Chapter Text
The world is black and blue, and Vox is sure by the throbbing in his joints that his body is, too.
A sharp stab runs through his middle. Then, a recollection: arms flailing, feet stumbling and failing to find purchase, hip colliding with the corner of his desk before he’d met the ground in a mess of sparks and twitchy limbs. He thinks he’s lying there, still, sinking into the coolness of the floor.
He isn’t entirely sure.
His memories are fragmented— jagged pieces of a mirror he can’t quite put together. He can feel them, ghosting beneath the surface of his consciousness, his grasp eludes them by a breath. They're a series of flashes; snapshots in time he can’t place, an amalgamation of senses, hot bursts of emotion without context.
The memories are there, so unbearably close, but he can’t quite make sense of them.
He remembers pain. A deep pang in his chest that had spiralled, twisted his heart and mind into something indescribable that had led him here— body broken on the floor, hot and cold and achy all over, entombed in an impenetrable darkness. He remembers the verbal blows traded on-air. The seething rage bubbling beneath the surface. Thick clouds of ozone choking the room.
He remembers that he had been winning, for once, and then everything was red, red, so obnoxiously red—
Eyes that bore into him without seeing him, a blinding suit as timeless as the man who wore it, dripping lines beneath a crooked smile that matched his own. It had consumed him, in that moment. Become too much, too quickly, morphing into a flash of white before his vision blinked out entirely.
Vox had felt the cables detach from the back of his cabinet, felt the rest of his senses drift as his mind willed itself to shut down, and then…
Nothing.
Nothing but the present, the flickering blacks and blues he can’t quite seem to place— and that damn pulsing behind his eyes. He doesn’t know how he’s managed to fuck up his vision. Hell, he doesn’t remember the last time he’s suffered through a system crash this awful.
Vox grits his teeth against the fresh wave of pain that accompanies the next spasm. His body is tired and his skin singed to oblivion. How long has it been?
Minutes?
Hours?
Maybe he’s been lying here a week now, teetering on the edge of wakefulness in what he’s only half-sure is still his office.
He is used to always seeing, always knowing. Even if his own hellish body failed him at times, his powers rarely did. There was always another screen to hop into. Always another escape.
Yet now, as he musters all the strength he has left to tap into the endless stream that lies at his fingertips, Vox is met with nothing. There is no gentle hum, no ebb and flow, no warmth from the data that is supposed to course through his veins like blood. There is nothing at all.
It’s as if the cord to his line of power has been snipped right in the middle, leaving only a cold silence on both ends.
Fuck, he thinks. He must have crashed so hard he’d taken out the power grid in the process. Probably permanently fried a good chunk of the tower’s tech as well.
There is no way for him to jump without a connection. No way for him to confirm where the fuck he is with his visual processors still on the fritz. He sees nothing— not the bleeding red nor the screeching white from earlier. Inky shadows pound into the back of his head, bringing with it an insuppressible pain that tears a scream from his throat.
It hurts, it hurts, fuck, it hurts—
He can’t die. He knows that. Not like this, not without a blow from holy arms. But fuck, it feels like he’s reliving death with each passing second. His skin is on fire— hot and raw and overwhelming all at once.
His breaths come in too hard, too fast, too painful— is he even breathing? Or has he been holding his breath this whole time? He can’t tell. He doesn’t care to find out.
The smell of burnt plastic lingers in the air. Apart from the whirring of his fans and the occasional spark, it is deathly still. He is overheating but the room is frigid, the ground beneath him stiff and unfeeling.
Vox commands his body to do something, anything. He stays limp. The only movement he can conjure up right now is involuntary, and each convulsion that runs through him only adds another beat to the drumming against his skull. He wills the agony to go away. If his will were stronger, it may have worked.
After who knows how long, it comes. A light at the end of the tunnel.
One he can't see, with his visual processors on the fritz from who knows what, but a light nonetheless, bright and burning, bringing with it a cacophony of voices. They are harsh and screeching, like a pair of stray cats fighting over scraps behind the dumpster, and muffled, at first, before a gust of wind blows in from somewhere and strips them clean of their filter.
The door, Vox thinks deliriously.
The voices reach a crescendo before they cease entirely. Even from a distance, Vox catches the sharp intake of breath. Twin gasps. Then— a scuffle.
Heels clack against the walkway at a dizzying speed, growing louder by the second. Vox groans as his mind fights to decipher their movements, to stay awake against the offending noise that threatens to overwhelm him once more. He feels the glitches intensify, jolting him against the ground with a sharp cry.
“–ox! Are you–”
“–n you hear us?”
“Oh fu–”
“His screen–”
It’s a barrage, an auditory attack that leaves him feeling like one of those jack-in-the-box toys— popping in and out of the world only to grasp mere fragments of it, left disoriented with the motion and frustrated with the missing pieces.
He can’t quite place the voices, but his body does not recoil when hands reach for him.
“–ick, grab h–”
“–’s all twitchy–”
His screen melts into the touch that cups his face. His mind still fights to process—those voices, their cadence, those hands—Vox knows them so intimately it frustrates him. On his left, someone whispers soft reassurances. The unfamiliarity of the emotions behind them strikes a pang in his heart, and somewhere in the dark recesses of his glitch-riddled code, his mind is telling him he is safe.
He is lifted off the ground by vanilla-scented hands, and Vox slips further into the darkness. The rest of the world drowns out as his head pillows against someone’s chest, soft and warm.
-V-
He’s died again, he thinks. Or dreaming.
There are hands all over him— on his chest, his face, his arms. Something taut and cotton-like wraps around the left half of his screen. Everything is still shrouded in that damn shadow, but this time there’s the occasional flicker of light that filters through when his body jostles, granting him a peek of the outside world.
Vox glimpses blurs of lavender and mocha— faces, he deduces, that bob in and out of view.
Everything else is coated in varying shades of reds and pinks. He tries to think of the red of Valentino’s wings. The plush couch in their shared tower. Velvette’s hair. The tacky wallpaper he’s tried for years to get rid of.
Instead he thinks of pinstriped suits and bloody claws. It plays on loop—his voice, staticky and dripping in condescension, smile stretched so wide Vox can almost see the seams–
You aren’t looking too well, old friend.
Speak of the devil. A figure steps out from the flickering shadows, stance brimming with the practised poise of a gentleman. He is dreaming, Vox decides, because why else would Alastor grace him with even a fraction of his attention?
There is a barely-noticeable pressure around the edges of his cabinet. Cinnamon-scented perfume floods his sensors before something pokes at his screen and his face erupts in pain. He can’t help the sharp cry that escapes him.
“Fuck, I’m sorry– shit, Valentino, hold him down!”
“I’m trying!”
“Well try harder, dammit!”
Everything is red, again, so blindingly red that Vox fights against the urge to shut his eyes.
The demon before him only smiles wider, mocking him. A stuttering screech pierces the air as Alastor tilts his head to the side.
How amusing.
He is dreaming, he must be, because why else is he the only one who sees him? Another round of glitches overtakes him, leaves him gasping in the shock and pain of it all. Static crackles amidst a dark chuckle. He feels nauseous.
“Damn it. He’s still panicking.”
“Shit, I’ve never seen him this bad.”
“Why the fuck would you tell him, you moron? You know how he gets whenever that radio bitch is involved!”
“I just wanted to mess with him a little, I didn’t know he’d fucking crash over it! I thought- I mean, fuck, it’s been so long-”
My, my.
Did my return send you into such a tizzy that you can no longer discern reality from fiction?
He is dreaming– yes, that’s it, for sure.
Vox ignores the dread that creeps into his stomach as Alastor steps closer. Ignores the way his heart jumps to his throat at the idea of a confrontation because holy fuck, it’s been seven years and he’s here and he’s real–
“Vox stop- just stop moving! We’re trying to help!”
He must be dreaming, because the touch that grazes his cheek feels far too gentle.
Did you miss me that much?
Red drips between Alastor’s grin. Drips, drips, drips until it trails down his chin and onto the floor, melting into the inky darkness. Everything is purples and browns, reds on top of more reds, mashed together and existing on different planes all at once.
Come morning, it will be back to gaping wounds bandaged by bitter resentment. But for now, Vox hopes he’s not dreaming, because he’ll never get a chance like this again.
“His ports are all fried, too. Shit, Vox, what did you do? ” Vanilla. How saccharine.
“A-Alastor…” Vox manages at last, his throat burning around the name. He forgets every insult, every accusation, every goddamn word he’s been building up for the better part of a decade.
Cinnamon, this time, with a scoff. “Yeah, no shit.”
“You came back,” Vox says, and the air stills.
Static creeps in on the edges of his vision. He does not know whether he receives an answer or if he’s met with the same cold silence as seven years ago. He’s back in the dark before he finds out.
-V-
His return to consciousness is graced with significantly less pain. His head feels considerably better, but there’s a light pounding behind it that persists. Vox also finds that, this time around, he can see. Finally.
Everything is muted and crackled like the edge of a well-worn photograph, laced with distortion and the occasional hiccup of a glitch. Colours swirl in dizzying wisps when he shifts his head, but fuck it. He’ll take this over empty voids and crash-induced hallucinations any day.
The surface beneath him is soft and well-worn, his body half-sunken into… the cushions of a couch? Their couch, Vox realizes. He’s in the penthouse of Vee Tower, tucked in underneath a shark-print blanket.
The lights are on, a sure sign of the backup generators doing their job. He’s not sure what the rest of their technology—and the rest of Hell, for that matter—looks like right now, and he’s not too keen on finding out. He needs a few more minutes to recoup before dealing with that mess.
Vox moves to sit up on the couch, wincing at the ache that accompanies the motion. His muscles are sore and his limbs twinge with fresh pain.
“Welcome back to the land of the dead.”
Vox jumps and nearly tumbles off the couch. He squints at the figure sprawled across the second couch, recognizing the unmistakable purple amongst the red. “Val?” His voice comes out scratchy and hoarse. He does not remember screaming. “What happened?”
“You crashed,” Val says, seemingly unperturbed. “We found you on the floor of your office. You’ve been in and out the last couple of hours.” He swings his legs from the couch to the floor, back arching as he stretches. “Vel should be back any minute now, she just ran out to pick up a few things.”
Vox tries to hide his panic. Hours? Fuck. Longer than he’s used to, and even now, he can feel the lingering effects on his body.
He tries to remember, to think back to the spark that started it all— but he comes up empty. Shit. It’s been a while since he’s experienced this level of data corruption. His brain feels muddled, as it always does after an unexpected shutdown, his memories swirling between the merciless waters of a whirlpool. He reaches for them.
All that comes back are fragments.
Velvette holding a disembodied arm and screaming her head off about some model. The crash of a glass near his head, the stifling smoke of Valentino’s quarters. A glimpse on a screen, distorted and hazy and…red.
Alastor.
Fuck, Alastor. He’s back. The realization hits him all over again as his brain fights to pick apart his memories.
Live broadcast: real.
Alastor threatening him on-air: real.
Blue-screening in a fit of panic: real.
Seeing Alastor for the first time in seven years: real. No, wait— not real. That…didn’t happen. Right? Fuck.
Waking up in Vee Tower: real? Or another symptom of his own delusion?
He attempts to run a system diagnostic only to be met with an endless stream of pop-ups and error messages. Vox tries and fails to quell his growing panic. Fuck, maybe he’d damaged himself so badly this time around that he’s trapped himself in a nightmare derivative of his own memories.
Maybe he’s so irreparably broken that his program can no longer distinguish between life and fantasy.
Maybe his body is still lying there on the floor of his office, frigid and broken and alone.
Someone is calling his name.
Hands. There are hands on him, their touch feathery and uncertain. One rests on his shoulder, grounding him. Another rubs soothing circles into his back. Two more hover in the air, waiting. For what, Vox doesn’t know.
“Hey, hey- breathe, amorcito. Breathe,” Val says, and Vox tries. “You’re okay.” He feels far from okay.
They sit like this for several minutes. Val’s movements are awkward and unpracticed, and his reassurances come out like verbal somersaults. It is nothing like the flawless performances he puts on in bed. It is imperfect and unfamiliar and…different. But he continues, and in these rare moments of vulnerability, Vox finds that he enjoys it.
“So. What happened to protecting our image?”
Valentino’s leering voice pulls him out of the moment, and Vox feels his screen heat up. “There’s a big difference between gunning for every whore that pisses you off and dealing with legitimate threats,” he hisses.
“Is that what happened? You dealt with it?”
“Fuck you.” Vox spits, because the wound is still fresh.
“Classic.”
Yes, okay. Maybe it is hypocritical on his part, but he hadn’t really been anticipating a response when he’d put out that broadcast— much less a beatdown so severe he’d end up frying his own systems. Vox does not entertain the topic further, for his own sake.
With his emotions teetering on the edge of another crash, and that smug look on Val’s face, he chooses not to risk it. “Help me up,” he says instead.
“What? Why?” Valentino draws a long puff from his cigar, a puzzled look on his face.
“I gotta deal with…all this shit.” Vox gestures towards the large windows of the penthouse, where the rest of the city stands frozen and blanketed in shadow. The crimson sky seems brighter, now, against the inky black.
“Oh, hell no. ”
Vox blinks. No?
“Not now,” Val amends. “Vel would actually have my head if I let you walk out of here looking like this.”
“The rest of Hell is going to have my head if I don’t fix this! Do you have any idea how much of a shitstorm this could cause?”
“Vel can handle it.”
“It’s not just that,” Vox huffs irritably. His migraine has increased tenfold, but he’s too worked up to care. “The paperwork, the lost revenue, hell, now I’ll have to draw up new plans for the city-wide generators seeing as how they didn’t fucking work!”
“They can wait,” Val says firmly, and there’s an undercurrent of… something in his voice. Caution. Hesitancy. As if he were trying to calm a scared animal.
Vox tenses. “I’m fine, Val.”
“You look like you’re about five seconds away from seizing back into cyberspace.”
Vox rolls his eyes at that, ignoring the way his vision distorts at the motion. He moves to stand up, arms trembling at his side and readying themselves to push— before an immovable object knocks the breath out of him and sends him sliding back down into the cushions.
“Lie the fuck back down, Vox.” Valentino has a hand on his chest. His touch feels feather-light, and Vox realizes with a resigned tiredness that he hadn’t even needed an extra limb to keep him in place. Perhaps he is more exhausted than he'd thought.
It is then that Velvette bursts in, eyes wide and arms laden with a box.
“Oh, thank fuck,” she says, and Vox thinks for a moment she almost looks relieved. “You’re awake.”
“I am.”
“What the actual shit, Vox?” Aaaand here it comes. Val makes his way to the open bar to concoct a drink and Vox lets out a heavy sigh, his shoulders slumping as he meets Velvette’s glare. “Do you have any idea how this makes us look?”
“Like a fat fuckin’ joke?” Val pipes up with a grin, and Vox wants to kick him.
“What’s the damage?” Vox asks wearily. His eyelids are heavy, and he fights to keep the glitches out of his voice.
“Your stupid tantrum cost us a fuck ton of money, obviously, not to mention questions. There’s at least a dozen gossip blogs yapping about it, and every network across the pentagram wants a statement. Ton of stupid fuckers who want to back out of brand deals, too.”
Vox winces. “That bad?”
“Obviously.” Velvette rolls her eyes. She moves to place the package in her hands down onto the floor beside the coffee table. “One of the most powerful Overlords, AKA CEO of VoxTek, losing his shit on live television? Bit hard to ‘trust us’ if they know everything can be lost at the drop of a hat.”
Velvette is right, he knows. He’d built his brand on reliability. To have his facade crumble so easily is downright pitiable. It is nothing short of embarrassing, the way he loses himself the moment Alastor is involved.
“’m sorry,” Vox mumbles tiredly, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
Velvette’s face loses some of its grit, and she moves to plop down onto the floor by his legs. A scowl colours her features as she pulls out her phone, fingers already moving and expletives spilling from her mouth in angry mutters. Damage control, it seems.
“How are you feeling?” she asks, eyes still fixed on the screen.
“Fine.”
“Liar,” Val accuses, and Vox shoots him a pointed glare. “He’s still glitchy as fuck.”
“Dick.”
Val sticks out a tongue between a sly grin, gold tooth glinting in the low light. There’s a freshly-made cosmopolitan in one hand and a crude gesture in the other. Velvette snickers from her spot on the floor, and Vox would be lying if he says his mouth didn't twitch at the sight.
A splitting pain rushes through his head, then, and he jolts at the suddenness, raising a shaky hand to his screen. His fingers brush against the jagged indents that run across its surface before they catch on something soft and felt-like. Vox frowns. Bandages?
“Figured you’d appreciate having some of your sight back,” Val says, taking notice. “You’re welcome.”
Velvette snorts. “Oh please. As if your clumsy hands could pull that off.”
“I helped!” Val insists, a hint of indignation in his voice. “I held the bandages! And all the other shit.”
It feels…strangely thoughtful, to know that they had cared enough to patch up his screen when he was so out of it, despite knowing the entire monitor would be replaced as soon as he would wake. A glance at the assortment of supplies on the coffee table tells him it must have been a real bitch trying to jigsaw his face back together.
“What did I do?” Vox asks, and the other Vees quiet. He still doesn't have a clue how he'd managed to get his system so far beyond the usual level of fucked.
“When we found you, your screen was already sorta shattered,” Val says slowly. “We uh. Weren’t sure how it happened until we brought you back here. At first, we thought you’d just cracked yourself open on the floor. You were seizing left and right and glitching like crazy. Just…completely out of it.”
He swirls his drink around, eyeing it with a suspiciously-thoughtful gaze. “You were saying things. Nothing that made much sense, but then-”
“Your face imploded,” Velvette says simply.
Vox blanches. “What?”
“Satan’s tits, Vel, way to drop it on him,” Valentino mutters. He reaches for his cigar this time, taking a deep breath before exhaling. Sickly sweet clouds float across the room and Velvette swats them away as they near.
“You were taking forever,” she argues, pointing a finger at the moth. She puts her phone on the coffee table beside a roll of electrical tape, turning from her spot on the floor to face Vox. “And you were creeping me out.”
“What?” Vox says again, because there is nothing about this conversation he understands. His head is spinning, round and round like a carousel. “Why don’t we circle back to the part where my face fucking exploded?”
“Imploded,” Vel corrects. “Like. Without any external force damaging it.” What. The fuck. “I take it this is new?”
“Uh, yeah.” Vox says. “I just…how…?”
Vel chews on her lip, her eyes darting back to Val in silent conversation. “Beats me,” Val says, and alarm bells go off in Vox’s head. He’s lying, or at the very least, sugar-coating it. “You just started mumbling about a bunch of shit and then it sorta just…happened.”
“What did I say?”
“Huh?”
“What was I talking about, before it happened?” Vox grits out impatiently. He is tired. His body is screaming and he needs a nap and he can’t keep playing these games because he feels like he’s going to pass out any minute now. He is tired of not being in control. Of not knowing.
He does not care what the answer is, does not care for the cushiony words to soften the blow— he just needs to know.
“Alastor.” Valentino stares long and hard at him, expression unreadable. “You were talking about Alastor, and then next thing we knew, your screen was in pieces and you’d nearly killed yourself from the inside out. I didn’t even know that was possible, to be honest.”
“Oh.”
It is all he can say in the face of such a revelation.
He’d always known Alastor was his greatest weakness. But to this degree? How could someone be so entangled with his very being that the mere thought of him could short-circuit his entire system? It's humiliating, the very thought absolutely deplorable.
He meets Val’s stare, and the moth recoils.
There’s something more behind Vox’s eyes— behind the anger, the loathing, behind even the barely concealed fear, lies raw hurt. A pain so potent that years of delicately-crafted smiles and posturing cannot hide. Something so deeply rooted within him, ingrained in his code and intertwined with his very essence, it would take tearing him apart bit by bit to ever be rid of it.
Like an eternal virus, Alastor haunts him in a way Vox is not sure he can ever escape. Deep down, he isn’t sure he wants to.
For Val, that realization cuts deeper than anything else. Because honestly, how could he ever compete?
“I think you should rest,” Val says at last. His voice is quiet, restrained; he places his empty glass on the table with a soft clink. His limbs are rigid and he looks like he’s barely holding himself back, and Vox reigns in his discontent— he does not want to deal with one of Val’s tantrums now, of all times.
“I will,” Vox starts, then he pushes, just a little. “Just as soon as I square a few things away. The blackouts-”
“They’re just being dramatic,” Velvette says, breaking her silence. “They can deal without power till the morning.”
“But the revenue-”
“Already got my whores scheduled for overtime for the next few months,” Val smirks. He makes his way over to Vox, quiet ire forgotten and replaced by playful words as he claims the empty cushion on his right. “Should be enough to make up for at least a good portion of it, eh, amorcito?”
One of Val’s arms snakes around his waist, gentle against the multitude of fresh burns, and the fight starts to drain out of him. “And the presses?” Vox asks half-heartedly.
“I got it under control for now. Move,” Velvette says, and Vox obliges. She takes his left, arms reaching for the blanket to add herself to the shark-printed pile they’ve become. She sighs, leaning into Vox’s side with a frown. “Just…don’t let it happen again. Or I’ll fucking end you.”
He wants to thank them. For being there, back then. For being here, now. Instead, all that comes out is a quiet “Okay”, because they aren’t like that. The words remain unspoken and the silence stretches on.
For a moment, the lights stutter and Vox curses. Even the backup generator for the Tower needs upgrading, it seems. Another item on the docket.
“I’ll fix it,” he promises.
“Tomorrow,” Val and Vel say in unison.
“Tomorrow,” Vox agrees. He shuts his anxiety away for now, shoves it into a neatly-wrapped box and kicks it under his metaphorical bed, letting his eyes slip closed voluntarily for the first time today.
Tomorrow, there will be violent outbursts and little compassion. They will be back to their usual hellish selves and today will become nothing more than a hiccup in their blood-stained history. For now, he sinks into the hands that caress the side of his face, careful to avoid the broken glass and bandages that litter his screen.
He drifts off to soft touches and quiet breaths.
-V-
The next time Vox wakes, he is alone on the couch.
The warmth is gone from his sides, but he finds an extra blanket has been carefully placed over the first. The supplies on the coffee table have been replaced with a mug of freshly-brewed coffee. His eyes catch on the box on the floor, recognizing the sleek packaging as one of his own.
He makes a mental note to thank Velvette for the new screen.
He takes a deep breath and slips off the couch, feet pressing into the soft carpet, already cataloguing a backup of yesterday's memories under Anomalies and Days to Revisit. He pauses, before copying and pasting all deer-related references into a separate folder. A few swipes and an added countdown later, the folder is temporarily locked.
Tomorrow.
For today, Vox clears his mind of all distractions and stifles what remains of the swirling pit of emotions in his gut. Today, he will wear his usual self as if it were his trademark suit- loud and sharp and distracting to everyone but a select few.
He looks up. Beyond the great big windows the rest of Hell is still dark and shapeless, but inside, vanilla clouds and cinnamon still linger in the air, invisible and sweet.