Vaggie didn't let Charlie see her scars, at first.
Not when they first met, because Vaggie certainly wasn't going to bare any part of herself, physical or otherwise, to any stranger in this cruel afterlife. Especially not when she despised the grey strokes scoring her forearms and legs; vivid against her skin.
(Not even if this particular stranger was so kind and earnest that it was hard to be so constantly suspicious.)
Not even when they were still just friends, growing closer by the day.
Vaggie wore long grey gloves up past her elbows, and thigh-length stockings. When she and Charlie spent time together, she turned down activities that would leave her skin exposed (like swimming, orchard picnics in the blazing heat of Hell's summers), and felt guilty afterwards at the maybe-flashes of sadness upon the Princess's face.
Charlie concernedly, repeatedly asked, to the point of pestering:
"It's gonna be really hot today Vaggie, are you sure you want to keep your gloves on?"
"Demons can still get heatstroke and stuff, and there are swimming pools that are actually cool in Hell if you know where to look! Or maybe it's just a perk of being a Princess…"
"It isn't like we had planned to do any gardening today either… but you never know, heh… I mean, I don't mind getting my hands a bit dirty, but if you do, that's okay, more than okay, fine I mean…"
"Charlie, please! I'm fine, with – with gloves on! I don't – I – can you please just drop it?"
That outburst made Charlie look so bewildered and hurt that Vaggie immediately apologized, immediately fearing that she'd pushed away her one friend (who she was starting to crush on) in Hell.
Charlie was good about it all, though. She was very insistent on apologizing for her own part, for being too pushy. She did do her best to drop the whole gloves issue after that.
Vaggie didn't feel like she deserved that forgiveness.
Vaggie hated how the scars had stayed with her even after death. She hated how she could still feel the hot-cold bite of each blade, when it got bad. She hated how all the fucked-up bullshit she went through in life still taunted her now.
She hated that sometimes she still, still felt compelled to take a knife and drag it across her arm.
(Never her harpoon, though. That was holy steel. She didn't want to kill herself.)
(She hadn't wanted to kill herself. Then, as now, she didn't know how to put it into words.)
(She just felt that she had to hurt herself, sometimes.)
