Chapter Text
Vox, what the FUCK have you gotten yourself into?
Vox wished he had an answer for the voice in his head. Slouched over, elbows on his knees with a cigarette between two fingers, staring blankly at the flatscreen in his living room, he watched the news without intaking the information. Turf wars. New product announcements, his products of course. Extermination preparations. Petty celebrity squabbles. The usual schlock. Their worlds, the ones belonging to the sinners outside, those kept turning. His world had been turned upside down because of one stupid, head-up-his-ass, truly braindead decision, and he really only had himself to blame.
An empty carton of Chinese food was beginning to get gooey, starting to stick to his glass-top coffee table. His cup of coffee was cold. His cigarette was almost entirely burned to embers, an unbroken line of ash clinging desperately on before it hit the sculpted rug that made up the majority of his little living corner in his penthouse. The extra food he’d ordered had been packed away into his fridge, after some economical energy-drink-Tetris to free up the space. The bag the food had been delivered in stood on the counter, back-lit by the lights over his oven. Almost accusatory. He never ordered enough to need a bag that big, not while he was on his own.
He replayed the events of the last several hours in his mind, rubbing a hand over his screen, mindful of the claws that could easily pierce the film.
Okay, so, seeing a pair of feet sticking out of a dumpster was not uncommon. It was Hell. People got murdered, like, a lot. Nobody else seemed to care about it, despite the fact it was damn obvious someone had dumped a corpse in the trash in the middle of the goddamned day. Again, Hell, murder, it came hand in hand. Vox wasn’t even sure why he noticed the shoes to begin with, he had picked up a box of donuts at eight o’clock post meridiem for ‘a meeting’ (see: to eat by himself) when they caught his eye. His first thought had been, Damn, there goes my appetite.
His second thought had been, Are those deer tracks?
Fuck, sure looked like it from here. Size 14 wingtip boots, black and red, with cloven hooves imprinted on the bottom. Like a certain pair he was so familiar with. But that wasn’t possible, because Alastor was dead.
Alastor had died six months ago. Vox knew that, he’d filmed the whole damn thing live from his multitude of drones spread across the city, always watching. He had seen the entire happy-go-lucky, power of friendship rainbow barf-fest from the safety of the Extermination bunker with the other Vees. No, no, Alastor had died, to Adam of all people! He had melted into shadows, turned tail and run away.
At first, Vox thought he’d just escaped, somewhere safe, but the hours of silence turned to days, weeks, and then the truth slowly trickled in. Death need not be immediate, it could be a long, drawn out affair, over the course of days if one was unlucky. Angelic steel could poison your blood, slowly sap your strength until you succumbed to the injury. It was fitting, he told himself, that the deer demon had limped away with a hole in his chest and bled out alone, just like the animal he was.
Even still, the knowledge that Alastor wasn’t coming back, that he really had kicked it this time, had sent him into a month-long rage. Now that he had no rival, what was the point, he’d said, words falling upon the apathetic ears of business partners who only saw expansion. Yes, expansion was nice, but it was less fun when there was no Alastor to fight with every so often. The Radio Demon had died for his friends, what a headline! It had taken a full day for the public to even begin to swallow the idea, but now, everyone in hell was aware. The Radio Demon was dead.
After his tantrum, Vox, loathe as he was to accept it, had come to stomach that truth. Somehow, those pansies at the newly-rebuilt Hazbin Hotel were more important than eternity at the top. What a loser. What a schmuck. Yadda yadda, roll credits.
So why did he check the shoes? Why did he bother? Why was it him? Why did he have to be the one that stopped, the only one that did, to check the trash where this poor, unlucky sop had been dumped? Vox even had the foresight to give his donuts away to the first person who would take them, caught some rando with a timepiece for a head and shoved the box in their hands. “Hey, you’re the first lucky winner of Free Donut Day , be sure to tell your friends! VoxTech, trust us with your happiness!” He’d said, before promptly walking backwards into the alley as an honest to god brawl erupted, right there on the concrete, only marginally goaded by hypnosis.
The public was a feral, savage creature that loved free shit. Vox knew that and took advantage of it regularly, because the public also loved to fight over said free shit, and it made perfect entertainment on a boring day. He went unnoticed by the pack of sinners scrambling over the donuts as he stepped back, heeled loafers sloshing through a puddle that he would rather not identify. As he approached the dumpster, his internal systems kicked on. Sure smelled like something dead, or at least that’s what his sensors said, but he’d had to actually turn his head to get a real sense of what he was looking at. Part of him knew what he’d find. The rest was giving him a thousand reasons, ten thousand reasons, why what he was doing was idiotic at best and reputation-damaging at worst.
An Overlord, digging through the garbage!? The fuck is wrong with you?
He’s dead, Vox, you know that. You saw him die.
A million people have boots with animal tracks on them. Velvette released something around ten whole collections. Wild Stepz, remember?
What if you get caught? Think about your reputation!
That’s not him.
That can’t be him.
Vox felt the tangle of wires and circuitry that made up his heart skip a beat, before the voltage regulator wrangled it back under control and stemmed the flow of epinephrine that was beginning to pour out of his adrenal gland. One eye kept on the bloodbath that had grown to eclipse the alleyway’s entrance, he lifted the lid of the dumpster, just by an inch. Just to make sure this wasn’t some silly cosplayer, a time bomb, any number of things that someone could’ve stuffed into a body double of fucking Alastor, but no. He wasn’t that lucky. He wasn’t so lucky as to be getting pranked by Velvette, wasn’t fortunate enough to find some weird freak wearing Al’s clothes.
It was him.
That was Alastor.
Vox sucked in a breath.
Shiiiittttt.
Vox, the Television Overlord, part of the three Vees, was stuck between a donut shop and a clothing outlet. A riot had eaten all of the street at this point. And his greatest rival was three quarters dead in a fucking dumpster. Anyone else would've walked away.
Instead, his next action was to call a car, a black car with heavily tinted windows that specialized in discretion according to the blurb on their profile, to arrive in the back alley that this one fed into. The driver was told to book it if he wanted extra pay, and Vox heard the rev of the engine three blocks over. He remembered thinking to himself, even then, that this was now or never. There would be no coming back from this.
And yet, Vox still hoisted the unconscious body of his rival Overlord over his shoulders, only minorly thrown off by the weight, and scuttled into the dark. If he’d waited, put more than two seconds of thought into his actions, he wouldn’t have done this. Even another second and he might have lost his nerve. The smart course of action would’ve been to drag Alastor out by the back of his tattered overcoat and blow his damned head off in public view, as a show of strength, of power. Alastor wouldn’t be making a comeback, it would say. Miraculous resurrection or not, he would not be coming back. Hindsight made these thoughts all the sweeter, too.
So bundling Alastor into the back of the van when it pulled up, handing the driver a stack of cash, and telling him to floor it and shut the fuck up, well. The logical part of him clicked its tongue on its coffee break.
Once his capacitors recharged from that impromptu deadlift, hauling a two hundred pound body into the low seat of an SUV, Vox flicked his screen back on and continued to shut down the thoughts that wondered what the hell he was doing. Instead, he gave the driver an angry glare for staring in his rearview, and when the eyes averted themselves, started his shaky hands towards Alastor.
He’d never actually… Touched, the Radio Demon before. Their fights were brutal and fought with powers, shadow tendrils and arcs of electricity. Fisticuffs wasn’t his style, nor was it Alastor’s. For a moment, all Vox could do was stare, hesitating, still doubting himself. Alastor seemed hurt, yes, he had to be if he was out cold like this, but was this an over reaction? He was breathing, if shakily, his chest rising and falling under the layers of fabric that made up his ensemble. His hand started and stopped, inching closer and closer, nerves prickling over the back of his neck. He'd wanted to throttle Alastor not even six months ago. Had leapt on a table and proclaimed that watching him die was 'better than sex'. Had thrown the fit of an age when he seemingly slunk off to live another day.
Steeling himself, Vox laid the pads of two fingers to his neck to check his pulse.
He was hot and clammy to the touch, damp from sweat or trash juice, Vox wasn't sure. His heart, as far as Vox could detect, was pumping blood. His pulse was slow, and thready, but there. When he went to tuck his limbs back in, the temperature sensors on his hands helpfully informed him that Alastor's extremities were icy in comparison, and hell, Vox was not a doctor but he figured that was probably bad.
“Step on it,” he growled to the driver, who did just that. Good thing most Vrive drivers had No-Fault insurance, otherwise Vox didn’t even want to think about the amount of money he was going to have to pay to clean up after this little stunt. More than the industrial grade windshield wipers were worth, that was for sure. Distantly, he noted the VoxTech branding on the wipers that were swiftly clearing the blood and viscera of unlucky pedestrians off the glass, and felt the teeniest touch smug. The rest of the ride was spent oscillating wildly between different types of panic until he reached his destination.
He instructed the driver to park at the back of the V Tower, and with a little pulse of hypnosis out of his good eye, to wait there for a special consolation package, courtesy of VoxTech Enterprises!
God, the game show host voice was really starting to clog up his throat. Vox dragged Alastor out of the car, over his shoulder, and fried the cameras he had out here as preemptive damage control.
After that it was a series of dodging backstage technicians belonging to him and his comrades, more blasts of hypnosis to convince everyone they’d seen jack shit nothing and certainly not him dragging a corpse that looked like Alastor up to his penthouse, and a rather undignified skitter to the service elevator. Val was out at some slutty networking party, Velvette was at the same party but for different reasons, and Vox had claimed he would be ‘tied up in meetings’ as an excuse not to see Val. He wished he’d gone to that stupid event because then he wouldn’t have gotten donuts, wouldn’t have found Alastor, and this would not have been happening.
Velvette did say his sweet tooth habit was going to be the end of him. Vox just didn’t expect it like this.
Once he made it to the lift, he had a moment to take off his hat and fan himself with it, leaning against the wall to alleviate some of the burn in his back and shoulders. Vox really had meant to start hitting the gym again, but then he’d broken up with Val, and as usual, his life blew up. The pity party was momentary, Alastor stirred on his shoulder then slumped into a heap, and Vox's thoughts shattered to pieces again and fell back into the void of background processing.
Vox flew out of the elevator the moment the doors opened and half-jogged down the hall, trying not to jostle Alastor more than was necessary. V Tower was one glorified advertisement on most of the floors. The faces of Vox, Valentino, and Velvette were plastered everywhere. Posters and flyers for events, products, and events to promote said products were pasted all over the walls, in some places three or four layers deep. The seedy underbelly that made up the maintenance halls was only a little different, that being dusty, industrial, and dirty. The only reprieve Vox had found was his own penthouse.
The other two Vees may have loved to look at themselves all day every day, but Vox preferred a simpler aesthetic. Black tile floors with runner rugs led up to his door, the pervasive cream color of the wallpaper infecting his outer hall. He pressed his palm to the identification pad, let it scan the RFID chip implanted into what passed for his flesh, and slammed the door behind him as quickly as he was able.
He made it to his guest room, dumped Alastor into a bed, and promptly had another panic attack when the fool stopped breathing on him for a minute. Vox summoned two emergency nurses, paced in his living room outside, then informed them when they arrived that not a word was to be spoken about what they saw. Vox provided them with a change of clothes for Alastor, his own clothes as a matter of fact, and told them they would be compensated heavily and rewarded for discretion.
Then he went downstairs and killed the driver.
It wouldn’t stick, his gun was loaded with simple lead slugs without a hint of angelic power, but hypnosis had wiped the last hour of the sinner’s life and the murder would just double-back and make sure he didn’t remember shit. More goons to clean up the car and dump it in a landfill somewhere, sweet Jesus, was this beginning to get expensive, and another slog up the fucking stairs this time, because maintenance was using their elevator and he wasn’t going out in the lobby right now. The reporters were circling like sharks at every hour, and with both the other Vees due to return at some point tonight, they were especially bloodthirsty. He hadn’t yet had the thought that he should’ve just killed Alastor in gruesome, flashy fashion, but the logical part of him was walking back to its desk now, lighting a stogie as it did. It would hit soon.
When he came up the stairs, the nurses were standing in his foyer. A peek in the door, and he saw that Alastor had been cleaned up of the garbage residue, redressed, and fucking tucked in to bed of all things. His stained, ratty clothes were folded and placed, neatly, on top of a plastic bag to preserve the fabric of the cushioned window seat that the room boasted. They had even cleaned up the blood and trash that had dripped all over his tile. Vox was impressed, he really couldn’t have done any better himself! He told the two girls that with a sharp smile. They were twins, one with pigtails, one with a ponytail, in candy striped colors. They looked like Velvette. Smiled like her, too.
He promptly killed them as well, though he had the foresight to walk them out into the hall before he did that. Shit, today was expensive in men and money. Vox wired their bank accounts two grand each, for the inconvenience of murder, and to fulfill the ‘See Nothing, Say Nothing’ clause in their contracts. Every employee was liable to be killed at any time, though if it wasn’t justified, they would be compensated. Made it easier to handle little hiccups like this. He dispatched another cleaning crew to deal with the mess outside his penthouse’s door, removed his overcoat, and loosened his tie before he collapsed onto the couch.
Vox had had just enough mental wherewithal to order Chinese, receive it, and decide not to kill this particular sinner as he’d seen nothing in the long run. Other than some blood on Vox’s slacks but, hey, that was easily ignored with a nice fat tip. Straight after that, the logical part of his brain sat back at it’s post and cranked up the alarm bells, so he’d had other thoughts to occupy him. He’d just shut the door with his heel when it occurred to him that Alastor was in his spare room, flat fuck, why did you do this!? And he’d gone sprinting off to confirm that, yes, he had done a fool-ass thing like drag his rival out of a dumpster and save his life.
What the fuck was wrong with him.
Coming back into reality, Vox pressed his gloved palm into his screen so hard it began to mash into some of the fluid crystal swimming around in his face, distorting his view until he let it up. He hung his head over his chest, grumbling bitterly under his breath about his misfortune and apparent lack of rationality. You can’t just stay out here forever, you box-brained moron, Vox thought to himself. Go look at what you did. Go on. Get up.
His Heads-Up Display ever so helpfully pointed a dozen big red arrows at the shut door to his guest room, and then, when he didn’t get up right away, a handful of tooltips and a red circle showed up. All pointing him to that door, and what lay beyond. He made a mental note to change his settings for his HUD later.
The HUD then displayed said note.
Vox took a moment to adjust some of the more aggressive ‘reminders’ down to a more reasonable level, then put his burned down cigarette out in the carton of gloppy, congealed noodles before it could burn his fingers. He pushed his hands to his knees and stood with a groan, feeling quite like he was heading to the gallows. His body ached, Alastor wasn’t light, and Vox himself wasn’t exactly the beefiest on the block. He rolled his shoulders under his hand, rubbing the tightening knots out of his muscles as he tentatively approached the door. It was a plain white door, one of the only wooden bits in the whole house. It could be reinforced with metal in an emergency, of course, but some part of him liked the homeliness of it. Paint and a black-stained aluminum handle. Quaint.
The television demon scolded himself for stalling.
Without giving himself more time to go haring off down rabbit holes, he cracked open the door, just enough to poke an eye in. He paused there, hanging in the doorway, peering in at the shape in the bed. Seeing no movement, he stepped in further, lightly. Vox told himself it was to check the work the nurses did, that was all. It was dark in here, the shades were drawn over the windows to blot out the light, but just enough of the neon filtered in to cast Alastor’s lumpy form under the blankets in glowing relief. He was thin and wiry, like always, but… Something didn’t look right.
Vox crept closer.
The nurses had redressed him and tucked him in on his back, but he didn’t look much better than he did hours ago. His hair splayed out over the pillow, his mouth had fallen out of the trademark smile he wore in any situation, and his ears were completely motionless against the blue-edged black silk of the bed. They didn’t even perk his way as Vox put his hands on the footboard and leaned over, making the wood of the vintage-style frame creak. He looked pale. His face was tight, even in sleep, as if being comatose was some kind of hell beyond hell.
Bandages peeked out of the top of his half-open, borrowed pajama shirt. He had smaller bandaids all over the rest of him, rubble and god knew what else having eaten into his skin. He’d seen Alastor nearly die on the television months ago, but he hadn’t actually gotten to check out the extent of the wounds. He’d been cut across the chest at an unknown depth by holy light, anyone else would have just died on the spot. Anyone who didn’t should certainly be healed by now, right? He still looked so injured. So weak.
It was piteous.
“Not piteous,” Vox snarled to himself, crushing the thought, his claws carving into the wood as his fingers clenched in anger. “It’s pathetic. He’s a washed up, piss-poor excuse for an Overlord. He should’ve died in the trash. It’s what he deserved.”
Despite the snarled insults, he kept his voice low, for reasons he didn’t fully understand. He was so close now he could see Alastor’s chest rising and falling, shallow breaths that indicated he was still alive. Vox counted them. Ten per minute. A quick ping to the wider web, and he found that was slow. He quickly hunted down the subroutine that did that and killed it.
“I only saved you so I could kill you later,” he spat at Alastor, who still could not hear him, on account of being unconscious. “That’s the only reason. The minute you’re up and in fighting shape, I’m gonna drag your ass on Main Street so hard you’ll be nothing but road rash, you hear me? I’m gonna make you wish you’d stayed gone a second time, fucker.”
Alastor did not respond. He was still unconscious. Vox began to feel a little silly, even sheepish, for standing here in the dark and spitting insults at his rival when he was clearly on death’s door anyway. Like he was trying to convince himself that was the plan from the start, to save his life just to snuff it out on his own terms.
He walked, walked, not fled, back to the living room. The Chinese carton and cigarette butt went into the garbage. Vox briefly entertained the thought of going to bed, but just as soon as he’d had the thought, he dismissed it. He was far too wound up to sleep right now. He instead flumped down onto his couch, clicked on his flat screen, and started channel surfing.
Game shows. He liked game shows. They ran all night, because he told the network to make a 24 hour game show channel, and even if Vox himself was the only man to tune in, he’d keep it running anyway. Thankfully, he wasn’t. The channel was barely profitable, but it got to keep chugging along by the skin of it’s teeth and the grace of catering to Vox exactly what he wanted. A thousand reruns of Name That Scream! , consecutively, with the only break being for commercials. Perfect. The remote dropped from his hand onto the couch, and he put his feet up on the table, settling in to… Well, sit here. Forever. Shit, he didn’t know.
The game show captured his attention for all of thirty seconds before he found himself reflexively opening Voxtagram to mindlessly scroll there instead. Velvette was announcing a product line at eleven thirty at night at that stupid party, Valentino was sexting him like they weren’t broken up right now, a thousand small fires igniting across Hell to put out tomorrow. Influencer, influencer, porn bot (immediate ban, it wasn’t a Val plant), animal photo account, pyramid scheme, influencer. He flicked his eyes to the television, where a very unlikable woman was failing to identify the Wilhem, of all things.
Damn, was there nothing good on these days?
A very Alastor thought of you, Vox.
Vox slammed his phone down on the couch and tuned so aggressively back into the game show that he over-focused and found himself critiquing the set design instead.