Once Vaggie's come back down from taking Charlie to the room they share and putting her to bed, after Charlie explained the situation about Lilith, Lucifer, the two of them splitting up, and Lilith being gone for seven straight years, she finds Calliope playing the old piano with Alastor leaning against the nearby wall while Angel Dust and Husk watch the pair from the bar and Niffty sweeps the floor while making her way to the kitchen. And the look on Alastor's face…he's always smiling, she knows that. But he's tracking every move Calliope makes with his gaze, and the only two options Vaggie can think of are either Alastor is looking to make a deal with her for her soul…or he's interested in her.
She's not sure which is more unsettling, in all honesty - Alastor has never seemed like one for feelings.
Calli's voice floats over, pulling Vaggie out of her thoughts, singing "When the world's crashin' down When I fall and hit the ground I will turn myself around Don't you try to stop me I, I won't cry I'll play the game, but I can't stay I've got my head on straight, and I'm not gonna change I'm not gonna change…" Vaggie clears her throat, and Calli cuts off at once. "Oh, thank Fate you're here. You here about me healing your eye? Or to talk about the shite-show that is Charlie's parents?" Honestly, she was playing the piano more so Charlie would fall asleep than anything else.
Vaggie blinks, then says "Honestly, I've gotten used to my eye being gone. I can wait a few more hours on it. What do you know about Charlie's parents?"
Calli sighs, closing the piano, and says "I knew them from long before they were banished here. When this world first came to be, I was there. I knew the original angels, and most of them were a pack of jerks. And, frankly, boring ones - they wanted to stick with what they had, what they could control. Or, at least, what they thought they could control. One angel, though, he was different."
Angel Dust says "Lucifer."
Calli nods, saying "Charlie gets her idealism from him, that apple fell straight at the tree's roots. Lucifer was the dreamer of Heaven, he could see so many ways things could be better, all these ways everything could be the best they could. The rest of the angels, though, they didn't want to listen. They mocked his ideas, his dreams, and made him watch from the sidelines as they created the world the way they wanted."
Alastor gives a static-filled hum, and says "Well, that sounds rather boring, honestly."
"It was. After a while, he and I became friends and I supported him. I listened to his ideas, encouraged him…and then I introduced him to Lilith, with her wild, rebellious spirit and her determination to forge her own path, and the man was gone from that moment on."
Husk hums, saying "Love at first sight, huh?"
Calli smiles nostalgically, saying "It was, I could see it."
Angel Dust incredulously asks "You introduced them?!"
"When she and Adam came to be, Adam opened his big mouth and fucked things up. Lilith told him to pound sand, he didn't like that and backhanded her. I knocked him out, took her to where I was were staying, and healed her face. Lucifer happened to be there at the time."
Vaggie says "Given the detail that her choices were Lucifer, you, and Adam…"
Angel Dust promptly blows his drink out of his nose, and Calli chuckles under her breath before saying "You have a point. Even so, they hung the moon and stars for each other. Quite literally, in Lucifer's case, as he created the constellations for her. She'd think up a constellation, he'd make it - they must've made hundreds of shapes in the sky like that, galaxies, the sky was their canvas and imagination the limit. I can show you, if you'd like."
Alastor leans forward, asking "You can show us, Ma Chère? Do tell."
"I can make illusions, anything I can imagine. Replaying a memory is easy." Calli turns, and waves her hand like she's waving away the entire room - following the motion of her hand, the whole room seems to change in a wave of color. Suddenly, everyone's standing in a field of grass late one night…and there's no stars in the sky.
Vaggie instinctively reaches for her spear, asking "What?"
Angel and Husk look around, Angel asking "Uh, yeah, what is this?"
Calli says "Relax, it's an illusion, nothing more. We're still in the hotel."
Husk says "This is, without question, the most detailed and realistic illusion I've ever seen. And I've seen my fair share."
Everybody's attention gets taken when three figures come into view, and a floating fireball appears to reveal Calliope - looking identical to how she does now, guess she really doesn't age - right along with a man that looks like an exact replica of Charlie and another woman that can only be Lilith if the near-literal heart eyes Lucifer is making at her are any indication.
"Ahh," past-Calliope sighs, stretching out onto the grass, "this is the life. No prissy angels, no sodding tosspots, just the three of us and the wide-open world!"
Lucifer and Lilith stare up at the starless night sky, the moon looking gigantic in the emptiness, and Lilith asks "You said there were stars in your old world, Calli?"
Past-Calliope nods, saying "Loads of them, though I watched as they disappeared one by one so there were probably hundreds more I didn't know about."
Lucifer's expression suddenly lights up, and he asks "If you could see any shape up there, my wild flower, what would you want it to be?"
Lilith hums, staring up at the blank sky, and eventually says "A cat, like Calli described. Let it play with the big ball in the sky."
Past-Calliope laughs in delight, and says "You know, some parents would tell their kids the moon was made of cheese back in my old world. You want to make some galaxies to?" The illusion ends with the three friends staring up at a gorgeous night sky, filled with brilliant stars and colorful galaxies.
Once the hotel is back in sight, Angel Dust incredulously asks "What the here happened to them between then and now?!"
"I don't know!" Calli pinches the bridge of her nose, fixing the crack in the floor her magic just made, and says "I don't know, alright? Aside from Heaven, anyway. They were constantly belittling him, mocking his ideas, telling him it was all a waste of time. I defended him, but…I'm not like them, having existed before any of them came to be, and they all knew it at least on some level. My words don't carry any weight up in the attic, even if my wrath does. Getting banished to Hell nearly broke Lucifer altogether. Lils and I did what we could, I'd tell him stories of what was going on up in the mortal realm, but…he could only pick out the worst parts. I'd tell him about ecology groups trying to save the rainforest, he'd focus on the bit that the rainforest is dying. When I had to leave to help D, back when Charlie was still so young and they were together, I left him and Lils my number. Twice, each. Neither of them had phones back then, but they were just starting out in the mortal world. I told them - especially Lils - to get a phone each, and call me if they needed me. I'd drop everything, Fate could just be entertained with Heaven's idiocy or some such if Luci was spiraling again, and D would understand. But…I never heard anything."
Alastor says "So, you'd thought that, between Charlie and Lilith, everything was alright."
Calli nods, swiping angrily at her eyes, and says "And now I learn she left him not long after I had to leave, never called - and Lucifer won't pick up my calls, I've tried ten times and it always goes to voicemail!" She stopped calling thirty minutes ago, before Vaggie took Charlie to bed, and he still hasn't called her back.
Maybe he's sleeping, maybe he's eating, maybe his phone is dead…maybe he's in a depressed funk and can't even scrape together the will to look at his phone when someone's calling - and she's willing to bet it's the last one, in all honesty. She'd go over and visit - probably drag him over to the hotel, honestly - but neither she nor Charlie knows where in Hell he is.
And he's the one everyone's sure is still in Hell, since Lilith up and vanished - at least Lucifer has called Charlie in the past, most recently asking her to deal with the visit from Heaven's 'Ambassador.'
Glancing at her hand when she feels cold glass appear in it, she finds there's a glass of Firewhiskey there - Calli considers it for a moment, remembering how the burn and getting drunk could distract her for a brief time, but ultimately Vanishes the drink. Downing a drink or two might seem like a good idea, just like it did when she was left all alone after everyone she loved was dead, but it won't help anything. Her getting drunk won't help Charlie with the hotel, it won't help Lucifer with his obvious depression, and it most definitely won't help stop Adam and his Exorcists from 'Exterminating' Pride Ring's citizens.
And, with Carmilla Carmine's admission of killing an Exorcist - to protect her daughters, though she didn't say as much, didn't even indicate that the two younger ladies were anything more than assistants or important employees of hers - she's willing to bet the Exorcists will Exterminate all of Pride Ring's Sinner citizens instead of just whoever they can find. Nobody needs her drunk right now, no matter how appealing forgetting all her worries might be.
"You know," Alastor says, "Zestial was telling me about a few of the legends surrounding you before you came out. Did you really kill eight Overlords at once?"
Calli chuckles a bit, and says "They started it, and it was long before Charlie was born. Fate decided it'd be a good idea to have my portal to Hell open up at the far side of Pride Ring that time, and I suppose someone saw me. Word spread quickly enough, even without me flying over to the palace. I'm out to get some food, when suddenly I'm dragged into an alleyway and see ten of the ugliest demons you've ever seen. They were going to see if angels could be killed, having mistaken my magic for Angelic energy. Two were cowards and cut and run when I blew up the first three and cut a fourth's head off with the sword I can manifest…and the other four didn't last long after."
Husk deadpans "Fuck, that was you?! That horror story of eight Overlords being dismembered and disintegrated?"
Alastor asks "Truly?"
"No shit, everyone avoided that alleyway like someone dumped a gallon of Holy Water all over the place for years afterwards! Still do!"
Calli shrugs, saying "Yeah, that was me. Why?"
Vaggie clears her throat, then nervously says "I really don't want to sound like a broken record, but…"
Calli snaps her fingers, saying "Right! Your eye!" A chair appears in front of her, the single most opulent chair anyone's ever seen before, and Calli scowls at it before flatly saying "I do not need to be that showy around my favorite niece's friends and girlfriend."
Vaggie eyes the incredibly ornate piece of furniture, and asks "Making incredibly fancy things is the norm for you?"
Calli waves a hand at the chair, changing it to a much more toned-down version - a dark wooden chair with fancy carvings in the whole piece, soft-looking cushions on the seat and back, instead of bright gold and looking like even a king wasn't fit to sit in it - and says "Hermione theorized it was something to do with making up for my childhood. Or maybe some subconscious desire to make anyone and everyone think twice about turning on me yet again. Whether that's true or not, the very conscious part of me just finds it really ridiculous half the time when I try to do a simple repairing spell and my magic turns everything newer and better than it all was before."
Alastor raises an eyebrow, saying "How very interesting, do tell."
Calli says "It loses its appeal about the tenth time you try to repair someone's house and turn it into a small mansion. You remember that room I accidentally broke?" At Alastor's nod, she says "Hope you guys all like vaulted ceilings…or at least don't mind them. Or you have another room, if you do, because my magic put them in. I've got an…interesting working relationship with magic, let's say."
The first very noticeable sign that something was very different about her magic was the time she and Bill Weasley went to try and fix the Hogwarts Wards after the final battle. She put a hand on it, trying to feel if there was any magic left in it to work with…and the two of them both got thrown backwards by a wave of magic so powerful it practically lit up the Wards around Hogwarts. When they woke up four hours later…the school was completely repaired, all the Curse damage had been reversed - the magic of which was absorbed by the Wards to strengthen themselves, amazingly enough - there was a rather large pile of dangerous artifacts piled up neatly in the courtyard, several 'missing' Death Eaters unconscious and tied up, the Room of Requirement had been restored, the Forbidden Forest now had a barrier preventing those under the age of sixteen from entering - they even found the remaining few of Aragog's children trapped behind powerful Wards after several weeks of frantic searching.
And Calli didn't think she'd ever seen Bill so angry, before or after, as when she had to tell him all she did was touch the stone and she had no idea how every single change she had in mind to the Wards had suddenly spontaneously happened plus much more. Even more, it quickly became apparent the next year that no more spells could actually be cast outside of designated classrooms, which likely saved the lives of several Slytherins - the spells would just dissipate maybe six inches away from the caster's wand. The head of the school, plus the students' Heads of Houses, would then be notified of the fight and informed exactly what had transpired by the Wards themselves, instead of them going off hearsay. The more dangerous plants in Herbology had been Warded from being able to attack the other students, the stairs spontaneously became impossible to trip on if you didn't hit a trick stair, and now there were signs for how to get to the correct classrooms.
No Runic Arrays, no Ward Scheme…just Calli Potter and what she thought would make Hogwarts safer. And, unknown to everyone until she and Bill woke up…her wildly reactive magic that was all too eager to make it all a reality.
Once Vaggie's sitting down in the chair, Calli puts a hand to the side of her head and says "This is probably going to hurt." That's all the warning Vaggie gets before her face suddenly erupts in agony, and her two hands get caught in a strong grip before she can even get them up to the hand on her face.
It's a solid ten minutes later before Vaggie's cries and fuitless struggling cease, and when Calliope takes her hands away….Vaggie immediately jerks her head to the side, both now-free hands coming up to shield her face from the light. "Argh! It hurts! Wait…" Vaggie slowly lowers her eyes, hissing and squinting in the light, but slowly says "I…I can see!"
Glancing at Calli, one hand covering her new eye protectively, Vaggie hesitantly asks "You wouldn't happen to be able to fix my wings to…would you?" It's a long shot at best, true, but she just regrew an eyeball. It's worth asking.
Calli purses her lips, and says "Wings are…tricky, Vaggie. They're magical in origin, rather than physical like your eye. If they haven't grown back all this time, then there's a reason for it. When they were originally ripped out, you were heavily injured. Manifesting them would've taken too big a toll on your body. But now…you can't get even a single feather?"
Vaggie shakes her head, saying "I tried. I tried dozens of times, back before I met Charlie. Eventually…I gave up. And you can't heal them either…"
Calli puts a hand on Vaggie's shoulder, and says "It sounds like some wound on your spirit, corny as the phrase sounds. Emotional or mental, rather than physical." Having spent literal centuries around Lucifer and Lilith, as well as decades before Lilith came to be with just Lucifer, she knows how Angels' bodies work. Their wings are manifested from magic, if Vaggie still can't fly...it's highly likely there's something holding her back or that she's missing.
After a long moment, Alastor says "It's getting late, we should all head up to bed. Miss Calli, might I show you to one of the empty rooms?" Husker, Angel Dust, and Vaggie all watch with their jaws lying on the floor as Alastor links his arm through Calliope's like a southern gentleman would and leads her upstairs.
Angel Dust asks "You saw that, right?"
Husk says "I saw it, I just don't believe it." In all the years he's known Alastor - too many, in his opinion - he's never seen the Radio Demon act this way.
Vaggie says "Fuuuck…alright, guys, give me a shot of whatever it is you're having. I need it now, and not just for the headache."