sera muses. “It does feel cruel to separate them, doesn’t it?”
Charlie’s stomach does an uncomfortable flip, and the desperate urge for Emily to come back is tempered only by the anger starting to kindle in her chest. She opens her mouth to retort, but Sera cuts her off.
“Of course, I imagine you know all about separation, hm?” Sera looks down at her, face carefully placid. “How long now has Lilith been absent? Seven years, was it?”
The hostile defense of her parents that Charlie was formulating dies on her tongue, and instead, all she can ask is, “How do you know that?”
Sera laughs, and despite sounding just as clear and beautiful as Emily’s, it brings Charlie none of the same joy. “My brother and I do talk. How else would he have gotten you this meeting?”
“Wait, brother?” Charlie’s brain stutters to a rather screeching halt that would probably have sent her sprawling had she been moving. “You’re my dad’s sister?”
“I am a sister to every angel,” Sera says, turning back to the window. “But you may consider us Seraphim to be…cut from the same cloth, as it were. Lucifer and I are among the oldest. Fallen and disgraced though he may be, he is still my brother.” She gives Charlie a look out of the corner of her eye. “Which I suppose makes you my niece.”
A few hours ago, Charlie would have been thrilled to have a connection like that to call on with the leader of Heaven. Now, though, something in Sera’s tone makes Charlie want to shudder. She only manages not to by tugging at her blazer again and looking back up towards the window. Think positive. Be tactful. Charlie clears her throat and tries to think of something to say that won’t kill her plan before she even gets into the courtroom.
“So you were there?” Is what rises from her throat instead, and Charlie regrets the question as soon as she asks it. She doesn’t want to know, doesn’t need to know, doesn’t want this anger inside her to burn any brighter, but she refuses to backtrack and show Sera a weak point in this battle of wills they’ve seemingly slipped into.
Sera’s expression is almost impossibly neutral. “Of course I was.” For a moment, her voice seems to soften with something that’s close to pity, and Charlie wonders if perhaps her earlier hostility was unwarranted. Sera continues, “Does he not speak of it?”
Obviously, Charlie’s earlier hostility wasn’t unwarranted, if Sera’s asking stupid questions like that. Angry disbelief surges in her chest as she stares at the window and imagines Sera’s cold, cold eyes watching Lucifer as he tumbled into the darkness. She’s pretty sure Lucifer would rather die than talk about it. There’s no hiding the scowl on her face, and she crosses her arms over her chest.
“No.”
Sera hums, not quite sad but somewhere close. “Perhaps he does not remember it well. That may be for the best. It was quite difficult for his siblings to watch. Sometimes I wish I could forget him as he has forgotten us.”
Charlie’s temper spikes far past the threshold of what she’s willing to tolerate, and she turns to glare at Sera. “How dare you? Difficult for you? You threw him and Mom from the fucking sky! He tried to forget you because you tried to break him!”
As soon as the words leave Charlie’s mouth, Sera’s face goes cool and stern, disappointment splintering her overwhelming aura into little sharp-edged shards that prick Charlie’s skin. But underneath that royal, holier-than-thou disappointment is something else, something that feels disturbingly smug, and Charlie wishes, not for the first time, that she was a little better at shutting up, because she’s pretty sure she just played right into Sera’s hands. This isn’t going to help her make her case and she knows it, but this is wrong. Charlie’s never going to hand either of her parents any awards for their work raising her, but she’s not going to let Sera talk about them like this, either.
“You speak so confidently of a moment you know nothing about.” Sera’s voice could freeze the entire Wrath ring into a glacier. “I should hope that’s not how you plan to structure your arguments in front of my court.”
Charlie bites down on her tongue with the tip of a fang to avoid saying anything, thinking back to Emily’s words. She said that Sera was strict, but didn’t like to see people get hurt. Bitterly, Charlie wonders if Lucifer counts as a person to the Seraphim. Besides, obviously Sera’s fine with Adam and his Exorcists coming down to slaughter every Sinner in their path. Charlie suddenly feels like she needs to crawl out of her own skin, wanting to stand up somewhere and demand answers for why everyone here is so happy and content to let Sinners suffer because they fucked up a few times. Are all angels like Adam — rules for everyone else, but not for them? Charlie fights not to growl. No. They can’t be. Emily seemed legitimately hopeful. Maybe this is just a weird test on Sera’s part to see if Charlie’s even worth her time.
“Dad was a dreamer.” Charlie stares at the window, the silhouette of Lucifer, all six of his wings spread and one hand upraised, his halo splintered around his head. She hopes that’s artistic license. “He might have gone about it wrong, but—”
“Lucifer was a naïve idealist,” Sera says coldly. “There is a difference. Creation has rules, child, and there is one rule above all: order. It was thanks to his asinine meddling that order was broken, and we have spent the last ten thousand years trying to set it straight. You say the system could be better. Perhaps it could. But order is a fragile, delicate thing, and one wrong move could send Creation itself splintering at the seams.”
Charlie’s mouth moves before her brain has time to catch up. “If the system is so fragile, then maybe it’s just a shitty system.”
Sera’s eyes narrow, and after a pause, she says, “You remind me very much of Lucifer.”
Charlie raises her chin defiantly. “Thank you.”
“That was not a compliment.”
“I know.”
Sera seems to gather herself, because her shoulders relax slightly before settling back into a regal line, and she brushes her hands over her feathery hair before folding them in front of herself and giving Charlie a haughty look. “You have so much of your father’s potential, Daughter of the Morning Star. For your sake, I hope you did not also inherit his arrogance.”
There’s a swish of wings, a flash of gold, and then Sera is gone, leaving Charlie with nothing but a vague feeling of dread and the sense that she should probably hug her dad next time she sees him.