#goldenvision

1975- Part 2

Vox lies awake for hours after his fight with Alastor, recounting every word of the argument, every misstep that he had taken. He can’t believe he hypnotized him- even accidentally. Alastor had seemed fine afterwards, but Vox couldn’t shake the feeling that it was wrong- that Alastor had detected some change in him that would make him turn his back on their partnership. Their friendship. Them. He couldn’t stand it- he wouldn’t survive it. Not another person leaving him like that.

He needed to prove himself, he realized, sitting up in the bed and letting his screen flicker to life. That was what he needed to do; show Alastor that he was powerful and strong all on his own, that he didn’t need the security that the Radio Demon provided him to stand on his own feet. He would rework the plan- change the contract, get the souls on his own, and present a portion of them to Alastor as an apology. For losing his temper, for the accidental hypnosis, for not being enough yet after all these years. Vox could do it, and then Alastor would trust him again and everything would be alright.

He goes a day early, night creeping in when he leaves his apartment. Nerves make him feel like he’s vibrating under his skin, a deep well of emotions- anxiety, determination, adrenaline- fueling his motion as he makes his way across town to the club. He knows they know who he is- he’s got a reputation these days, not just as Alastor’s partner but his own reputation. Cunning and viscious, ruthless in his actions, Vox grins triumphantly when he sees the shades draw down as he approaches, hands in his pocket and whistling casually as he strolls up to the front door. He knocks for the illusion of politeness, and then kicks the door down, wood splintering under his heel as Sinners dart in different directions. The club owner, Harlan, sits at the bar, a cigarette between his fingers that smokes so heavily a cloud hovers above them. His hat is tipped low, the glint of his yellow eyes flashing when he looks up from under the brim. The bartender’s eyes flicker between Vox and Harlan, wide and fearful.

“Evening,” Vox starts cheerfully, crossing the room in a few strides to sit next to him. “Lovely place you’ve got here. I’ve only been a few times but it seems-”

“Cut the shit,” the reptile snaps, his forked tongue drawing the S’s in the sentence long. It’s an interesting combination with his Southern drawl. “I know ya type, Vox, and th’company ya keep. Man like you don’t come around here for nothin,’ and I’m not feelin’ particularly generous tonight.”

He keeps his smile light, drawing his claw around the rim of a glass that was set in front of him- rye, like Alastor drank, even though Vox himself wasn’t big on it. “Easy, Harlan! Can’t a man swing by with a business proposition?”

“I’m not interested in doin’ any business with ya, screenhead. If that’s what ya want, might as well head out now.”

Frustration crackles across his screen, fleeting before he schools it. This was why Alastor had originally been in charge of this part- he was so calm and suave in the face of disrespect, as seldom as he received it. But Vox could do it- could channel Alastor in this way to get the job done so they could both benefit. “Understood, I suppose. I guess I won’t stop by Alastor’s on the way home then- figured I could talk him out of bulldozing a business I frequent, but hey! I know when I’m not wanted.” He downs the glass in his hand, alcohol burning on its way down his throat as he stands. “Maybe I’ll see you around- or, you know. Hear you around.” He tilts his head pointedly at the radio that sits silent in the corner, and when Harlan’s hand twitches around his own drink Vox can almost hear the bells in his head that declare his victory.

“Well- hold on there, Vox. Maybe we can discuss over drinks. I’d hate to miss out on an opportunity.” It’s bullshit; they both know it’s bullshit, that Vox was leveraging his partnership with the Radio Demon to force a discussion of a deal, but he would take what he could get.  “Dimmock, our friend here drinks on the house, ya hear?” The bartender nods, refilling Vox’s glass with shaky hands. “Now, what brings you near, Mister Vox?”

“I’m happy to pay for my drinks, Harlan,” he laughs, pleased that he has the club owner where he wants him as he tips back another glass. “I just wanted to have a quick discussion, you understand- Alastor has been talking, you see, trying to find places here and there where he can amass a high number of souls quickly. And while you’re no Overlord,” he adds, tipping his head in recognition, “you do still have a number of souls under your belt- and those souls have their own souls, and so on.”

“I certainly know that,” he says. “I take careful consideration to not become an Overlord- no disrespect,” he adds like an afterthought. “I’m just not much for politics, ya understand.”

“Of course, of course,” Vox nods. “But still- if you follow your ownership all the way down, that’s quite the legion you have under your indirect power.”

“And I intend to keep it that way.” His eyes harden, his empty glass pushed away. “I have no intention of selling any souls to you- or anyone. Today or any day.”

“Hey now, who said anything about selling souls?” He pulls the contract from his suit jacket, revised in the early hours after his fight with Alastor, and places it on the bar. “I get that protectiveness- admire it, even! I’m on the same page here- keeping those souls safe.” He taps a sharp clawed finger on the paper. “It’s simple Soul law. I don’t take anything now- but if the day comes that anything should happen to you, the souls under your care then belong to me.”

“So you inherit them, basically.” His expression is guarded, even as he signals to his bartender to pour Vox another drink. “What do I get out of this?”

“Besides assurance that your souls will be cared for? You drive a hard bargain.” He grins, but Harlan isn’t laughing. “Easy- you get reassurance that the Radio Demon won’t touch you or your club. I have some sway with him, you see, and if I give him the word that this place and its Sinners are off limits? You’re golden. He’ll never touch you.”

Vox, of course, was a different story. 

Harlan hums thoughtfully. “Mind if I take a look?” He asks, and pulls the paper closer to skim his eyes over it. The bartender slides Vox another drink, his current one still half full, but he shrugs and tips it back anyway. His neck is warm, fingers tingling with excitement at the thought of pulling this off, of being able to report back to Alastor and tell him everything was good now, that they were equals at last. He’s distracted by Harlan flipping a pen between his fingers, tip deliciously close to the paper- and Vox hadn’t even really had to persuade him! 

Time passes too slowly for his liking after that- but he’s plied with alcohol, and Harlan is looking at the paper intently, following lines with the pen even though Vox is positive that his verbiage is perfect regarding protection from the Radio Demon. He feels high on the knowledge that this job was as good as done, and when he finally sees Harlan scrawl his name across the bottom of the paper, he feels like he’s done a line of coke.

His screen gets noticeably brighter when Harlan slides the paper back over to him, his signature golden and glittering. He hands the pen to Vox who flourishes his own signature across it, and the entire paper glows when he sets it aside- legally, cosmically binding. “An absolute pleasure doing business with you, Harlan,” he says, his smile wide and manic, and when the other man reaches out a hand to shake Vox sends enough electricity through his fingertips to take down a fucking rhino. Harlan jolts in his seat, limbs going stiff as he’s electrocuted, smoke pouring off his body in waves while the bartender screams behind them. He slides off the barstool into a twitching pile on the floor, Vox still clinging to his hand so tightly that he’s drawing blood, unable to let go while he’s actively putting out voltage.

He finally stops the current and releases the Sinner’s hand, burns left in the shape of Vox’s claws on the back of it. Miraculously, Harlan is still breathing. “Ya sonuva bitch,” he says, his voice as stiff as his limbs, but Vox is too thrilled with the fact that this plan is going off without a hitch to notice the amusement in his tone. “I fuckin’ knew ya were no good.”

“Yeah, well, should’ve trusted that instinct!” He snatches the paper off the bar, eyes drawn to the signature at the bottom, the curl of Harlan’s name. “You signed it anyway, and once you’re out of the picture all of those souls will belong to me and Alastor.”

Harlan laughs. “You’re one dumb motherfucker, ain’t ya?”

The thrill of the moment dies with abruptness. “I would watch your fucking tone if I were you,” Vox says, leaning down to get into Harlan’s face- but smile lines are creased into his scales even as dark blood drips from his nose. He pulls the angelic blade he had reserved for the end and holds it to the fucker’s throat. “There’s still time to make this hurt, you know. Or take it out on those souls you seem to care so much about.” He laughs harder, and the sound enrages him. He crouches on the ground, fists a hand into the reptile’s shirt and pulls him up to press the blade to his throat. “Stop it. Stop fucking laughing-”

“Or what? Ya gonna kill me? Seems ya were already plannin’ on that.” His neck trembles as he holds his head up, strength quickly fading from his body even though he still had the energy to fucking laugh. “Think I can’t smell desperation when it struts into my club like it owns the place? Talkin’ all that shit about the Radio Demon wanting to gain souls quick when everyone n’ their mama knows that you’re the one ridin’ his coattails.”

“Shut up.” His voice is stronger than he feels, the crash of adrenaline making his hands tremble where he holds Harlan. “You shut your fucking mouth.”

“Ya might have looked into enough about me to know about my souls, my trickle-down power, but ya didn’t think to look into me.” Harlan’s smile is wide, manic the way Vox’s had been and showing no signs of dying. “Everyone wants to rag on Harlan, thinkin’ just because my voice has some twang and I’m not rubbin’ elbows with you powerful fucks that I’m stupid. But a lawyer from the South is still a lawyer- and lawyers know to read what they’re signin.’ Do you, Mister Vox?” 

“No.” Panic claws at his throat, and he drops Harlan with a thud to the ground, his laughter seeming to echo in the empty bar. He snatches the paper off the counter and his eyes scan it with growing anxiety. 

“... that in the event of an action of violence from Alastor, the Radio Demon, or Vox, of VoxTek, all souls in the possession of Isaac Harlan are to be immediately transferred to Vox, of VoxTek released, with all soul contracts rendered null and void…”

The fucker hadn’t been using the pen to follow the words as he read. He had been crossing shit out, rewording the contract and taking out everything that was important- everything that had made this job worth doing, everything that he had spent fucking weeks researching and reworking to make sure it was ironclad. He’d scribbled in new words while loosening Vox up with alcohol, the bartender keeping him distracted while his boss worked to ruin everything that Vox had been banking on.

He’s still laughing on the ground, not having moved even though Vox no longer had a hold on him, no angelic steel pressed to his neck. “Not so fuckin’ smart now, are ya? Thought you’d pull one over on ol’ Harlan here, but I don’t let people fuck with what’s mine. And they ain’t even mine now- they’re free. Go on and kill me if that’s what you’re gonna do, but just know that ya ain’t gettin’ shit out of it. They’re all free.” 

Blind, incandescent rage makes his screen glitch out of his control, electricity arcing from his fingertips to any available electronic device in the vicinity before he turns and stabs the angelic steel blade into Harlan’s stomach. He laughs and Vox stabs him again, in the same place, because what else could he do now that he was well and truly fucked? Over and over, blood coats his nice suit jacket with every swing until the laughter finally stops, and Harlan is fading to divine ash underneath him. The laughter still echoes in his head long after the fucker is gone-

And with him, all of Vox’s plans. Foiled by some fucking hillbilly that had tricked him, and now he was never going to be back in Alastor’s good graces after that fight. They would never be equals, not with the work that Vox was going to have to do to make this up when it was supposed to be easy. The easiest job they had ever done, and Vox had completely ruined it by letting his ego take over and letting himself get too fucking cocky for his own good.

He hears a noise then over his heavy breathing, and when he looks up the bartender is still there; cowering behind the bar, he holds a bottle of rye in his hand like a weapon. Vox is sure he looks fucking insane, covered in blood as he is when he smiles. “How about one more for the road?” He asks, and the young Sinner responds by chucking the heavy bottle directly into his face. He hears a crack, feels a splintering pain race across his screen, and then the room goes dark.

He wakes hours later. At least, he assumes it has to be hours later, because there’s no other reason for Alastor to be there before Vox had a chance to clean the place up. He wants to joke about it, keep the mood light, until he sees that Alastor was already holding the contract that had fucked him. His eyes keep flicking over it, settling on Vox’s name at the bottom, and it’s so unnaturally quiet that when Vox shifts from his position on the floor and the wood creaks, it sounds like a gunshot.

“Al-”

“What,” he asks stiffly, his smile strained, “were you thinking?”

“I don’t-”

“You’re not stupid, Vox.” He slaps the paper down on the counter to turn and look at him. “We had a plan. A good plan, if a little underprepared. If you were eager for some bloodshed, there are countless turf wars happening at any given moment that you could have thrown your hat into.”

“That’s not what I was doing-”

“Then what?” The eerie green stitches have appeared at the corners of his mouth, eyes flickering to dials as his voice contorts with static. “What could have possessed you to act so rashly and let yourself be misled in this way? To not re-read the terms of a contract before signing it- that’s the work of amateurs, Vox, which is not something that I thought you were.”

“What would you have done then, Alastor? If you’re so fucking wise- how would you have handled it?” His anger cracks like a whip at the almost condescending tone his friend takes on.

Alastor’s smile flares with obvious frustration. “I would have stuck to the plan. I wouldn’t have tried to do a job like this by myself when I so obviously was not ready for it-”

“Oh, fuck you.” He stands from the floor, his head still aching from the force of the bottle slamming into it. His vision is cracked and fractured, Alastor clear in one eye, the wall of alcohol behind the bar appearing in fractals where his screen has cracked. “I was fucking ready. I wouldn’t have even felt like I needed to try to do it on my own if you hadn’t-”

Darkness swirls around him, shadows condensing to fill the space around him with the void as Alastor takes a menacing step forward. “If I hadn’t what, precisely?” His cane comes out to tap on Vox’s casing. “I can’t recall anything I might have done to prompt this little outburst of yours, my good man. Don’t blame me for things about yourself and your past that you cannot control or cope with.” 

Everything is going wrong- the plan, the talk with Alastor, these constant reminders that no matter how hard he tries, nothing he does is ever enough for the people he cares about. “I did this for you,” he manages to get out around his incredulous laugh, missing the way that Alastor steps back. “I wanted to- to apologize, for what happened the other night. For losing my temper, for accidentally…” He waves his hand vaguely towards Alastor’s eyes, indicating the hypnosis but not wanting to admit what he had done out loud. “I was trying to get it done so you could see me, see what I’m capable of!”

“I know what you are capable of, Vox,” Alastor says. “We’ve been partners for well over fifteen years now, haven’t we? I know you can be quick-witted and savage and clever- but you also have a tendency to overreact- blow a fuse, if you’ll forgive the pun.”

She flashes through his mind, and he pushes her away by sputtering out his thoughts. “Just… Why don’t you see it? That I’m trying to be better, to rise like you did. I want to be on your level, Alastor, not just- hovering just below you and hoping that you’ll think I’m good enough.”

“Good enough for what?”

“To be with you!” Lightning sparks between his antenna and off the ends of his fingers. “To join you, for you to join me! Everything I fucking do is to prove myself, and I know I fucked this up but come on, Alastor, can’t you see that I was trying? Why isn’t it enough?” 

When Alastor doesn’t respond, his desperation rises. And with it, his filter disappears, words spilling forth that he can’t quite control. “Fuck, why is it never enough?” He’s basically asking himself, grabbing the side of his screen like he could tear it off his body, stop the incessant beating of thoughts inside his head. “Christ, no matter what I do or who I do it for. I try and try and try and it’s never fucking ḛ̡̰̳͓̥ͬ͋ͪͧn̫̫̘̗͕̲̲̎ͥo͙͙̙̘̙ͤͫ͞ụ̴̴̾̀͟͡g̬̬̱ͩ͋͟͟h̨͚͚͖ͯ̒̄͗͞!" His arms sweep across the bar counter, his empty glasses shattering on the floor alongside Harlan’s until shards litter the floor as his voice is distorted and garbled with his scream. He stands there against the bar with his shoulders heaving, breath leaving him in unrestrained pants until he looks at Alastor and sees an expression he doesn’t recognize on his face.

He struggles to get his breathing under control, plastering that familiar fake smile on his face before turning back to Alastor. “Fuck. Fuck. Okay. I’m cool now. And I’m sorry you had to see that, and that I fucked up this plan, but…” He laughs at himself, at the situation, how quickly it was all unraveling. “Whew! Let’s just forget it, okay? There are bigger fish available to fry than this backwoods fucker anyway, so we can refocus our energy and-”

“Tell me about Kora.”

He feels the glitch take over his screen, and he fights to keep his tone calm. “I told you about K-” He pauses, takes a much needed breath. “I told you about her. We dated- she left. That’s the end of the story.”

“What did you do that wasn’t ‘enough’ for her?” 

He blanches- at least, as close to blanching as a screen could get. “What are you-”

“I’m sensing a pattern, Vox, of you thinking that you know what other people want, acting on those thoughts, and then lashing out when they don’t properly appreciate what you’ve done. Am I correct?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, coming closer into Vox’s space and making his breath catch at the proximity as he jabs a finger into Vox’s chest. “Because that is what you’re doing now. So caught up with this idea in your head of being an equal to me that you haven’t stopped to think about the fact that I do not want you as my equal.” He pushes Vox, who stumbles over his own feet and lands hard on the ground, looking up at Alastor and feeling, for the first time since they met, properly afraid.

“Come on, Alastor, you don’t mean-”

“Don’t tell me what I mean. Don’t assume what I think or what I want or what I know. I am not a substitute for this Kora woman, as much as you seem to have seen me as one.”

“I didn’t.” Desperation clogs his throat, and he’s amazed that he can feel the sting of angry tears somehow, despite not having eyes. “I didn’t, Al, I know you’re not- she’s gone, she’s fucking nothing anymore-”

“And yet you cannot tell me about her. You can’t hear her name without short circuiting, you cannot bear to contemplate the idea of her thinking poorly of you, and poor Ms. Jagoff is still fighting the lingering effects of your shock after speaking ill of her.” His smile feels like a sneer, angry and vengeful as he directs it at Vox. “I told you the other evening that I cannot work with you if I cannot trust you.”

“But you can!”

“I can’t. You have proven that I can’t.”

“Alastor, please.” He schools the attempted swirl of his eye, going as far as covering it with his hands before he looks at him. “I’ll fix it. I’ll be better, I can-”

“I don’t think you can be better,” Alastor says, and then he’s sinking, descending into his shadow faster than Vox can reach for him. “Such is the nature of technology, I’m afraid- prone to malfunction that can’t always be fixed.” And then he’s gone, and with him goes all of the noise in the room and all of the breath in Vox’s lungs before everything inside of him ignites and he screams.

1981

He works. Of course he works, because what else is there to do?

Vox very pointedly doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t think about Alastor, despite knowing that reporting on him would boost some of his network’s ratings. He doesn’t think about their friendship, how he had fucked everything up like he always did, doesn’t think about the gaping hole in his chest where he used to be. Where Kora used to be.

He works. After shit went down with Alastor he had ended up reaching out to the man that Joy worked for, that Valentino. He was easy enough to get along with- friendly and charming, persuasive. Innovative, which was what had Vox agreeing to invest and boost the advertising for his Vixxxen magazine, the Hell equivalent of Playboy filled with scandalous photos of naked, half-naked, and occupied Sinners throughout its pages. He had plans, he explained to Vox over drinks, of eventually pivoting to video- but for now he was content to share his printers with the Media Overlord in a little quid pro quo to get some more reach. He bought a tower on the outer edges of Pentagram City and paid to get it fixed up, with plenty of room for his various broadcasts and a few floors to Valentino to spread out for his cameras. He lived on the top floor, a specially designed penthouse that looked flashy and expensive, with entire walls of windows that he could watch the people below through, lights shimmering and blinking on the long nights that he actually went back there.

He had finally reached the status he was aiming for. And the victory felt empty, like he knew it would. No one to share it with. No one to impress with it. He was feared and respected and successful, and his afterlife felt empty. Valentino was a coworker, as often as he tried to find excuses to slide into Vox’s bed, but he didn’t have any real desire to find someone else. How could he try to make another connection like that, knowing where it would lead? The same way it had with Alastor and Kora- with him alone and scrambling to put his life back together. 

Years passed, and he shoved both of them to the back of his mind- or Kora, at least, since he couldn’t go more than a few days without hearing something about Alastor in the news cycle. He buries her with the memories of their life together, memories of who he had been in life and when he was with her. 

He takes women to bed, of course. This was Hell but Vox was still only human, and fucking didn’t require the same commitment as being with someone. It didn’t grant them the same familiarities, the same insight into his being- he could ‘dick and dash,’ as Valentino referred to it, and not have to worry about hurting anyone’s feelings or letting them get too close. It was stress relief; an outlet for his frustrations and aggressions as he continued to get more and more powerful and take on more responsibility. When he starts picturing them all to look like her, he very obviously chooses Sinners that don’t share her features. No blue eyes, no dog-like forms. No fluffy ears or soft tails or crooked smiles that made whatever was left inside his chest clench. He lays them down and focuses on the tight, wet pressure around his cock; that was what they were there for. He reciprocated- he wasn’t a fucking monster- but his heart wasn’t it in. Easy, lazy orgasms between silk sheets, and the women all blurred together until he escorted one out of his room one night and realized that he couldn’t remember what she looked like as soon as he closed the door. All he remembered was that she hadn’t looked like Kora, and it was depressing that the bar was that fucking low.

He mostly forgot her. Lost himself in his empire and his partnership, worked with Valentino as his business grew, VoxTek as a brand taking off and becoming more popular. He stayed far away from Joy, managed to convince Val to put her in a department that kept her the fuck away from him so he didn’t have to be reminded of her presence as the years went on.

He was holed up in his office more often than he wasn’t. He didn’t necessarily need to be there- but why bother going back to an empty penthouse when he could sleep on the chaise in his office and get right back to work when he woke up? It was ruthlessly efficient, only interrupted one day when Valentino strolled in without knocking with a woman on his arm that made Vox’s whole body crackle with barely concealed static, his face going carefully blank.

“Voxxy! I wanted to introduce you to a friend-” He holds the woman’s hand and twirls her as they come closer, nearly as tall as the moth himself, feathers falling loose and floating to the floor around them. “Isn’t she just preciosa? Meet Eris.”

The bird watches him beneath lowered lashes, her gaze calculating. She leans further into Val while offering a hand across the desk. “What a pleasure to meet ya, Mr. Vox.” She places emphasis on his name, says the V of it just a little too hard to be believable. “I’ve heard nothin’ but good things from Val!”

He shakes her hand, his grip loose before he pulls away too soon. “Right. Nice to… meet you too.” He knows she remembers him; he can see it in the glint of mischief as she watches him, Val settling into a chair across the desk before Eris perches herself on his knee and hangs herself off him, her body lanky and lean like it had always been. “What can I do for you two?”

“Amorcito, it’s what we can do for you!” Val taps Eris on the hip and she reaches into her coat, pulling out one of the latest copies of Vixxxen. “Eris here is one of my scouts- finds the prettiest Sinners on the streets, coaxes them in front of the camera for me.”

“I hardly do anythin,’ Val.” She smiles coyly at Vox, tossing the copy of the magazine onto his desk, little colored markers sticking out on some of the pages. “It’s real easy to convince people down on their luck, ya know? Couple pics for some cash, sure- a whole spread for a little more? Easy money, baby! And then Val does all the real work,” she simpers, putting her hand back on his chest and toying with the gold chain that hung between his nipple piercings, making Vox’s partner grin wide and devious. “Negotiatin’ contracts, butterin’ the gals up, keepin’ everyone happy on set.”

“Fantastic,” Vox deadpans. “I fail to see what that has to do with me.”

He doesn’t trust Eris. Never has, since the first time he met her, and she could pretend all she wanted but he remembered more than he cared to. 

Val nods to the magazine. “We’re planning to expand soon. Some of the girls have agreed to make the switch from the mag to video, but a couple of them are still pretty… inexperienced. I thought you might like to be the one to give them a test run. Scope out the skill, see who has potential, comprende?”

Eris flutters her fingers towards the pages. “Take a look. We’ve bookmarked ‘em- the blushin’ virgin types, the ones that won’t show their faces, won’t pose with another person. I’m sure there’s at least one in there you’ll really like, ya know.” She smirks, laughing to herself while Val watches Vox flip through the pages disinterestedly, not really looking.

It’s all a lot of the same. Women in lingerie spread out across silk sheets, hands between their thighs or across their chests to cover anything too scandalous- Vixxxen catered to a lot of tastes, from the downright pornographic to the vanilla shit, and the marked pages were definitely ones that would leave someone wanting more. That was the appeal, he supposed; innocence in a place of sin. Something left to the imagination.

“Why would I try to fuck someone on your payroll, Val?” He says, still idly flipping through the magazine. “I can pull perfectly fine on my own.” He had a drawer full of scribbled numbers right there in his office to prove it- he was hot, like only a man with status and power could be. He knew it; all of Pentagram City knew it.

“Consider it a mutually beneficial arrangement,” the moth leers. “You’d have an endless supply of lovely putas to warm your bed, and I’d have the assurance of the Media Overlord that they’re ready for the big screen.” He takes his hands off Eris, frames his fingers like a camera that he peeks at Vox through. “I need more than pretty faces. I need talent- and if there’s one thing you know, amor, it’s talent. Showmanship.” He leans forward far enough that the bird is dislodged from his lap, crowding into Vox’s personal space. “Who better to ensure I can get it from my gals than you, hm?”

“It was my idea, ya know,” Eris adds, from her now standing position across the desk. “Ya come out on scouting trips sometimes just for the star-factor, but ya seem so stressed all the time- why not fix that and help ya business partner out at the same time?” Her eyes flick down to the magazine again. 

He leans away from Val, doesn’t look at Eris. “Whatever- I guess I’ll think about it,” he says, shooing them away. If he was gonna do it, he didn’t want them watching him pick one of the many Sinners that Val featured in the magazine. “I’ll let you know.”

Val pouts, but Eris soothes him with a hand to his wings. “I picked the green tabs special for ya,” she says with a wink, and then she’s leading a complaining Val away from him, back to whatever part of the tower he was working in these days when he wasn’t bothering Vox.

He tries to keep working, but his eyes keep flicking back over to the closed magazine, sitting as innocently as it could on the corner of his desk. It’s not a bad idea, he thinks, to basically run some trials on some of Val’s prospects. An objective opinion and all that. He hadn’t been lying before, he was perfectly capable of picking women up on his own- but maybe it would be nice to not have to go to a bar and chat them up, waving away people looking for autographs or trying to get him to share some bullshit news that he already knew about. He loved the attention but when Vox was on a mission, it was more of a hindrance than a stroke to his ego. 

He looks at the pages a little more carefully this time, flicking through the colorful tabs and letting his eyes linger. They were all beautiful women- Valentino wouldn’t work with anyone that wasn’t a ‘ten,’ as he described it- and the framing of the pictures was surprisingly tasteful when there wasn’t an explicit sex act being photographed. Coy glances over shoulders, legs crossed strategically, short skirts riding up plush thighs while bent over a desk with an armload of paperwork. He remembers the comment from Eris about the green tabs, flicks the magazine open to one of them at random-

The woman on the page wore nothing but a baggy t-shirt, messy blonde hair spilling across the pillow beneath her head. She faced away from the camera, face down and her back arched, her thighs and ass pressed snugly against the legs of a man in unbuttoned tailored slacks. The only other part of the man visible was his hands, one placed possessively on the hip facing the camera, the other wrapped tightly around the base of a fluffy golden tail-

Vox doesn’t even bother checking the other tabs, his throat tight with anger. He throws the magazine in the trash and pages his assistant into the room. “Tell Valentino I’m not interested in being his test pimp,” he says with more calm than he actually feels. “And tell him to keep that bird bitch away from me- use those exact words, if you want.” The Sinner nods frantically and bolts from the room, off to find his partner and relay the message, and Vox sits quietly in his office looking at the opening of the trash can until he’s paged to set for the morning news.

1998

He’s balls deep in paperwork that couldn’t be delegated when he gets a call from Val’s studio a few floors down. “What is it this time?” Vox asks, fingers at the side of his casing like he had a headache- a muscle memory of frustration that he had never been able to shake.

“I need you to come to the studio.” The lack of any Spanish or mirth is unusual for Val, who usually tried to ply Vox with pet names and exaggerated words of adoration and affection. “It’s important.”

Vox sighs, looking at his papers until the words blur in front of him. “I can’t. You saw that shit with Alastor this morning, didn’t you? Fucker took out a whole goddamn city block in one of the border zones across town, and you know how hard it is to keep his Eldritch ass on screen for more than a few fucking seconds-”

“No me importa- I don’t care,” he clarifies, when Vox is quiet after he speaks. “No one cares about the Radio Demon but you, baby, so why don’t you take a break and come see what I have for you?”

“I said no, Val.” Knowing his partner, it was probably another shoot that he wanted Vox to join in on, or another instance of the moth draped in skimpy lingerie across whatever surface he thought would be most appealing. He was constantly trying to get Vox to get ‘in’ on things, since that incident with Eris a few years ago. Vox had made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that he wanted nothing to do with the stork, and he had only seen a tail feather here and there since- Val had the good sense to keep her away from him.

He also wanted nothing to do with the porn industry. He’d never begrudge Val his choice of venture, and he couldn’t deny that the videos that he steadily put out had them raking in more money than they really knew what to do with- but it wasn’t his scene. He preferred his fucking to be in the moment, focused on himself and his partner, not worried about what a camera might pick up. And his years as Valentino’s partner had rubbed some of the knowledge of how things worked on him, so watching any of the videos had him thinking about technicalities rather than how arousing the acts being performed were. 

He was aware of distant speech in his ear and tuned back in to what Val was saying. “What?”

“I said get your square ass down here or I won’t put out any videos for a fucking month!” He continues to rant in Spanish, words that Vox had never been bothered to learn but that he was sure weren’t treating him favorably, and cursed his partner.

As much as he didn’t want to go down there, he couldn’t afford to lose the profit. Valentino’s videos were a steady, consistent draw of cash, not even taking into account the monthly issues of Vixxxen that still went out. The people in Hell were perverted and depraved, and Val capitalized off that more than anyone- more than Vox himself, even.

“Are you fucking listening to me, Vox?”

“Satan’s fucking tits, Val, yes,” he snaps, static sparking between his antennae and his voice contorting as his anger gets the best of him. He forces himself to calm down, relaxes his shoulders and adopts his easygoing tone again. “I’ll be right there. And this had better fucking be worth the trip, or I swear to God-”

He can almost hear the dismissive waving of his hands as Val cuts him off. “Yeah yeah yeah, you’ll do something horrible, I’m sure. Trust me, this will be a treat. See you soon, amorcitooo,” he sings, and then the line goes dead.

Vox rolls his eyes and slams the button to end the call. He eyes his paperwork, having stared at it for so long that the words all blurred together, and heaves a sigh before sliding it all into a pile to focus on when he came back from whatever Val had planned for him. He didn’t have high hopes, but at the very least it would be a short break from the shitshow that he had to deal with on his way to the top.

If there was anything he needed after the last few years, he thinks as he makes his way to the elevator and starts his descent, it was a fucking break.

finally, my chance to brag about how I was right about Vincent!!!! and Dante's!!!! god it feels good to have guessed something correctly lmao

1963

As years went by, everything felt like it fell into two distinct eras; Before and After. 

Before was Kora; sweet, golden Kora, who still made his heart ache when he thought about her, when he imagined glimpses of her on the streets, caught a whiff of that honey and almond scent that she had always carried with her. Before was Nine Rings News and Richard Riot, the late night segment at the station and constantly dead tired on his feet as he scratched and clawed his way to the top to make a name for himself, to provide for the only woman he had ever truly felt like he loved. Before was years of struggling to do something worthwhile, something good, only for it all to slip from his fingers like too-thin thread that he couldn’t get a good grip on.

Before, he was Vincent- still clinging to the person he had been in life, the person he had tried to be for Kora in Hell. Better than all that had led him here, before everything had gone to shit and he had lost everything.

After was meeting Alastor, joining him as an acquaintance and growing under his watchful eyes while he helped the television demon to harness his powers, rather than letting them run rampant. After was abandoning Imp City and the lower rings of Pride, joining Alastor in Cannibal Town and the surrounding areas and not having to worry about work or rent or whether or not missing people could ever be found. After was undisciplined, unrestrained fun in the shadow of the most dangerous Overlord in Hell, where all semblance of the normalcy he had known before had been stripped from his life.

Now, in the After, he was Vox.

He had spent a long time thinking about who he really was before he decided to change his name; Vincent just didn’t feel like it fit him anymore- not after Kora, not after all that he had done and lost. It didn’t feel right when he stood next to Alastor and watched him tear apart Sinners three times his size for the slight of flicking the screen of his partner in passing. It was thrilling to watch someone so powerful defend him, thrilling in a way that made him want to be better. Be more again, in a different way than he had before. There were limbs being torn from torsos, organs pulled from chest cavities and he had been reminded that this was Hell- the potential for greatness was so much higher when one took morals out of the equation, when one lived as they wanted and for themselves like Alastor did. As Vincent he had spent his first years in Hell like some horrible caricature of life on Earth when this had always been an option- carnage and blood and destruction that he could be a part of on the front lines, rather than hearing about it from behind a desk. Which had been fun, but it didn’t give him the same rush that he got watching Alastor grow the size of a goddamn house and unhinge his jaw to swallow a demon whole.

So now he was Vox. The voice. Something that was perhaps more adept in referring to Alastor on the surface, until one looked closer at the relationship between the two of them. Alastor might have been the radio man, but he was the one spreading the word- making sure that people were watching when the deer went on a rampage, telling tales to anyone who would listen about his power and his reach. He had taken over the Nine Rings News cameras more than once, claws sparking with electricity as he dug them into ports and wires and redirected the news to where he wanted it. Normally the news stations wouldn’t report on Overlord business and happenings- too much potential for loss if an anchor said something for or against the wrong person. 

Alastor wasn’t just another Overlord, and he- Vox- would make sure that they all knew it.

He knew the broadcasts and more importantly, he knew how to sell them; if people were enamored with destruction and chaos even on Earth, it was almost pornographic in Hell, the degree to which people stopped and stared when there was a fight going down. He and Alastor both thrived on the attention that Vox’s takeovers brought- Alastor had done fine on his own for decades, notorious from his airwaves alone, but as technology had changed and adapted he had accepted that there were other ways of marketing to reach a wider audience. A television was almost as common a household staple as a radio was these days, and between the two of them Alastor’s reputation spread like wildfire and left ashes in its wake with every news segment that Vox commandeered for him.

Alastor urged Vox to aspire for more. Helped him find someone to replace his screen like Kora had done, a newer model that wasn’t shattered from his failings. Helped him learn to control his powers as they grew and changed with every year, every soul that he acquired with or without Alastor’s help. Despite his statement to Rich all those years ago that he had no Overlord ambitions, he could admit that it was easier to survive in Hell when you had power- and power came from having people under your thumb. Even with his first lazy contract, a new Sinner that he had made a simple deal with before the poor sucker had known better than to accept help from a stranger and say they ‘owed him one,’  he had felt the surge of strength through his body like an electric current. Steady and charged like he had livewires in his veins instead of blood, and it was addicting.

His hypnotism got stronger, the swirl of his eye compelling people to do almost anything if their willpower was weak enough- he couldn’t control someone like Alastor, of course, not yet, but lesser demons, those new to Hell without power or conviction, did his bidding like puppets; they hung on his words like a God. When he dug his claws into a camera or electrical outlet, he could almost see the slack-jawed mindlessness that took people over if they happened to be watching a screen when he did so. He used his power to get Alastor more listeners, sharing his broadcasts through the screen when Alastor was on air, compelling people to tune in, growing his own influence and power as he did so. 

He wanted everyone to see Alastor the way he did- larger than life. Terrifying. Worthy of their fear and awe in everything he did, every broadcast he put out. He was an example of what Vox wanted for himself, power and influence and respect that he didn’t have to constantly prove himself to get. Alastor had saved Vox, pulled him out of the rut he had dug himself into and helped him to be more like he had always wanted to, showed him that there was more to Hell than adhering to guidelines set for Earth that had no place here. 

Even beyond the things in their professional life- the destruction, the deals, the rampages and glorious gore that was brought to him at Alastor’s side- there was a camaraderie between them. One that Vox appreciated most of the time when it started, when Alastor would invite him out for something other than business, to go to a bar together or tag along while he ran errands around Hell. It felt good to be with someone without being absorbed by them the way he had been with Kora, still his own person even when he and the powerful demon spent time together. He was still full of anger and spite and sadness about everything that had happened, but being with Alastor made it easier.

Most of the time.

In the majority of ways, his new partner was nothing like Kora. He was ruthless and cruel and strategic where Kora had been kind and generous and good. But the things that they did share snuck up on him unexpectedly and sent him reeling into the life he used to have. Alastor made shitty jokes and tasty food, he spoke his mind and sometimes woke up with a grumbly voice, crooked ears and a messy head of hair that put Vox right back in that apartment in Imp City. Sometimes he would catch the upturn of Alastor’s lip as he smirked at something or laughed, manic and terrible and wonderful, and he would feel that ache in his chest that reminded him of her. The way he had felt with her. Like he was empty and waiting to be filled with whatever affections the person before him would bestow, and when that happened he hated himself so deeply it was a wonder that Alastor never picked up on it. 

He told himself it wasn’t the same- he didn’t feel for Alastor like he had loved Kora. He didn’t think losing him would destroy him as completely; it was just nice to have another person to spend time with again outside of work, someone to bounce ideas off of and relax and enjoy their company without pressure or guilt that he wasn’t doing enough.

If he sometimes caught a glimpse of his life with her- the good parts of it- while doing that, well… that was nobody’s business but his own.

1969

The accumulation of power was too slow for his taste as time went on. Vox wanted to be like Alastor- feared, respected, growing at an exponential rate. Instead, his progress was slow and steady.

“Nothing wrong with taking your time, my good man,” Alastor would tell him with a friendly clap on the back when Vox complained. “Why, if you were as powerful as I am already I might have to consider you competition,” he would say, letting a bit more static into his voice, his eyes flicking to dials like they did when he wanted to seem particularly terrifying.

It didn’t strike fear into him the same way it used to. Sure, he knew Alastor could kill him with very little effort if he wanted to- but he prided himself in being one of very few people that Alastor seemed to consider a friend. Years at his side had taught Vox the ins and outs of Alastor; what he liked, what he didn’t like, what music he preferred to dance to at what clubs after a certain number of drinks. He thought about what it would be like if he were competition- surely Alastor would finally respect him, instead of just tolerating him like a funny little pet. He acknowledged that Vox was getting stronger, that his powers were worthwhile, but he still talked down on him, made jokes at his expense. Satan forbid anybody else insult him- Alastor had torn the tongue from more than one Sinner for daring to comment on Vox’s head in a joking manner- but Alastor himself cracked puns and jokes at him like it was a necessity to his day. Vox let it all slide for the sake of companionship- he knew it didn’t come from a place of real malice, that Alastor had to have some faith in his abilities, or he wouldn’t tolerate him.

“I just want to be… more,” he lamented to Alastor one night at his friend’s bar, a little blonde whirlwind of a Sinner that entertained the crowd from the stage with her dancing and singing. “Like you are. But as long as Nine Rings News is around, I can’t corner the market like you do with your show.”

“So infiltrate,” Alastor said dismissively with a wave of his hand. “You know what they say- if you can’t beat them, join them! And then take them down from the inside,” he adds with canned laughter. “You’re more than capable.”

Vox shook his head. “Richard Riot is head of the network now- he’ll never let me back in.” He had seen the news years ago, that Rich had been promoted and promoted again, surpassing the positions that Vox had been striving for as Vincent until he sat at the top, no longer even on the air but making all of the decisions. “He was there the day we met, when I took over the station and fuckin’ hypnotized a room full of staff and executives.”

“Don’t be such a square,” Alastor reprimands with a gentle knock to Vox’s casing. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Spontaneity? All you have to do is get rid of the problem,” Alastor adds. “He’s no Overlord- he has no real power to speak of beyond control of a network that would be put to better use in your hands.”

Vox’s screen crackles with static at the unusual comment of belief. “You really think so?” He asks incredulously, and Alastor’s smile is soft and hazy with drink, the slow blink of his eyes- red, not blue- familiar and comforting.

“Naturally. Why, imagine the reach my reputation could have in your silly little claws! Nine Rings News reaches the other circles of Hell, does it not?” He starts off on his grand plan, the wonders that Hellspawn knowing his name could do for him, the power and notoriety that it could bring, and Vox sat there and listened and thought about what he had said.

Getting rid of the problem.

With a friend as powerful as Alastor, taking over the news station- not just the cameras, the broadcasts, but the entire thing- could be done. And not just done, it would be easy. With Alastor at his side he could have the news station under his influence in a couple of days at the latest. “You don’t think I should keep trying to make it myself?” He finds himself asking, and Alastor laughs his staticky laugh and takes another sip off his drink.

“For some people,” he says pointedly, with a tip of his head towards Vox, “its best to take what you can get where you can. Not every aspiring Overlord can be me, you know!”

He didn’t love that- that Alastor thought he was less than, that a takeover of something already established was the only way that he could rise to power quickly and efficiently. But if he wanted to be at Alastor’s level soon, with thousands of souls under his thumb and the power they provided thrumming through his veins, he needed to do what he could. That was all that mattered now, making sure that he was worthy of being at the powerful demon’s side for everything that he had done for Vox.

“Let’s do it,” he says, and relishes in the dark excitement that lights up Alastor’s eyes. “I don’t care what it takes- I want to be on top.”

“Glad to see you haven’t lost that spark of inspiration,” he says, flicking at one of Vox’s antennae and laughing when it flickers with electricity. “Let’s discuss details.” And the rest of the evening is lost to the intricacies of their plan, the ways that they would use their powers to topple Nine Rings News under Vox’s feet where it had always belonged.

Mere days later, the plan was set and ready for them when Alastor allowed Vox to slide an arm around his narrow waist and dropped them both into a puddle of shadow. It was a strange feeling, to travel without a corporeal body, but one that Vox wasn’t entirely opposed to when he stepped back into being on the top floor of the Nine Rings News building. The shadows at their feet dissipated without a sound, the space around them brightening when they faded and showing Vox exactly what he had expected to see in the CEO’s office.

It had been a busy day for Richard Riot. Vox had pulled his usual stunts, hostile takeovers of the NRN camera vans that he diverted to displays of Alastor’s brutality, scenes of turf wars happening around Pentagram City, private footage of executives from the station that Alastor had managed to leverage from one of his cronies and Vox had promptly hooked up to a signal. He was knee deep in paperwork as Vox and Alastor watched him from behind, bent over his desk and muttering to himself as he tried to do damage control from all that had transpired today. Alastor inclined his head towards Vox’s old mentor, and he knew it was time.

“Richard!”

The cyclops nearly bolted out of his chair, whipping around in a panic to be met with Vox’s wide, shark-toothed grin. “Vincent,” he said quietly, pupil darting to the side as Alastor patrolled the perimeter of the room. “What are you doing here?”

“Come on, Rich, don’t you keep up with the news?” He asks cheerfully, every inch the newsman he had always been, always would be. “It’s Vox these days! Gotta keep up with society while it changes, you know.”

“What are you doing here?” He repeats, turning while Vox walks around the office, following him with his gaze. He watches while Vox pulls books from the shelf, flips through the pages before tossing them carelessly onto a nearby chair, rifling through papers on Rich’s desk when he comes close enough. “I know you’re behind the mess I’ve been cleaning up all day, which means you must want something.”

“I think I want a chaise,” Vox says, watching Alastor’s grin grow and split in the corners of his vision. “Right there where you have the desk. That view behind you is wasted with the chair facing this way, you know. A man at the top should have a worthwhile view.” He spins on his heel, inspecting the room further. “The desk could go… oh, I don’t know, there maybe? Do you think that would interrupt the flow of the room?”

“Is that what this is? You’ve been a pain in my network’s ass for almost a decade and you dropped by to give me notes on my office layout?”

“My office layout,” Vox corrects with a smirk, “because you’ll be stepping down today.”

Rich scoffs. “Like Hell I will,” he retorts. “What makes you think you can just come in here and demand my job after all the shit you’ve been behind lately? Running around with the Radio Demon, fucking over my broadcasts and ratings. You think that’s how you get power?”

“You get power by doing what you need to fucking do,” Vox says calmly, though Rich’s words hit deeper than he expects them to. It’s one thing to be encouraged to do this by Alastor, but for someone else to call him out on it… “Something you wouldn’t know anything about. How many decades were you the network’s bitch before they finally let you up to the top?”

Rich scoffs. “Loyalty is a valuable skill in fields like this. Its not always about who can be fastest- you find something worth sticking with and you stick with it. You make a decision and commit to it; you don’t do what you’ve done, going with whatever is easiest and quickest to reach these lofty, unrealistic goals that you set for yourself.”

He can feel his heart racing in his chest, the encounter not proceeding the way he thought it would- Rich simply bowing to his whims, doing what he said. “Ambition is a valuable skill. Working towards something is how you keep going, how I kept going despite all the shit I was put through here. This place was a shithole- I’m going to make it finally worth something-”

“There you go again,” Rich interjects. “That’s exactly what I mean- you put so much time and effort into that undefinable ‘finally’ that you don’t see the things you’re missing right in front of you. When will it be enough, Vinnie? When will you be satisfied?” He frowns, standing from the desk and coming around to stand in front of Vox like a disappointed father. “Have you ever stopped to think about the things that you’ve lost aiming for heights that don’t have a ceiling? You can take over my network, sure, but that’s not gonna make you happy. That’s not going to fill the massive hole in your soul from the shit that’s happened to you, and it’s never going to be enough.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Vox snarled, teeth bared and electricity sparking down his frame while Alastor watched from the sidelines with his signature smile, amused at the whole thing. Rich was hitting too close to home, poking at things in Vox’s memories and psyche that were better left alone. This wasn’t what he had come here for, for his grievances to be aired in front of his new partner like a map of the worst parts of himself.

Rich’s frown was unchanging. “I know that you used to know what it meant to work hard for what you wanted instead of taking shortcuts. You want more exposure, more reach, and your answer was to take it from me? From my network? That’s lazy, Vinnie, and you know it.”

“It’s Vox now,” he says, low and angry while his hand shoots out to grab Richard by the shirt, the truth of his words cutting deep. He had only come here at Alastor’s suggestion- he would have done the work himself, made Nine Rings News obsolete with his own network. Alastor was the one who had convinced him that it would be easiest to just take what was already established from Richard, so he could get his power quickly, simply. It touched the tender bruise of insecurity inside of him, that he was taking the easy way out, listening to people he considered as being better than him again. “And I would be careful what you say to me.”

“You’re scared,” Rich says softly. “You lost your Golden Girl and things fell apart, and you fell in with the wrong crowd.” His eye drifts towards Alastor, who gives him a little wave from across the room. “You can come back from this- what happened, happened a long time ago. You could come back-”

His claws sparked with static, Rich’s eye rolling down to see it where Vox held him. “As if I would fucking want to. I’m not some nobody anymore- come back and be lowest rung on the fucking totem pole again? I have power now- real power, power you could never dream of achieving with your shitty little news station. I don’t need you, I never needed you,” he spits with venom. “I’ve never needed anybody.”

“Vincent-”

“V̷̬̈ͫ͢͢͝O̵̷̪̰ͩ͆ͅX̸̵̨ͦ̒ͣ!”

When he screams, the sound echoes off the empty walls of Rich’s office, making the cyclops shrink into himself- properly afraid for the first time since Alastor had backed off. That was what he wanted- he didn’t want half-hearted, shitty attempts to drag him back into the life he had before, the life that he had escaped when he met Alastor. He wanted people to fear him, for his name to inspire awe and terror and fascination. He wanted everyone to look at him like Rich was looking at him now, mouth dropped in fear and a tremble to his body where Vox held him by the shirt.

He takes a deep breath- he doesn’t want to seem messy and impractical in his dealings if Alastor was going to let him tag along on more important jobs once he pulled this off. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” he says, with his old news anchor smile in place again, forcing nonchalant calm into hsi voice. “Nine Rings News is mine now. You’re gonna make the call- tell everyone that I’m top of the food chain now, that I’m calling the shots. And then Alastor and I are going to kill you.” He brings forth the angelic steel blade that Alastor had lent to him, held loftily by the handle. “If you don’t kick up a fuss about it, maybe I’ll be the one to put you out of your misery.”

“A merciful promise,” Alastor adds from across the room. “I like to take my time- I know you’re a man of the screens, but surely you’re familiar with my broadcasts.”

The way that Richard’s skin pales where visible is enough of an answer. “Why don’t you just hypnotize me?” He asks quietly. “Make me do it. You had no problem doing it before.”

Vox shakes his head. “No. I could- I’ve gotten a lot stronger, you know. I could make you do anything. I could make you use this yourself,” he says, bringing the blade down to press threateningly against Rich’s heart. “It’s one thing to watch you do something because you’re compelled to do it. It’s so much better when you do it of your own volition, knowing that what’s going to happen to you won’t change.

“Much more entertaining, I must say,” Alastor chimes in. “You’re really putting on quite the show, my good man!”

But Rich doesn’t reach for the phone to make the calls that Vox told him he would be making. Doesn’t even look at Alastor when he speaks, just sets his mouth back into that disapproving frown and stares Vox down like he was the one in control here, like any second now Vox would turn back into Vincent,  eager to please, ready to do whatever he was told.

The words leave Richard on a soft exhale. “Kora would be so disappointed in you,” he breathes, and Vox can’t stop the surge of electricity that bursts forth through his hands, shocking Richard so hard that his entire body goes stiff like a board against him. His clothes catch fire with the force of it, crackling while Vox struggles to let go, his muscles not cooperating even as the flames licked at his own blazer sleeve.

It finally burns him, the angelic steel heating in his hand until he’s forced to release it from the pain, letting go of Richard’s shirt as well and taking a step back. The fire spreads from Rich’s form, still locked in place with the strength of the electrocution, eye unseeing as it stared at the ceiling. The desk catches, spreading quickly up the side and taking over the papers on top that Rich had been working on when they entered.

“Vox.”

He can feel the glitch of his face when he looks at Alastor, the Radio Demon’s expression unreadable. “I didn’t mean to,” he blurts, feeling that desperate ache of inadequacy start to burn in his chest, in his throat. “I didn’t- fuck, I messed up the plan here. Fuck-”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” Alastor says flippantly, his tone strange and the static in his voice at full force. “It was really your plan anyway- you can do as you like.” A shadow tentacle reaches out from the shadow, picking up the angelic steel blade and offering it to Alastor, who in turn offers it to Vox. “Would you still care to do the honors after making him comply?”

Rich twitches on the floor, and Vox can’t stand to look at him anymore. 

“You can do what you want with him,” he mutters. “He was right about one thing- taking over another station is lazy. I don’t want his fucking scraps; I’m going to let this building burn to the ground. I’ll start fresh.”

“I can appreciate a good remake,” Alastor remarks, toeing at Richard on the floor and gesturing at the building around them. “I’ll handle this then- you have fun with your old flame.” He crouches low by the old news anchor and Vox makes his way to the exit, busting the glass of the fire alarm in the hallway and digging his claws in. He shorts out the circuits to the entire system, rendering the building’s sprinkler system entirely useless- by the time anyone took notice of the blaze growing on the top floor, it would be too late to stop it.

He takes the elevator down to the ground floor, thinking about what Rich had said- that Kora would be disappointed in him. It burns in him like a festering wound, growing until he can hardly breath from the ache of it. He was right, of course; Kora would take one look at what he was doing, the things that he had done, the person he had become, and leave again. It hurts in a way he doesn’t expect, and he hates that it still affects him like it did. She had been gone for years and he still couldn’t stand the thought of disappointing her, making her unhappy. It was something he would need to get over, he tells himself, setting a room of paperwork ablaze with his electrical sparks, digging his claws into the sockets that line the rooms of associate offices, overloading the generator in the basement before he finally makes his way out of the building. 

He watches from across the street as the fire begins to flicker in the windows, the burning glow of the blaze growing and growing, unrestrained and powerful.

Like he was. Like he needed to become.

He would go after the other executives next, he decides.One by one down the chain of command until Nine Rings News was nothing more than a footnote in his story when it was told, after he accomplished all that he wanted to do. Another decision that Kora would disapprove of, but he wouldn’t let himself be swayed by what the ghost of a woman a decade gone would think of his choices. He was his own person, his own burgeoning Overlord, and he had work to do.

That night, he tuned into Alastor’s radio broadcast and only felt a little terrible when Rich’s voice was carried over the airwaves, sustained and scared until they finally faded.

1975

He grows exponentially after everything with Nine Rings News. Word travelled quickly about his quick and efficient takedown of the station; the people in charge that opposed him were disposed of, and the ones that feared death- feared him, finally- signed their souls and any others that they had control of to him. He was a proper Overlord in short time, still nowhere near Alastor’s level but rising quickly up the ranks, thousands of souls under his thumb and feeling the power that granted him flowing through his veins. He replaced his head again, finally having people in Hell that were familiar with his unusual brand of anatomy and able to make such changes, ports on the back that he could plug into his new headquarters connections to the security system that he had installed around Pentagram City, furthering his knowledge and insight into the things that were happening in Hell. 

Vox was ruthless. He was cold and calculating. He blackmailed and schemed outside of the plans that he helped Alastor with; the new broadcast station he had created after taking down Rich was thriving, with him as both the head anchorman and the only one making any decisions. He didn’t have to answer to anyone but himself, he reported on what he wanted when he wanted, and he could take over the showings of any of the other stations, ensuring that his show was the only one on. Slowly but surely, he was confirming that he would be the only source of news available to Sinners. People would trust his word with no one to dispute him, no alternate opinions or reports. He would monopolize the news industry, his next step to go after the newspapers and magazines, perhaps start creating sitcoms to grow more revenue as he worked to be the best. HE would be unstoppable.

Alastor had been a little distant since what happened with Rich. They were still close, still friends- still out to the bars after a successful job, more souls for the both of them, still discussing the future when everything went well. The next step, the next target, the next level. But Alastor seemed to be more tight-lipped about his personal goals and what he wanted. He would go off on his own and come back having amassed hundreds of souls without Vox; he had leads that Vox couldn’t source even with all of his security cameras, his new ways of gathering information that somehow still couldn’t touch what Alastor had. Again, he was reminded of Kora- how reluctant she was to talk about her past, about Gideon and what had happened to her, how she ended up in Hell. Keeping secrets from him when all he wanted was to help her. It was different with Alastor, of course, always different in the key ways, but it all felt so similar as the years went on and he felt himself being left in the dark.

He thought before that losing Alastor wouldn’t affect him the way losing Kora had- these days, he thinks it might be worse. Alastor was one of the first people to see the potential in him, the promise of what he could be if he just went after what he wanted. The thought of letting him down after all this time, after all the work and effort Alastor had put into molding him, made him anxious the same way that he had been with her. That what he was doing wasn’t enough, that Alastor deserved better from him. Alastor deserved someone that could be on his level, not someone that would always be a couple feet behind, following in his shadow.

Vox wanted to bring Alastor into his company. Officially, permanently- VoxTek, as he had dubbed it, was gaining traction, and having Alastor attached would do wonders for both of them. His growing followers combined with the almost cult-like listeners that Alastor had amassed over the years was a good majority of Pentagram City, and a large portion of Hell as a whole. But Alastor was resistant to the idea, always laughing the idea off, pushing it away like something distasteful. 

He was sure his mind would change after the newest job. Vox had nearly killed himself in his research, finding the ways that the transfer of souls worked after death, finding a target with enough souls for them to profit off without being strong enough to overpower either of them, sending his own lackeys in to gauge the fear of attack. Some hick-like lizard Sinner with a trickle-down network that amounted to thousands of souls when one traced it all the way down. He had done all of the work- all Alastor had to do was show up and look intimidating, get the Overlord to take the offered deal of ‘protection’ for himself and his club from the Radio Demon in exchange for soul rights if the Overlord passed, and then when Vox came in and took the entire place down, all of those souls would belong to Alastor for them to split down the middle. Alastor had seemed impressed, even, with the calculating and deceptive nature of the plan that Vox had presented, and finally, finally Vox was climbing the steps to reach that pedestal that Alastor had sat on for so long, so out of reach. So untouchable.   

The day was approaching, and after another minor job Alastor had drug Vox out to Mimzy’s again for dancing and drinking, his aversion to touch taking its usual backseat when Mimzy herself asked his friend to dance. It was a marvel to watch him spin and dip another person, bodies close without any heat to the movements, and when Alastor caught his eye across the crowded room and smiled, teeth sharp and dangerous, Vox smiled in return and pretended that he didn’t feel how soft it was, how weak it probably made him look. He ignored the frantic beating of please, please, please behind his ribs, hoping that if he ignored these growing feelings that they would disappear.

Alastor didn’t want that. Alastor barely tolerated regular friendship, let alone anything further that Vox might try to pursue. Unlike with Kora, Vox knew that this, at least, was impossible. That gave him a modicum of comfort- that even though he was starting to feel the same, it wouldn’t be the same as it had been with her. There was no heartbreak to be found in a vague something that would never actually be, which made it easier to try and bury the complicated emotions that plagued him. He raised his near-empty glass to Alastor before he turned back to the bartender for a refill.

He frowns in confusion when he saw there was already one in front of him. “Whiskey on the rocks, right?” He hears a simpering voice ask beside him, and he barely swallows his exasperated sigh when he turns to see Joy Jagoff on the stool to his right. “You can update that screen of yours, but some things never change.”

“Joy, what a pleasure,” he says, in a voice that clearly indicates it’s anything but. He hadn’t even thought about her in years- not since he had burned the NRN building to the ground. He didn’t watch other networks anymore, just caught glimpses here and there before taking over their broadcasts, but he hadn’t seen her on a screen in ages. “What are you up to these days, now that Nine Rings News is out?”

“Oh, a little of this and that,” she says, inspecting her claws. “I’m more behind the scenes these days; administrative assistant for the production and editing of a magazine.”

That catches his interest, his vague future plans for print media coming to the forefront of his agenda quickly. “Magazines, really? You wouldn’t happen to have a business card for a boss I could get in touch with, would you?”

She laughs, haughty and irritating the way it had always been. “I’m not sure it’s the kind of magazine you want to get involved with,” she giggles. “You’re still in the business of news- my boss is more interested in… other endeavors,” she says softly, running a large paw up the inside seam of his slacks in what she surely thought was a coy manner.

He hadn’t expected Joy to go into anything even remotely resembling sex work, but a contact in printing was still a contact. He imagines Alastor’s face hearing that he had made his own connection, had his own source of a wider reach, and while he gingerly removes her hand from his thigh, he doesn’t vacate his seat. “Interesting work, I’m sure,” he says instead, strained but still polite. “A business card, perhaps?”

She reaches a couple long, red-tipped claws into the low cut of her dress and extracts a pink rectangle of cardstock, sparkly even in the low lights of the bar and etched with a swirling gold font that read Valentino with a short number printed across the bottom. She held it out to him before turning it over in her fingers, her own number scrawled in pen on the back. 

“I’ll be expecting a call,” Joy teases. “Otherwise, Mister Valentino might just miss yours.” 

Vox sighs internally, not really willing to entertain her. “Gotcha. I’ll give you a ring sometime.”

“Or,” Joy says, placing her hand on his thigh again, this time with a gentle squeeze that makes his skin crawl, “you could join me in the bathroom. Gimme a few minutes of your time and I’ll have Val call you instead.”

He finally feels the scowl flash across his face as he looks at her, this ghost from his past that hadn’t changed in all these years, still just as desperate and irritating as she had always been. “As tempting as that sounds, I think I’ll just call the office,” he says, once again removing her hand from his person. He was no longer in a position where he needed to actually entertain her, to make excessively nice for the sake of his career- if it wasn’t for this potential contact for a magazine, he would have shocked her like he had done on air that one time. He gets down from his stool, ready to go tell Alastor that he was heading home for the night when a sharp claw traces along his neck, the seam where mechanical met biology.

“Come on, Vincent- oh, sorry, Vox,” she corrects herself. “I know what you’re like, always working towards the top. Wouldn’t it feel better to be chased than to do the chasing?”

“It would feel better if you got your hands off me,” he snaps back, slapping her hand away. “I said I’ll call the office- stop fucking touching me.” He glances across the room and finds Alastor’s gaze on him and his unwelcome companion.

“Or what?” Joy follows his gaze, and though her posture tenses she doesn’t stop talking. “You’ll sick your newest big, bad guard dog on me? So disappointing,” she says with a sigh. “All that new power and you’re still following other people around like a puppy, just like you did with Kora.”

He hears Alastor before he sees him, slinking up like a shadow like he always did. “My, my, Vox, it seems you have all manner of old friends you’ve never thought to mention,” he says, and the menace in as thick in his voice as the static. “Who is this charming creature?”

“Joy Jagoff,” the bear says, extending a hand out to offer it to Alastor and placing the other on Vox’s shoulder for balance. “Big fan of your work, of course- I’d love to have a chat sometime.”

“A delightful idea.” He smiles, tight and ominous as his eyes turn to dials, the screech of feedback permeating the air as he focuses on Joy’s hand on Vox’s arm. “Continue to place your hands where they’re not wanted and perhaps that chat will come sooner than you think- perhaps on the air!”

Joy’s expression sours and she turns to Vox after removing her hands. “Don’t tell me you’re still such a pussy that you let other people fight your battles for you.”

“I’m perfectly capable of handling myself,” he says, not looking at Alastor. He doesn’t want to see the disappointment, the acknowledgement of who he used to be. Weak, lost. That wasn’t who he was anymore. He didn’t need help with this, with anything.

“God,” Joy laughs maliciously, eyes flitting back and forth between Vox and Alastor. “You’re so pathetic. If Kora could see you now-”

“D̷̨̥̥̥͖̞͐ͮ̄o͙͙̙̘̙ͤͫ͞n̫̫̘̗͕̲̲̎ͥ't͖͖̠̬͛ fucking talk about her,” he snaps, and his voice is strange and corrupted with the words. His body sparks, the short flash of light illuminating the section of the bar where they sat and drawing attention from other patrons. Alastor’s eyes light up as well, but there’s something odd in his expression- something guarded and suspicious that Vox can’t look at too closely right now, too preoccupied with Joy. The way she pushed him, kept bringing up reminders that he didn’t want, not when everything he wanted was so close. “You’re fucking nothing compared to her, Joy, you never have been.”

And she just doesn’t know how to fucking quit. “Please- I saw right through that bitch the very first time we met. Right through both of you, so fucking codependent it was disgusting. You needed her and that kept you right where she wanted you until she found something better, and then what did she do? Fucking left you anyway.”

He feels it before it happens, a surge of power through his whole body that makes it feel like he’s going to throw up. He hadn’t done so since he was human, but the sensation is the same; a burning in his throat that has nowhere to go, but he can’t actually throw up electricity so he redirects it. Anywhere and everywhere else.

The dim lights above them shatter, casting the bar into darkness. He hears Mimzy scream, hears Joy laughing uncontrollably in front of him until a stray jolt of  power shocks her into silence as her clothes catch fire, and when he looks back at Alastor he can’t decipher the expression that’s illuminated by the glow of his screen, and he panics. Vox finds the closest electrical outlet he can- behind the bar, the lighted mirror behind all of the alcohol unplugged- and focuses his attention on it. In a moment he’s gone, flashing with a bright light into the electrical current and searching for the first exit point.

It deposits him a couple blocks away, stumbling out of a broken power box attached to an old building. His clothes are smoking, his body trembling as he tries to catch his breath. That had been disastrous- fuck Joy. Fuck Joy, and fuck this Valentino as well. He didn’t care what kind of printing business he was in, what kind of connection it could be- he wasn’t going anywhere near Joy Jagoff ever again. Not with the constant reminders she gave him, of who he had been and what he had lost. Not with the way she was constantly tearing Kora down, even though Vox didn’t fucking care anymore, had moved past her.

He’s taken the block out again, he realizes, looking at all the darkened windows of the street. He can see the shifting of curtains, people peeking out at him from the safety of their homes, and he should appreciate it. This was what he wanted, right? Fear? Respect? This was what he had been working for.

It feels hollow.

Vox hears the light sound of a cane tapping on the ground, and turns to see Alastor watching him. Eyes narrowed, smile wide, Vox is… unsettled,  for the first time in a long time with his partner. “Well, that was certainly entertaining!” He says, the static so thick in his voice that Vox struggles to understand for a moment. “Electrifying, one could say-”

“Just- stop, Al,” Vox says, not in the mood for the puns and jokes and everything about Alastor that reminded him a little too much of Kora. “Not now.”

The radio demon is uncharacteristically silent as he watches Vox pace. “Apologies- I rather thought you enjoyed my little jokes. But I’m beginning to sense that there’s much about you that I am unaware of.”

He stops, looks at Alastor a little more closely. His shoulders are stiff, stanced with his cane in a way that makes his entire frame straight as a ruler. “What do you mean?”

“Who,” Alastor asks carefully, “is Kora?”

“Not important,” he responds automatically, because what else could he say? That she was a woman he had loved with every fiber of his fucking being and she had just vanished one day? That she was the best thing that had happened to him in life and death and he fucking ruined it with his ambition, with his need to make her happy? Nothing he could say would make Alastor understand.

Alastor’s eyes narrow, and the shadows at his feet expand. “You’re lying,” he deadpans. “That was not the kind of reaction one gives over something that is not important. And I cannot work with you if I cannot trust you to tell me the truth.”

Vox scrubs a hand over his screen, groaning internally. “It’s not a lie- she was just… a woman that I knew. That I was involved with. She’s fucking gone now, so she’s not important.”

“There is nothing wrong,” Alastor starts, “with harboring memories of an old flame. But it is affecting your work-”

“It’s not affecting anything!” Vox shouts, and he’s so caught in the moment that he doesn’t see Alastor’s face harden, how he takes a step back. “I’m fucking fine, okay? She was here, now she’s not. She’s out of my life, she has been for almost fifteen fucking years, why do people insist on bringing up things that don’t fucking m̰̰̹͚̙̂ͦ͗͠a͔͔̜̗̦ͩ̅̎t͖͖̠̬͛t͖͖̠̬͛ḛ̡̰̳͓̥ͬ͋ͪͧṛ̣̬̫̍͌ͩ͟ a͔͔̜̗̦ͩ̅̎n̫̫̘̗͕̲̲̎ͥy͙͙̪̰ͫ͌́m̰̰̹͚̙̂ͦ͗͠o͙͙̙̘̙ͤͫ͞ṛ̣̬̫̍͌ͩ͟ḛ̡̰̳͓̥ͬ͋ͪͧ?”

He ends up screaming the last words, his voice echoing through the street that they find themselves on, and its only when he coughs on the crackle in his voice that he realizes it. He swallows hard, watching Alastor as he tilts his head to one side and looks at him like he’s something curious, interesting. Like he had that first night so many years ago.

“I see. Pardon my curiosity then.” And he turns on his heel and starts to leave, and the need to stop him hits Vox so hard he nearly chokes on it. 

“No, wait!” He grabs Alastor’s arm, grip tight enough that his claws pierce through the red suit jacket and turns him to face his screen. He can feel the mad swirling of his eye, unpracticed but steady- he’s not strong enough, he knows he’s not strong enough for this to work on Alastor of all people. Alastor, who’s been better than him through their entire acquaintanceship; who taught him how to use the eye more effectively, taught him how to use all  of his powers more effectively, probably knew most of them better than Vox himself did. He knows he’s not strong enough and he does it anyway, without conscious thought, so desperate to keep another person from leaving him that he acts without thinking like he always does.

He catches himself before Alastor has a chance to react, releasing the other demon’s suit like it was burning him and taking several steps back. “Fuck, I didn’t- I didn’t mean to do that, Alastor, I’m so sorry.”

There’s so much happening on Alastor’s face that its hard to keep track. Rage, disappointment, acceptance- they all flicker by in time with the ticking of the dials in his eyes while Vox stands there, useless, hoping that this can be salvaged. That he hasn’t irreparably fucked this up. That Alastor won’t eat him where he stands.

Finally, mercifully, it stops. The creeping darkness around them faded, Alastor’s eyes went back to normal. He brushes his arms down his sleeves, the holes from Vox’s claws glaringly obvious in the fabric. “No harm done,” he says, and his smile seems… mostly normal. He’s still on guard, reserved, but he’s backing down. “I apologize for poking at what seems to be a tender bruise.”

Vox shakes his head. “You’re not. It’s not- that part of my life is over,” he settles on. “Kora doesn’t matter anymore, that’s all that’s important right now. And I swear that our job this week will not be affected by any of this.”

Alastor grins finally, wide and manic and what Vox was used to. “Oh, I know,” he says cheerfully. “The job will be right as rain. Truly an inspiring idea on your end- I suppose innovation is one of the wonders of new technology.”

The sigh of relief that leaves him is too loud in the quiet air. “Good. That’s good- everything is gonna be-”

“Good?”Alastor offers, with a chuckle. “Freshen up your vocabulary, old pal- you’re slipping. Whatever will the masses of Hell think when their trusted news source can’t string together a sentence? They may cancel your showings.”

“As if.” This was better- this was more familiar for him, this easy banter and teasing from his friend. “I’ll be on air for centuries to come- and you with me!”

Alastor hums, a non-commital sound. “Quite. Well then- I suppose I’ll bid you a goodnight. We’ll need our strength for this job.”

“That’s a good idea. So I’ll see you there on Friday? Unless you wanna meet up one more time to go over the plan, the verbiage of the contract-”

“Unnecessary,” Alastor interrupts. “You’ve done your work- it’s time to see your plan come to fruition. Put all of this nonsense behind us.”

“Okay, great! Well, I’ll see you…. Then,” he trails off, watching as Alastor drops into a puddle of shadow and vanishes before him without a proper goodbye. He shakes it off though, knowing that Alastor was a little strange, that today had been a rough day and he had likely been just as affected by their minor fight as Vox had been.

He zaps back into the power box he had come from, riding the current until he vaguely recognized the area near his new apartment. The power outage hadn’t reached this far, but he could see through his window the extent of the damage he’d done- an entire sector of Cannibal Town blacked out amidst the bright lights of the rest of Pentagram City.

Not as large as the first time, he reasons. And not as damaging as his last breakdown at the Nine Rings News building. That felt like growth to him, a step in the right direction- he was learning to control them, those irritating feelings that welled up in him at the worst times and just exploded outwards like a fucking bomb. He was learning, and adapting, and Kora would be a blip in his history when he was done.

He would be on top soon. Kora would be a long forgotten memory once he and Alastor were on top together.

March 1961

Vincent knows as soon as he sees it that it’s the one.

He had stopped into the jewelry store on a whim, having to take a different route home than usual because some idiot had wrecked their car down the street he usually took. He hadn’t thought something like a jewelry store could survive in Hell without being robbed on a near daily basis, but the series of guns that he heard cocking as soon as the bell above the door signaled his entrance explained that well enough for him. He had looked over the cases for only a few minutes before he spotted it.

He doesn’t even look at the price when he waves the attendant down, hardly even turning his head to acknowledge the woman in favor of watching the ring, glistening in the display case, and making sure it wasn’t going anywhere. Kora would love it- a delicate golden band adorned with a tiny cluster of soft green stones to either side of a modest diamond. It wasn’t overly loud or large, only having caught Vincent’s eye because it was so much more discreet than some of the others in the shop.

Kora didn’t wear a lot of jewelry, opting instead to express herself with her fun t-shirts and her words. But a ring like this- something subtle without seeming cheap, its purpose and meaning obvious without being tacky or drawing attention- he thought she would appreciate enough to wear it regularly, make sure that people knew that she was his as much as he was hers. He wasn’t totally sure how something like engagement worked in Hell, but this, at least, would serve as his promise to her. Something to show her that he was committed to her, that he wasn’t going anywhere. That he loved her back. 

Vincent still hadn’t said it. But he felt it in the kick of his heart every time he looked at her; cuddled up during one of their rare times together these days, watching television on the couch; fast asleep when he came home late from work and she hadn’t been able to wait up for him, his pillow clutched to her chest like a lifeline; when she whispered it to him as she got ready for the day, said with the press of her lips to his screen while he was groggy and half awake. It consumed him, the need for her to know what she meant to him despite how busy he had been lately, that it was all for her.

The chances of it being stolen from her while working at the diner in the short time between giving it to her and when she would no longer have to work seemed slim, because the latter was closer than ever before.

The attendant returns with the ring, nestled delicately on a velvet pad for him to pick up and inspect, and the path before him is suddenly laid out so clearly in his mind it felt as solid as the ring between his fingers.

He could almost taste that top spot. Vincent felt the eyes of the executives on him whenever he filled in for someone, when he showed up on his days off, coming in before everyone else and not going home until he was the last one left from the overnight crew. He filled in for the morning team sometimes as well, anyone that wasn’t as reliable or dedicated as he was; he had done weather, cooking segments, sports coverage, anything and everything they would let him do. The praise that flowed for him was near constant, Rich always there to offer him a spot of advice or sing of his merit to the higher ups. Joy was a thorn in his side- she had never gotten over his siding with Kora after an incident at the Christmas party a couple of years back- but it was easy to tune her out when he thought about how he would soon be calling the shots for the late news.

Calling the shots for all of the news, by the time he had finished climbing the ladder the way he wanted.

And once he was on top, it would all be worth it. He wouldn’t have to work so hard to prove himself worthy of respect and could take regular time off, spoil her the way she deserved. They would finally have what he had been working so hard to provide for them; no more late mornings hunched over scripts, when Kora was off to work by the time he got home, or missing the Sunday grocery shopping like he had been. No more worries on her end about rent or being able to afford her little pleasures. A regular schedule where they could fall asleep together again, curled in one another’s arms, wake to the warmth of each other’s bodies before spending the days doing whatever they wanted, instead of what was needed to get by.

“Sir?” The attendant’s voice pulls him from the thoughts of their future and back to the present, and he feels a spark of static between the antennae on his head. “Will you be purchasing today?”

“Yes,” he says with no hesitation, pulling his wallet from his pocket. The price is nothing to him, not when everything he had ever wanted was so close, his efforts finally on the cusp of paying off.

When the transaction is over, the velvet box sits comfortably in his jacket pocket as he makes his way home. The sky is bright and red, and a glance at his watch tells him that Kora will already be out and about for her deliveries this morning. All the better, as it will give him a chance to hide the ring before she got home; he wanted everything to be perfect when he gave it to her, his promotion to be as good as guaranteed and their future well secured. He would take a day off, treat her like a princess, spend some good quality time together before he sprang it on her and watched her face light up with happiness when he finally told her he loved her, that everything would be better soon.

He keeps the box clutched tightly in his hand the whole way home, something dangerously like hope beating a rapid rhythm in his chest.

It comes even quicker than he expects- and at the worst time possible.

He told Kora to take off the next Friday after he bought the ring, that he had something important to discuss with her and he wanted to spend some quality time together, and his Golden Girl had come alive, peppering his face with kisses and sweet talk before she went to work to talk to Viv, confirming her day off with him with a sticky note to the fridge. He confirmed with Rich that he would be taking the day as well, resulting in a clap on his back and a wink when he mentioned Kora.

The box burned a hole in his pocket the whole time; his ‘hiding place’ that he settled on was his work blazer, hung by the door with Kora none the wiser of its presence. He rubbed his thumb across the soft velvet so many times he worried there would be a groove in it, but every time he checked it was just as pristine and perfect as when he bought it. The gems in the ring still caught the light in the most perfect way, and once when Kora was sleeping he had oh-so-carefully slid it onto her finger to ensure a perfect fit. The sight of it made his chest ache, and he had pressed a kiss with trembling lips to her forehead after slipping it back into its box.

His plan was perfect- not Dante’s for this special occasion, like they had spent the two-year anniversary of her rescue of him, but the skating rink. That was where she had introduced him to her friends, showed everyone that he was hers, cemented her feelings for him before even saying she loved him, and Kora had been so in her element the last time they had gone; he regretted not being able to take her more frequently. But fuck, once he got everything he was working towards, he could buy her a skating rink- build one in their house if they wanted. She would never want for anything if he could provide it for her.

This afternoon, she was in the bathroom applying some kind of makeup, her hair pulled into a soft bun that let some curls loose around her face. She wore the twirly skirt that he loved from last time, one that he knew would flair when she spun and show off her strong legs. He already couldn’t wait until they got home- he would peel it off her slowly, take his time in a way they hadn’t been able to for a while, watch the lights reflect off the stones of the ring-

The phone rings, pulling his concentration from his thoughts of when they returned. He answers with a smile still present in his tone, but when he hears Rich’s voice on the other line his stomach drops.

“Vinny, my boy! Look, I’m sorry to reach out like this- I know you had a day planned with Kora- but you gotta get down to the station.”

Anxiety flashes through his system. “I’m- I really can’t today, Rich,” he tries, voice lowered so Kora won’t hear him. “This is really important, I’ve had it requested for almost two weeks.”

Rich sighs in his ear. “I know, I know, and I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need it. Listen-” He lowers his voice, and Vincent can hear the rustle of his clothing as he looks around. “You didn’t hear this from me, but the execs have had their eyes on you and have just been waiting for a chance to put you in the spotlight. The real spotlight, not just filling in.”

“I-”

“This is that chance, Vin. They’re wanting to move me to the early morning crew- fucking Brandon got himself caught during the extermination in January and no one else can work with that Shelby bitch for more than a few weeks at a time- and they’ve been looking for someone to fill my spot on the late show, for good. They want to run a test of the new proposed line up today- apparently no one looks at the schedule to see when people are off. They were expecting you early like you always are so they can adapt the lighting to account for your screen brightness. They want to see that you can handle it.”

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Kora was going to kill him.

But he couldn’t turn this down- not when this was what he had been working for after. Not when this was the final stepping stone to being where he needed to be so he could do right by Kora. He had been wanting to give her the ring early,  a sign of what was to come for them, but now it could be a symbol of what already was- the future already in motion. She would be upset with him today, but she would understand when it was all said and done.

Rich’s voice is muffled on the other end of the line when Vincent takes the phone from his ear and lays it on his shoulder, resting his screen against the fridge. Over the humming of it he can hear Kora humming to herself in the bathroom with the door open, probably putting the finishing touches on looking perfect for him.

“-still there?” He hears when he brings the phone back to his head. “I’ll make sure I’m available to cover another night for you- work a double if I need to but I don’t want you to miss this opportunity-”

“I’ll be there,” he says, and of course it’s at this moment that Kora exits, and even not fully turned towards her he can see the shadow of her tail droop. “Give me- I don’t know, ten minutes and I’ll head out.”

“Attaboy!” Rich exclaims in his ear, “and tell your Golden Girl I’m sorry to steal you away. But this is gonna be huge for you, Vinny, HUGE!” He shouts the last word and hangs up with a click, leaving Vincent to face the choice he had made.

Her face is sad, arms crossed defensively across her chest. “Are you leaving?” She asks quietly, and it kills him to break her heart like this.

“I have to,” he says, and her eyebrows crease with some unreadable expression. “It’s… it’s what I’ve been working so hard for. They want me to take over for Rich-”

“They can’t postpone that for one more night?”

“I know, baby, I’m sorry.” He crosses the living room to stand beside her, hand reaching out to caress her cheek; she leans into it, huffing a soft sigh into his palm. “It’s a huge opportunity though, and if I can’t be there, who knows who they would offer it to next?” 

Vincent can see it in her expression- the want to dispute what he was saying, convince him to stick to their original plan. And he wants to- he really, really does- but this was what his whole plan for the future was riding on.

“I might not be able to get another night off anytime soon,” she tells him. “Besides Sunday- and what’s the point then if you don’t take it off, too?”

He presses a kiss to her forehead. “I know, Goldie, and I’m sorry,” he says again. “I wouldn’t cancel for just anything- it’s really important.” He steps back and she grabs hold of his hand, grip firm when he tries to tug away.

“Vin, come on- I never see you anymore, you can’t just keep the one day off you requested specifically to spend time with me?” Her eyes well with tears, and he diverts his gaze so he doesn’t see them- he’s always been weak to it, to her, but the ring that sat like a rock in his pocket was for nothing if he didn’t land this position. “You said this was important- that was why we took the day off.”

He sighs, squeezing her hand and releasing- this time, she doesn’t try to hold on. “I’ll ask another day off soon, I promise.”

She pulls back a step, expression hurt. “You haven’t had more than a day off at a time in ages, Vincent. I miss you-”

“When I get this promotion we’ll see each other more,” he says, a hint of irritation spiking at her continued wheedling. Didn’t she realize he was doing this for her? The long hours, the pushing for more at work, saving money; it was all so she could get what she deserved, so he could give her the life he wanted her to have. “I really have to go.” He starts towards the door, groaning in irritation when she blocks his path. “Kora, come on- move.”

“No.” She stands her ground, arms crossed across her chest in a way that shouldn’t have been cute, but even in her anger she was beautiful. “What is going on with you? You’re never home anymore, when you are home you just sleep, you don’t go out to do the grocery shopping with me anymore or spend any time with me beyond a quick fuck when you can spare a couple minutes before leaving again.”

A pang of guilt flickers in his chest, but it was drowned out by his own frustration. How could she not see? He wasn’t doing this for some selfish reason—he was trying to build a life, a future where she didn’t have to worry about a damn thing. He fingered the small velvet box in his pocket, the one he’d planned to give her today, that had been on the peripheral of his mind since he bought it. But then the call came- this could be the end of it, the confirmation about his position, his security for their future. The ring, that promise, it had to wait for that. “Move,” he demands again, and when she doesn’t immediately comply his hand shoots out to grab her bicep, forcibly moving her to the side.

The sound she makes is likely more from shock than pain, but tears well in her eyes regardless. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You’ve been making it seem like none of this matters, like I don’t matter. Why are you acting like this?”

The tension inside of him unravels quick as a whip. “I’m not acting,” he snaps, and she takes a step back in shock at the harsh coolness of his tone. “This is what I am, Kora, you didn’t change me when you picked me up off the street- you just delayed the inevitable. Fucking leave if you don’t like it.”

The silence that follows is suffocating; when he looks over, Kora’s eyes are glassy and wet, her lip quivering. His heart pounds as the regret creeps in, winding like vines around his heart- but his pride keeps him from taking it back, taking her into his arms with an apology and an explanation. He wanted to tell her about the ring, the life he’d been trying to secure for them; why he had been pushing so hard, why he was choosing to leave her today. His vocals stutter when he speaks. “I-”

Love you. He almost says it, the words on the tip of his tongue like his stupid brain thinks that will rectify the situation, the ring box in his pocket weighted like its made of something heavier than a bit of gold and diamond and velvet. If he says it now, it would be tainted by the moment, by the fight they found themselves in. She had waited for too long for it to be some cheap thing he said to keep her from being upset with him. “I’ll be home late,” he mutters instead. “We can talk when I come home, okay?” 

He would fix everything tomorrow, he tells himself as he tries to catch a cab for a faster trip, refusing to look back to the door of the apartment. Rich would make sure he got a day off, especially if he told him what today had been for- then he could show Kora the ring and explain. Once he got the promotion everything would get resolved, and she would see that everything had had a purpose, it was all for something. For her.

“... and that’s all we have for you tonight, folks- keep those doors locked and those windows closed, you never know who might come creeping through.” Vincent flashes a wide grin at the cameras, the lights of the studio dialed down to adapt to the brightness of his head. Rich had come back in to see the rest of his test run, shooting him a smile and a thumbs up from the sidelines. He could feel Joy’s eyes on him as well, but he had been ignoring her as best he could- banter was expected between co-anchors though, so he engaged her when he needed to. 

To the left of him, he sees the image he casts on televisions all over the rings of Pride, and he looks good. His blazer is pressed and wrinkle-free, screen buffed to a shine that forced the crew to adjust some spotlights to avoid blinding anyone, and his sharp-toothed smile is flawless and fierce. The timer was ticking down to the end of the broadcast, and Vincent leans forward onto his elbow on the desk. “This is Vincent-”

“-and Joy-”

“-signing off from Nine Rings News.” They speak the last line in unison, and Vincent can see on the televisions set up that the channel has cut to commercial, the first of many that will play for the next few hours until it’s time for Rich’s new slot. The room erupts into cheers, Joy leaning back in her chair to eye him appreciatively. The production crew surrounds him, taking his notes off his hands, disconnecting his equipment as they offer his praise and words of encouragement. 

Rich approaches with a slap to the back that knocks the wind out of him. “I fucking knew you would be a hit,” he says over the chorus of final congratulations, grabbing his arm and shaking it vigorously. “Let’s head out to celebrate! I have a couple hours still before I have to be back for my segment- that’s plenty of time for a couple rounds at Spite! You can ring Kora, see if she wants to come out with us if she’s not working to make up for missing your plans today.”

At the mention of Kora, Vincent’s excitement gets a little muddled,  feeling the way a glitch crackles across his screen as he remembers their fight, the way she had cried when he snapped at her and made her move. She would be asleep by now, even if she had decided to pick up a shift once their plans were canceled- he wouldn’t wake her for this, not with the way that he had left. He throws an arm around Rich’s shoulder and steers him away from the crowd. “I appreciate it, Rich, but really- I gotta get home and talk to her. We had a pretty bad fight when I left, she was really looking forward to spending the day together.” He fingers the box in his pocket again, the velvet smooth and soft under his thumb. “I was too,” he adds, and he pulls the ring out to show to his mentor.

If Rich’s eye had been capable of widening, it would have done so- his shock is evident in the way his jaw drops though, taking the box with careful fingers and opening it to inspect. “Satan’s left ball, Vinnie, you could have mentioned you were planning to ask the girl to marry you today! Fuck, I would have found a way to put the execs off if I had known you had plans this important.”

Vincent shrugs, can almost feel the pink tint take over his screen. “This was important too,” he tells him, “this was what I’ve been working so hard for. And now that I’ve done the test run, they’ve seen what I can do, it feels as good as mine, right?”

“Now that they know you’re committed and you look and sound fucking fantastic in that main anchor spot, you should get an official offer in the next couple of days,” Rich assures him, closing the velvet box with a snap and handing it back to Vincent. “You don’t see a lot of ‘marriages’ in Hell, you know. It’s exciting though, and I’m happy for you.”

“Never thought about asking that old PA to settle down, huh?”

Rich cocks his head to the side. “Do you know what the process of ‘getting married’ looks like down here, Vin? It’s a little different from topside- you actually give a piece of your soul to your partner. It’s basically a deal set between the two of you with whatever stipulations you have for the partnership, which is like the Hell equivalent of a prenup. It’s a pretty serious commitment- if have any sort of Overlord aspirations, that’s really something you should take into consideration-”

“I don’t,” he interrupts. “My job and Kora are what’s most important to me, I don’t need all that power and hassle that comes with being an Overlord.” He pockets the ring again, keeping his hands there to hide the tremor in them. “I have to get through her being mad at me now before any talk of the future happens though.”

“Put the whole thing on me,” Rich advises as he leads him to the door, “just tell her it was all my fault, and she can come down here and give me a scolding whenever she would like.” He guides Vincent to the door and gives him another parting slap on the back. “Apologize to your Golden Girl for me, will ya? And good luck!”

“Thanks, Rich,” he says, and the back door closes with a crack that echoes in the alley. The smile he’s been wearing for almost ten hours finally fades, and if he had had a jaw it would have ached. He pulls the ring box out again and opens it, looking at the reflections off the gems in the streetlight before he puts it away again.

He lights a cigarette as he walks home, the streets of Hell mostly empty but for shadows that lurk in the alleys and the hum of huge neon signs plastered all over the city. The adrenaline of the night still buzzed in his veins along with the nicotine, a spring to his step that even Kora’s inevitable anger with him couldn’t dull. He still felt guilty, but it was tempered with a sense of justification in his actions. The pieces would all fall into place now that he had proven himself with the network, their future as good as guaranteed. Kora would understand when he explained.

It was nearing four in the morning when Vincent made it home, but the lights were still on in the living room- either she had woken up early for her walk, or she had never gone to sleep. He runs a hand over his screen and takes a deep breath as he approaches the door, surprised to find it unlocked but still opening it slowly so he doesn’t startle her. “Kora?”

The living room is empty as he enters, the smell of burnt popcorn coming into his processors- she never followed the instructions correctly, which was why the rare times they had to snack together he was in charge of it. Her stack of books that she cycled through on the coffee table had been toppled, the bowl of burned popcorn having followed suit, her blanket thrown haphazardly onto the cushions in a way that made it slide towards the floor. He picks it up and catches the familiar almond and honey scent of her before he tosses it back onto the couch properly and comes further into the apartment.

“Goldie?” He keeps his voice low as he peeks into the bathroom and moves to the bedroom, in case he was wrong and she was sleeping and had simply forgotten to turn the lights off. But the bedroom is empty as well, the sheets still rumpled the same way they had been when the pair of them had gotten ready this morning. Her nightstand drawer is open, the framed photo of her and Gideon resting on the floor with a spider web fracture in the glass panel that distorted their faces. The window sat open, a breeze drifting through the open pane. “Kora,” he calls again a little louder, because she has to be somewhere in the building- she wouldn’t take off for no reason, even with the fight that they had had.

He winces at the memory of their again, words that he had said in anger that he didn’t mean. He had just been so frustrated that she didn’t understand what he was working towards that he had snapped at her-

“Fucking leave if you don’t like it.”

Panic settles into his chest behind the thumping of his heart, but he forces himself to remain calm. She wouldn’t have just left like that- not without a conversation, even as angry and hurt as she had been, even with the words he had spit at her. If she was going to leave she would have waited for him to come home so they could talk about it first.

And regardless of that- she wouldn’t leave. She loved him- more than she should. Certainly more than he deserved. 

Her clothes were all still hung on the rack in their room, her socks and underwear and shirts still folded in the drawers of their dresser. When he navigates back out to the living area, her punny coffee mugs are still happily displayed on the rack he had gotten her for Christmas. Kora wouldn’t leave those behind, not with the effort she put into finding them and incorporating them into her home. She had to just be on her walk; maybe she had woken up early and left before Vincent came home, and she would return soon. That’s what he convinces himself of as he cleans up, tidying her stack of books on the coffee table, closing the window and putting her photo of Gideon in the drawer of her nightstand. He resolves to wait for her to come back so they can talk, but as he settles onto the couch and pulls the blanket over his lap, sleep claims him too quickly to resist.

He awakens hours later from dreamless sleep, disoriented, finding himself still on the couch. Kora usually woke him when he fell asleep there instead of the bedroom- and then he remembers that Kora hadn’t been home when he returned from work yesterday, and from the looks of it had still not come back. A glance at the clock reveals that it’s well past noon, and when Vincent stumbles up from the couch to check the bedroom, the bathroom, Kora isn’t there.

“Fucking leave if you don’t like it.”

Despair claws its way into his throat, his lungs feeling constricted while he tries to breathe through the anxiety that makes itself known. He’s still trying to be logical as he grabs the phone and dials Viv’s to see if she had maybe gone into work early, went to stay with a coworker, anything.

Eris answers, to Vincent’s disappointment. “You’ve reached Viv’s Diner, what can I do for you?”

He does his best to keep his voice level. “Eris, hey- have you heard from Kora today?”

He can hear the rustle of her clothing as she shrugs. “What do I look like, her keeper? She’s not scheduled to come in ‘til later, we haven’t seen her yet.”

His voice shudders against his will when he asks, “you wouldn’t happen to know of anywhere she might go if she was upset, would you?” The Rings of Pride were huge- he had no chance of locating her without any direction, without any help. He just needed her to come home so he could explain everything, sort out the miscommunication.

“What’s the matter, Vinnie? Did Kora finally have enough and leave ya?” He can hear the smirk in her voice, the amusement that tints her tone. “I warned ya about steppin’ up for her, didn’ I?” He doesn’t stay on the line long enough to hear more than a few seconds of her cruel laughter before he slams the phone back onto the receiver, and then slams it again for good measure when he still hears her in his head. 

He still has hours to go before he has to go back to work, but Vincent can’t bring himself to sleep properly without knowing where Kora was. He tried the package hub for her courier job; he tried Viv’s again and asked to speak to Viv herself, who also hadn’t heard from Kora; the skating rink was a bust; he even called down to the station to see if maybe she had shown up while he was still working, but to no avail. No one had seen or heard from her since he had fought with her earlier the day before, and the guilt weighs him down as he leaves the house and checks the neighborhood around them for any sign of her.

He burns through an entire pack of cigarettes as he scours Imp City, fingers trembling as he lights the last one a mere thirty minutes before he’s due back at the station; not early, for once, so consumed in his frantic search for his girl that he hadn’t thought to see if anyone needed him before his actual shift. He’s sure he looks like a disaster now—a far cry from the poised, presentable anchor the city had seen just last night. He hadn’t showered, his clothes were wrinkled, and he hadn't even had a proper meal. His screen was in dire need of a wet wipe, coated with grime from the city’s pollution that made it difficult to see.

Kora has to be out there somewhere. She wouldn’t just leave him, not with how much she loved him, not with how close they were to the future he wanted for them. If something was wrong he would find her, bring her home; whatever it took.

Movement catches his eye; a bird Sinner that slinks along the shadows of the buildings like a wraith, seeming to almost blend in and evade sight as they moved. They hold a scrap of fabric clenched in their fist that they bring to their beak, the twitch of their mouth visible even from where Vincent stood. Their eyes gleam red in the darkness, a predator that’s caught the scent of their prey, and as the Sinner turns to peek an even darker alley Vincent’s first instinct is to follow them.

He wasn’t familiar enough with the darker parts of Imp City, the Pride Rings as a whole, to know all the places a person could disappear to. If they could track by scent, maybe he could give them something of Kora’s- her sheets, her clothes, anything in the apartment that her scent clung to like skin- to help find her, make sure that she wasn’t in trouble. 

The alternative was unthinkable.

“Fucking leave if you don’t like it.”

The words from their last fight ring like a death knell in his ears. He can’t push them away, can’t pretend they weren’t said- they echo in his mind like when she had told him she loved him. He had been angry. He had been frustrated, but now, in the quiet of the night with Kora’s absence weighing on him like a stone in his chest, he’s not so sure anymore.

Would she leave him? Would she give up on their future because he’d failed to be there when she needed him most? Was he consistently failing her like he had always feared he would, and the day before had been the last straw?

Vincent squeezes his eyes shut, forcing the thoughts back. No. She wouldn’t leave him. Not when everything they’d fought for, everything he had worked towards for her, was so close.

The bird vanishes into the shadows, disappearing down the alley with a speed and certainty that makes Vincent’s breath catch in his throat. He’s hardly taken a step after the Sinner when his watch beeps at him angrily, the alarm he had set earlier in his search to let him know the latest he could leave for the station if he wanted to be on time. Indecision immobilizes him.

In his place, Kora would choose him every time; it would never even be a choice for her. But she had never been in his position before, so close to the top his fingers scrabbled at the edge to pull himself up. He had proven himself the night before, sure- but that could change at a moment’s notice, and he would be right back where he started if they felt for even a moment that he wasn’t committed and willing to do whatever it took. 

Guilt sits heavy in his chest, the ring that still sits in his pocket feeling like it’s burning him as he stands there knowing that either choice was the wrong one, and turns to head towards the station.

SORRY LOL

There are 3 more chapters before we move on to part two! I promise they'll be happy- not in this fic, but eventually! ❤️

March-October 1961

Time passes in a daze for Vincent once Kora is gone.

He spends a couple of weeks looking for her- how could he not? But he could only go so far with his limited time, his search mainly confined to right around Imp City. When he wasn’t searching for her he was working, usually just catching a couple hours of sleep at the studio after his segment before heading off again. He asked, but the network wouldn’t let him post anything on the news about her being missing, and he got the same answer from the newspapers- “It’s nothing personal,” Rich had told him during their short overlap between shifts. “But people go missing in Hell all the time- if they let you broadcast something they’d have to let every Sinner schmuck out there in, and that’s just bad for business.” At Vincent’s anguished face, Rich had given him a sympathetic pat on the back. “I hope she comes home, Vinnie,” he said, and then he was off for makeup and leaving Vincent to stew in his thoughts.

The days he came back to the apartment he had always expected to see her there waiting for him- her eyes full of tears, lips quivering as she told him that she was sorry, that something terrible had happened and she had been trying to get back to him. He thought he would hold her as close to him as he could get, breathe in the familiar scent of her- the one that was fading too quickly from their apartment- and tell her that it was okay, everything would be fine now, and that he would never let anything bad happen to her again. He would slide the ring that he still carried in his pocket onto her finger and tell her that he loved her, and she would cry for a better reason.

He had continued to check into Viv’s for three months after she left, until Eris caught him chain smoking outside after her shift one day and laid into him.

 “Would ya stop your damn mopin’ already?” She had snapped, sidling up to stand beside him with a hand on his arm. “She’s fuckin’ gone. Get over it.”

“Fuck you, Eris,” he had told her, and when she laughed in his face he thought about shoving her into the wall of the diner. “She wouldn’t just fucking leave-”

“Wouldn’t she, though?” Eris’ thin eyebrows quirked up, a mean sneer to her beak. “Ya know how many times she came into work complainin’ that ya were never around? Always so focused on your work that ya were neglectin’ her- seems everyone around here knew it but you.” She slides her hand down and snags a cigarette from his blazer pocket. Slipping it into her beak, she lights up and takes a deep drag. “Dontcha think if something horrible happened to her that it would be all over that news channel of yours? Listen, Vin, I’m gonna do ya a favor here. If Kora wanted to be with you? She would be.” Smoke curls around her head like some sick caricature of a halo, twirling around her top feathers before dissipating. “You’re gonna make yourself look stupid if ya keep looking for her when she clearly doesn’t want to be found. Let her go.” She stubs her cigarette out on the casing of Vincent’s screen and leaves, her words ringing in his head as he slumped against the wall, out of sight of the windows. 

Was she right? He had spent all of this time looking for Kora working under the assumption that something had happened to her, that she had been taken from him. But as much as he hated to admit it, it was possible- that she had simply had enough and left in such a hurry that she had left everything from her life with him behind. Their argument before he had gone to work that day haunted his dreams; sometimes her face hardened and then cracked like porcelain when he yelled at her, Kora’s entire being crumbling in front of him while he tried to hold her together. It was never enough, and before he woke, shaking and sweating every time, he would watch what was left of her slip through his fingers like sand.

Vincent had told her to leave if she didn’t like who he was, what he was, and now she was gone.

He was still fighting to accept it come July, the heat of Hell unbearable as he sweated through his shirt searching a new area of the ring around Imp City. Then he thought he had seen her- a flash of golden fur that snaked by him in a crowd, too fast for him to process until she was a few feet away. He had stopped dead, the people walking around him swearing as they continued to shove past him while he watched her walk away and get lost in the masses.

He called her name, loud over the heads of the crowd, and she didn’t look back- not even a flick of her ear to indicate that she had heard him over the din, the bustle of the crowd as it weaved around him like an ocean buoy. He thought about following her- grabbing her by the arm and pulling her back to him, clutching her to his chest so he could apologize for the fight, for everything that he had done wrong.

But as he watched the woman walk away he realized that Eris was right- if she wanted to be with him she would be. Kora would have come home if there was anything left of their relationship to salvage- that she hadn’t, that she was ignoring Vincent now, spoke to the truth of the bird’s words. He couldn’t chase her; if it was her and he caught her, what then? Force her to stay with him, to explain herself? If he had been wrong all this time, if something hadn’t happened to take her from him- could he live with her telling him to his face that she did this intentionally?

If she had chosen to leave him, his first fear all those years ago, that loving him would hurt her, had come true.

He walked back to the apartment in a stupor, feeling a strange glitch crackle across his face as he wrestled with his emotions; it was something he couldn’t predict or change, a visual loss of control over himself. He felt it like a tingling numbness that spread over his screen, like when he cried too hard as a child and his eyes ached and burned. The loss of Kora, the potential of betrayal; the guilt, knowing that it was all his fault. He at least had the courtesy to lock the door when he left after gathering his few items in their home- so much of it had been hers; the furniture, the books, the bed. If she ever came back here, would she even notice that he was gone? How had he lived here for years without leaving any mark of his own? How had he left himself be so completely taken with her that he didn’t feel like his own person anymore?

Vincent would have to start over- a new home, a new routine.  A new life that didn’t include his Golden Girl. He didn’t even know if he could cry if he wanted to; would the biology he was created with in Hell allow him to show emotion like that anymore? Maybe that was where it had all gone wrong- not with Kora, with their relationship, his inability to tell her that he loved her. But the fact that he was now effectively a machine- he hadn’t had time since arriving in Hell to take a closer look at his anatomy, to know where organic material started and the mechanical began. 

Maybe this had been bound to happen from the start.

To no one’s surprise, Vincent worked even harder. He caved after sleeping on a break room couch for a couple of days and found a small apartment closer to the news station- roughly the same level of shittiness, so that at least felt familiar even without Kora’s items, her intoxicating scent, the ghost of her laughter. Every night he laid flat on his back in a bed that was too big for one person, with no one to miss him when he came home late, no soft press of lips to his screen when she got up in the mornings with a whispered endearment. He had taken those things for granted- had assumed that since he had them then he always would, and now she was gone and he hadn’t ever had to live in Hell without her.

He goes to work, smiles for the cameras, banters with Joy for the masses of the Pride Rings, and he misses her.

He joins Rich on nights out with the rest of the crew when he can, hiding the hole inside himself by filling it with good food and alcohol and the beaming praises of the people around him. They had learned not to mention the Golden Retriever that they had met at Spite, Rich having smacked more than a few people upside the head in reprimand when they tried. Joy was happier, which was fucking annoying, but she had also learned her lesson about trying to get a dig in about dogs- about Kora- when Vincent had accidentally shocked her with a handshake live on air- her fur had gone staticky and wild, and she had needed to take a ten minute leave to let the hair and makeup team get it under control again.

She would have thought that was hilarious. He hates that he knows that, that he’ll likely spend the rest of his days knowing when she would like something, when she would hate it, when she would laugh or cry or bite her lip at something he had said. Kora’s memory haunts him, pieces of her always just on the peripherals of his mind, just out of sight, out of touch. He thinks he sees her sometimes on the streets when he goes for his now daily walks, but it’s never her; it’s never actually his Golden Girl.

The hurt never fades. It clings to him in everything that he does, every move that he makes. If it weren’t for his memories he would almost think she had never been part of his life at all, if not for how she had changed him. He sometimes thinks about going back to the apartment in Imp City and grabbing one of her old t-shirts- the one that says ‘fuck’ is his favorite- just so he has something physical to remind himself that she was real. So he can cling to that time of his life a little longer. He doesn’t allow himself to go back, to even go near that part of town, or to the diner, or the skating rink.

Rich watches him too closely sometimes, a downturn to his lips when he sees Vincent smiling, laughing with the others, like he knows it's a lie. And Vincent doesn’t like to be so closely observed, but he deals with it because they don’t have much overlap in their schedules most of the time now that they’ve settled into their routines.

He starts drinking- heading out to bars or bringing bottles of whiskey back to his apartment to drown his sorrows, like letting himself be liquor-logged would bring Kora back, make everything better. He doesn’t like it, makes him feel too much like his father, but a salve on a wound is still a salve no matter if it opens up other, deeper hurts. 

Vincent exists in a perpetual cycle of work-drink-sleep-shower-work. And sure, sometimes the lines between those activities bleed a little into one another and he’ll wake up with bourbon spilled across his shirt, where he fell asleep in his chair holding the bottle; he’ll come into work with his clothes damp because he didn’t take the time to dry off after his shower, and the hair and makeup team always looks at him disapprovingly. He manages to keep the drinking confined to home and the bars until the day he doesn’t, and he slips through the back door of the studio with a flask tucked into his suit jacket to sneak a sip of it every here and there while he prepares for his segment on a Saturday evening.

Rich is there for whatever reason, probably hanging around or having come back so he could give Vincent that judging look before he went on air, like he knew the man was self-destructing and actually cared. But he didn’t really- Kora had cared, and she had still left him, and where was she now without him? Where was he without her? Who was left to give a shit what happened to him with her gone?

He redirects to a nearby office, blissfully empty, and tries to get a hold on himself. He can fill the phantom of static that crashes across his screen like a blizzard, white and fuzzy like he’s lost signal somehow, and he grabs his casing with one hand like he was tearing his hair out- if he still had any- and reaches the other into his jacket. He’s distantly aware of the door opening behind him as he tips his head back and just drinks as much as he can hold, his throat still human enough for it to burn going down and settle uncomfortably in his stomach.

There’s a hand on his shoulder then, comforting and heavy, and Vincent turns to meet Rich’s eye, the frown below it sad and pitying. “Oh, Vinnie,” he says softly, and Vincent wishes there was a second Hell that could swallow him whole so he could just stop having to be here with that look directed at him. “You can’t go on air like this, son,” he says gently, and reaches out to take the flask from Vincent’s clawed hand. He offers no resistance, letting his grip go limp while Rich sets the flask down on the deks- Rich’s desk, he realizes, and curses himself for his stupidity.

“I’m fine, Rich,” he tries, but his words slur and slide into one another as he speaks. “I can do it, I’m just-”

“You’re just drunk,” the cyclops interrupts. “And I understand you’ve been having a hard time since Kora left, but this isn’t good for you, and it's not the kind of image we want for the station either.” He turns Vincent towards him, hand on his other shoulder, and gently guides him to sit in the chair behind him. “You can sleep it off in here and we’ll talk afterwards- I’ll cover your segment with Joy.”

“No- Rich, man, I can do it, you don’t have to-”

“You can’t go out there,” Rich says sternly, and when he steps back Vincent feels that telltale crackle across his screen, static that betrays his inner turmoil as everything crashes around him. He would be written up for this- he could be fired for this. He watches as if through a fogged window as Rich starts rifling through the Rolodex on the desk, probably looking for an executive, someone on the production team. His career would be over, everything that he had worked for would be taken from him, and it would be like Kora had never dragged him from that junkyard the day that he fell- without her, without his work, without any sort of lifeline. Broken and battered at the mercy of some sick cosmic creator who had let him claw his way to the top only to now send him tumbling back down.

He stumbles out of the chair and into the desk, his knees cracking against the floor with a distant ache that has nothing on the horrid, deep thudding of his heart. “Come on, Rich,” he said, and tries to push himself to standing- he hadn’t realized how weak his legs were, how unstable he was on his feet. ”Don’t do this, please- I-I’ll get my shit together, I swear. I’m okay to go on.”

Rich’s pupil swings up to meet his gaze. “This is bad, Vin,” he says, still rifling through the cards before him before stopping and looking closely at one of them.“I can probably pull some strings to keep you from getting fired, but you can’t be on air like you are now.” He presses a button on the phone before him, which rings for a moment before Rich’s favorite PA answers. “Phineas? Yeah, it’s me- listen, let the team know that we’re gonna have a change to the line up tonight, Vincent needs some time off- see if they can convince Shelby to not be a raging cunt for one day so someone can work with her tomorrow so I can be on tonight-”

“No!”

He’s not sure where it comes from, the sudden, desperate anger that bursts from him with a shower of sparks from the lights above as they all blow at once. His hand shoots out to twist in Rich’s tie, claws ripping through the fabric as he uses it as leverage to pull himself up. “Stop fucking talking,” he snarls, and he registers a fleeting, terrifying moment of fear in Rich’s expression before he goes almost absent. His eye loses its spark, his mouth drops open as if in shock, and the phone clatters to the desk with Phineas’s voice faintly speaking as Rich focuses all of his attention on Vincent.

It’s dark in the office now, the only light coming from his screen, the light casting a strange, frightening shadow over Rich’s eye. “Just… hold on a minute,” he tries again, clearing his throat and releasing his tie. “Hang up the phone, please.”

Rich moves like he’s on autopilot, reaching over and placing the phone back on the receiver without looking away from Vincent. The movement is a little unsettling, even before considering that Rich doesn’t blink, and Vincent reaches out and snaps his fingers. “Rich, come on. I’m sorry, that was- fuck, what’s wrong with you? Say something.”

“Something,” Rich says with no hesitation, and it’s weird but he’s not reaching for the phone again and he doesn’t try to stop Vincent when he turns away to leave.

He catches sight of himself in the glass of the office door- his left eye, the one that Kora hadn’t been able to fully fix all those years ago, swirled like a vortex, slow black spirals that spun counterclockwise and made him dizzy. He shook his head to try and dispel it, and when that didn’t work he slammed his fist through the glass to get rid of the sight and took off towards set.

His hand was bleeding- he felt the steady, warm drip of it as he walked quickly towards the main studio, leaving a trail that security was sure to be able to follow, but they wouldn’t drag him off set if he was already live on air. A glance at his watch confirmed that he had about 4 minutes before they would start shooting, which gave him plenty of time to get there, get situated with Joy, and fake being sober enough to get through a couple of news stories before the first commercial break.

He hears someone call something behind him and increases his speed, desperate to get to the studio before anyone could stop him. He would show them- that he was still reliable, that they were better having him here even if he was a little out of it right now. This was where he belonged, what he was made for.

Vincent comes through the doors to the studio and is met with at least three security guards taking him to the floor- he hears his screen crack before he feels it, a piercing, sharp pain that shoots down the edge of his face when he connects with the floor, an elbow to the gut, a blunt knee to his shin. Joy watches from the desk behind the cameras, and he sees one of the screening televisions flash the rainbow error page before a message came up indicating that Nine Rings News would be back after solving some technical difficulties.

“Let me go,” he groans, and his throat is thick and sore, something lurking there that made it hard to speak- like a lump that one could choke on right before tears came. “I can go on, let go-”

“Here’s the real entertainment of the night,” Joy quips, standing to come closer and more fully watch what was happening as the security guards held him down. “Shame we’re not live-”

“You’re not fucking helping, Joy,” he hears Rich snap, and when he looks over to the doors Rich is leaning against the frame, looking so goddamn betrayed that Vincent has to close his eyes against it. His left eye still feels weird, and he thinks about the way that Rich had simply listened to him when he took the lights out in his anger, like he was mindless with it, and he wishes they would all just listen to him like that so he could do what he needed to do.

He opens his eyes and tries to put some force into it- more intent, more power, and nearly screams, “let me go-”

And they do. All three guards, watching his face while they held his limbs, dropping into immediate compliance as Rich shouted behind them all. Vincent climbed to his feet, dusting his suit off before turning to look at his mentor again. “I can go on,” he insists, and Rich’s mouth is agape in horror.

“Vinnie, what have you done?” He asks, and when Vincent looks he sees the entire production team caught with that same dead gaze that Rich had adopted, that the three guards had now. Joy had trained a camera on him for her own amusement, wanted his downfall televised to the entire company, and now her own expression was vacant behind the lens; the whole scene had been broadcast to the room from one of the test screens.

“I’m- I don’t know,” he says truthfully, and tries to take a step closer to Rich. “You gotta believe me, I’m just trying to-”

Rich leans more heavily into the door, looking away from Vincent and his still spinning eye. “I don’t even know what the execs will do about this,” he says incredulously. “You just- how long will this last?”

“I’ve never done it before.” He looks out across the group, clipboards held loosely in limp arms, eyes still trained on the large test screen above them. “Except you. I don’t know what to do, Rich, I don’t know what this is. I’m sorry- I know they’re probably going to fire me-”

“Fire you? Satan, Vincent, you’ll be lucky if they don’t kill you. Do you know how much money it will cost us being down for even one segment, let alone however many pass until this fucking- whatever you did, until it wears off?” He gestures around the room incredulously. “I could have pulled some strings for coming into work shitfaced- I can’t do anything about this, son.”

“Fuck. Fuck.” He grips the sides of his head and looks around the room again, wondering how he had done this without even really being aware of it. He was so fucked- he would be escorted from the building at the very least, he was definitely going to lose his job after he had already lost Kora with no hope of ever knowing where she had gone or if she was ever coming back-

He catches sight of one of the cameras still pointed at the desk that he and Joy shared, the one that would normally be broadcasting right now if not for the technical error message they were displaying. There were televisions everywhere- he’d never had a chance of finding her on his own, but a message sent out across all nine rings of Pride might do the trick. Rich said they didn’t do that sort of thing, but if he was losing his job anyway what did he have to lose breaking that rule now?

He glances at Rich for a moment, ignoring the call of his name as he approached the camera. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” he says, genuine in his regret at causing this mess for him once Vincent was gone.

“Vincent, come on,” he tries, but Vincent is already reaching for the cords plugged into the back of the camera.

Claws dig into the ports there and spark with electricity. He wasn’t quite sure what he was doing exactly, but he can see the way the wires light up with power that zips down them before it disappears into the walls and the rest of the equipment in the room, everything pulsing with little bursts of energy. Like the office earlier, the lights overhead sizzle and explode with sparks, stage lights behind them catching fire at the sudden overcharge coming from somewhere inside him. He could see himself in one of the test screens, the spinning of his eye having died down but his expression is raw and the glass in his screen is webbed from hitting the floor- when he brings his hand up to trace the crack in his screen, the blood from the glass of the office door still drips down his wrist.

He looks straight into the lens. “Kora, baby,” he starts, and he hopes that despite the temporary shut down of their recording equipment that the microphones would still pick up his words. “If you’re out there, I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry; please come home and we can talk. I need to know you’re okay, I know- I know I fucked up, Goldie, I know it.”

He can see people moving behind the camera when he glances up- like Rich, the trance he had put them in didn’t last very long, and there were frantic whispers growing in volume as he spoke, the wires coming on and off the set still flowing with bright white arcs of electricity.

“I’ll make it better, okay? I promise. Just- please come home, baby, I need you. I can’t fucking do this without you.”

He has more to say, so much more to tell her while he has the moment, but whatever power he was drawing on to take control of the camera seemed to have overloaded itself. He feels a jolt pass through his arm and straight through his claws, and in a moment the entire building blinks with a flare of the few lights that hadn’t yet blown before everything goes dark.

He looks over to Rich, still standing in the doorway, illuminated by Vincent’s screen, and he disengages his claws and runs, ignoring the calls of his name behind him.

Rich’s disappointed look is burned into Vincent’s mind as he runs home, opening the door of his apartment to a sight that made his chest ache. Bare, depressing, Kora-absent. There was no trace of her here, and this wasn’t his home; it couldn’t be without her. He should have stayed at their old place- if she had come home and he wasn’t there, he would never forgive himself. Even with her not there, it was better than this poor approximation of normalcy that he had had in this new place. And if she heard his message, heard him telling her to come home when he wasn’t even waiting for her? He needed to get back there- he shouldn’t have ever left.  

He doesn’t have anything to take with him when he goes- his clothing could be replaced. He would borrow a shirt from her like he had that first night, and they could just start over together. Forget the last few months, the last few years of him failing her, and start anew with his ring on her finger. He reaches into his pocket to touch it now, the only thing he hadn’t yet lost; the promise he had intended to make to her, even if he had to work on making his mistakes up to her for the rest of his afterlife.

It’s raining as he wanders towards Imp City, and the storm must have caused some sort of outage because the streets are black and dark as he goes, the only real light coming from him. He huddles under awnings and balconies when he can to avoid any serious damage to his equipment- his face already aches from the crack in his screen, and he didn’t want to think about what would happen if acid rain got into it. Closer to Imp City, the further he gets from the center of the top Pride ring, power seems to have been restored. He steps under an awning outside an electronics store, and what he sees on the televisions in the window makes him freeze.

His face- cracked screen and all, his mouth moving frantically with his message to Kora. Not just on the station for Nine Rings News, but on all of them; logos for different channels sit in the corner of the screens, but the video that plays is the same. He hadn’t meant to do that- he just wanted to broadcast from his studio, but he figured this at least meant that there was a better chance of Kora having seen it.

Vincent lets himself hope when he approaches their old apartment from down the street. There’s a light on in the living room, a glow that emanates from the section of window under the short curtain next to the fridge. And he sees something chained to the streetlight outside where Kora usually kept her bike locked up. His heart swells, reluctant hope beating at him from inside his chest-

Only to wither and die when he comes closer and sees that it isn’t her bike, the soft blue one with the little basket on the handlebars for her packages that she carried as a courier. It’s red, beat up and ancient, nowhere near as nice as Kora kept hers. And when he looks to the door of their apartment, the little wreath that she liked to hang up was missing- he comes closer and sees that her name is missing from the mailbox as well, and there’s no welcome mat on the porch.

He can’t hear anything from inside, but the flickering from the movement of the television still beams out from the windows. He doesn’t bother leaning over the railing to try and look inside, or knocking on the door; if it wasn’t Kora, like he suspected now that it wasn’t, the person living here probably wouldn’t react well to the man that had commandeered every fucking TV channel in the Pride Ring showing up on their doorstep. And if Kora wasn’t here, she might as well be nowhere- he would never find her.

He sits on the front step and holds his head in his hands and aches and aches and aches. 

It was all over now. He had ruined his career, he had lost Kora, he had nothing but a shitty little apartment near the station that people would know to look for him at. He can almost see the way his life had unraveled over the past months, starting with Dante’s and his inability to tell the woman that he loved how he fucking felt about her. Rich would never forgive him for the betrayal after all that he had done for Vincent, and without Kora-

“Well now! Isn’t this quite the sight?”

When Vincent looks up, he sees him; tall, menacing, red. Teeth sharp like razors within his mouth, his smile almost impossibly wide as he stared down at the television from beneath a black, spindly umbrella. His ears are fluffy and stick upright from his head, the same shade of red as the hair that curls in a bob around his face. Vincent thinks he might recognize him from somewhere, some paper he’s seen floating around that he never paid too much attention to. He doesn’t bother responding- if he was going to get his ass kicked he would go down without a fight. He was too exhausted for that, too beaten down with everything that had happened this evening, this month, this year. “It’s quite rude to stare,” the man says when Vincent stays quiet, and his voice has a static overlay to it that makes something in Vincent’s head crackle. “I’m sure you get a lot of it on your end with your… situation,” he adds with a gesture towards Vincent’s head, “but the rest of polite society doesn’t appreciate it so much!”

“Can I help you with something?” Vincent asks blankly, and watches as his smile- somehow- gets even wider. “If you’re looking for a fight, buddy, you’re in for a disappointment.”

He laughs, high and bright. “Oh, Heavens no! I’m not in the habit of punching down, as it were- you’re looking quite pathetic all on your own.” He comes closer and Vincent stays seated on the steps of his old apartment, his ass wet from the rain, feeling just as pathetic as the man had called him. “This is quite the change from the interesting display I happened to see on my stroll earlier- vibrating with energy and electricity and taking over an entire news station connection through sheer force of will- taking over all of the television circuit, actually! I find myself torn between reluctant admiration for the show of power, and amusement at how thoroughly desperate you sounded.”

Anger sparks within him- and out of him, the antennae on his head crackling with a buzz that reaches in an arc towards the other Sinner, catching the end of his umbrella with a snap that lights the fabric on fire before the rain extinguishes it. 

He twirls the umbrella, tilting it down a bit to inspect the smoking hole. “How fun! I suppose there is still some fight left in you after all- how shocking,” he adds with a wink, and the pun lifts something heavy off Vincent’s chest. It was dumb- but it was so Kora that it eased the flash of anger inside of him for a moment. He hadn’t heard one of her shitty jokes in so long, seen one of her coffee mugs or t-shirts. She was such a fan of bad puns and wordplay, something that few people at the station seemed to appreciate the way that he did. He wondered if the Sinner living in the building behind him now had kept all of her mugs, if any of her clothing had still been in the drawers when they moved in.

“Have you lost signal?”

He’s pulled from his thoughts when the man speaks again, close enough now to look fully down on Vincent with that strange smile on his face- he has a staff in his spare hand that he’s tapped gently against Vincent’s screen, making the crack in his glass radiate with pain. “I was never one for televisions in my time,” he carries on jovially. “I find radio to be a much more engaging medium, you know- though I can admit that having the visual of your funny little face really added to the experience. Such entertainment!”

“Yeah, televised breakdowns are my forte,” Vincent says sarcastically. “Did you have a reason for approaching me or are you just here to rub my failures in my face?”

“Oh, I just wanted to see what follows such a thorough frying of one’s career! And I admit, I do wonder if that charming little display of power has a sequel- or if it was a one time premiere?” He bends at the waist, gets right down into Vincent’s face with that eerie smile never breaking. “I might have some use for such a thing every once in a while, granted that there’s never a repeat performance of your little breakdown. I have little tolerance for outbursts, whether electrical or emotional.”

“I don’t- what?”

“I am asking, you obtuse picture box, if you could do that again.” His eyes flicker to dials, harsh feedback whining through the air as he continues to stare at Vincent like he’s seeing into his soul. Darkness spreads at his feet, sweeping the street into shadow; inky tentacles spill from his back and reach towards Vincent menacingly. “You may be geared towards reruns but I loathe them- as well as repeating myself.”

He can’t even see the streetlights anymore, the black surrounding them so dense that no light could penetrate it- the faint glow from behind him from the apartment was even dimmed from the force of it, and he realizes with startling clarity that this person, whoever they were, was powerful. Dangerous. It would be best not to get on his bad side- and if he could be useful somehow then anything was better than the idea of having to wallow around in his own self loathing and try to figure out what to do next. Being useful could give him purpose now that he had no girlfriend, no career, no path. “Shit, yeah! Yeah, I could do it again. Probably.” 

He had no idea if he could, but he was almost positive that it wasn’t a one time thing. It couldn’t be, if it meant this strange man was intrigued by him; he would figure out how to do it again.

“Splendid!” The darkness dies as quickly as it had come, shrinking back into a tiny pool at the man’s feet before he thrusts a hand out- long, spindly, tipped with claws that looked nearly as sharp as his teeth. “Let’s get a move on, shall we?”

Vincent eyes his hand warily, all too familiar with the shady dealings of some of the more known souls in Hell. “This isn’t a deal, right?” He asks suspiciously, and the laugh that answers his question doesn’t really help to ease his frazzled nerves. “Just an invitation to join you for a bit? I don’t even know your name, I’m not trying to sell my soul.”

“Ha! How charming- no, this is not a deal, silly man.” His smile turns even sharper for a moment before he continues, “merely an introduction between… oh, let’s say acquaintances. Believe me, you would know if I was after your soul.”

Despite the rules of this place, Vincent trusts him. So he reaches up and takes the offered hand, relieved when there’s no swirl of magic or heavy chain clicking into place around his wrist or throat. The man’s grin never falters- and if he’s honest, it's starting to get a bit creepy, but he was too far into it now as the other demon pulls him to standing, shaking his hand vigorously. “The name is Alastor, and it is a pleasure to be meeting you- quite the pleasure!”

“Vincent,” he replies, his arm starting to ache with the force that he was being shaken with. “Back atcha. So, what exactly does being ‘acquaintances’ mean? Where do we go from here?” Alastor finally releases him, and Vincent feels something like static clinging to him- if he were to reach out and touch the other man, he’s sure he would shock him. 

Another memory hits him, Kora in one of her oversized t-shirts and a pair of socks, dragging her feet across the carpeted floor to charge up and try to shock him with static- his grip on the phone at the time when she succeeded had caused their power to go out, the upstairs neigbors banging on the floor and yelling while the pair of them had giggled to themselves, Kora’s hair floating in a charged halo around her beaming face.

Alastor’s voice pulls him from the golden-tinged reminiscence. “Where else is there to go on a Saturday night? Out, of course! Come along, my funny little fellow-  there’s plans to discuss and fun to be had! I know this lovely little spot up towards Cannibal Town, a classy bar for business conversation…” He does a little spin on his heel and his voice fades when he starts to walk away, twirling his cane as he does so, and the shadow at his feet swirls in tandem before it grows an eerie, wide grin like the one Alastor wore on his own face and vanishing.

Vincent halts before following, looking back at the apartment he had shared with Kora. It still hurts, a deep hole in his chest when he thinks about her. But she wasn’t here anymore- wherever she was, it wasn’t with him, and that was what he needed to focus now if he wanted to walk away. He couldn’t come back here again- he wouldn’t. He needed to move forward from all of the things that he had fucked up lately. If following this strange demon to a bar up in Pentagram City was the easiest way to get over his failed love, his fucked up career, he would do it.

“An important thing you should know about me,” Alastor calls to him from across the street, “is that I do not like to be kept waiting.” Laughter springs forth from his staff, canned and generic like they sometimes used down at the station. Despite the vague threat to his words, he doesn’t seem in any rush to make Vincent join him- in fact, he looks down fondly at the microphone in his hand, almost contemplative when he asks, “are you joining me or not?”