Archive of Our Own ^beta

(1984)

Vox closed the door himself after Valentino left.

It wasn’t a grand exit. No echoing laughter down marble halls, no entourage lingering in the corridor. Just the soft click of a well-made lock and the familiar hum of the building settling back into itself. The office was his. Not ostentatious, but deliberate. Clean lines. Good lighting. A few little neon lights strategically placed in the corners. A space designed to be taken seriously.

The contract rested on the desk, already signed.

Vox straightened it out of habit, aligning the edges with the grain of the wood. His name at the bottom looked exactly as it should: steady, precise, confident. He had learned early that signatures were a kind of broadcast. His said control.

Valentino’s flashy pink signature had a heart at the end. Vox hadn’t decided exactly what that said. 

Things were going well.

He had reach now. Real reach. Networks that answered when he called, infrastructure people relied on without ever quite realizing it. Information moved through him the way current moved through a wire quietly. Not flashy yet, but pervasive.

Valentino accelerated that. He brought spectacle, appetite, an audience Vox hadn’t fully captured on his own. It was a calculated partnership. A narrowing of variables. Growth through consolidation.

Sex sold, no question.

Vox didn’t doubt the decision.

And still…Once the door was shut and the moment had passed, there was a peculiar, weightless pause. The sense of having crossed a threshold with no one there to notice.

He had leagues of souls and employees following his every command. Fear was abundant. Respect, too.  Neither of those were the same as approval.

Vox exhaled and loosened his tie, rolling his shoulders to ease the faint tension there. His sweater vest itched at the collar; he smoothed it down absently. He was dressed for work, not performance. That distinction mattered to him.

“Well, we did it.” He said. “Guess I’m in the porn game now.”

The words sat in the room without response.

He hesitated before opening the interface. Not because it was difficult, but because it was unnecessary. Vocal synthesis was a solved problem for him. He used it professionally, efficiently. There was no novelty left in it.

He opened a blank workspace instead of a preset. No label. No tags.

The voice took shape slowly, deliberately. Vox didn’t rush it. He adjusted pitch and resonance until it struck that particular balance. Warm without softness, wrapped with a transatlantic accent. A voice that rarely raised, because the malice behind its words was enough to get any point across.

He paused, fingers hovering.

This was indulgent, he thought. Pointless.

He activated it anyway.

“Well.” Alastor’s voice said pleasantly. “You’ve been busy.”

Vox stilled.

Not because the voice was wrong. It wasn’t. But because of how disconcerting it felt to have the radio demon’s voice float out of his own speakers.

He let out a small, amused breath through his nose. “You could say that.”

“Aligning yourself with Valentino is certainly one way to announce your plans for expansion.” The voice continued. “Loudly.”

“It was a good move.” Vox replied. He leaned back against the desk, arms folding across his chest. “He has a fan base I don’t. This helps both of us.”

A pause.

“And you believe you will remain the one in control.”

“I do.” Vox said, without heat. This wasn’t defensive. It was factual. He was only confirming what he already knew. “He needed what I offered more than I needed what he brought.”

“Mmm.” The sound was thoughtful. Considering. “Making yourself indispensable. A sound strategy.”

There it was.

Vox hadn’t realized he was waiting for that word until it arrived and settled, warm and solid in his chest. Indispensable. Not feared. Not obeyed. Needed.

He closed his eyes briefly, allowing himself that fraction of a second.

“I was building something.” He said, timid now. “Something that lasted. I told you.”

The voice didn’t laugh.

“Oh, I didn’t doubt it.” Alastor replied. “You were always determined, Vincent. And look at you now.”

Vox’s mouth curved into a small, private smile. He pushed himself off the desk, straightening, the moment already slipping back into professionalism.

“Okay, this is weird.” He said, more gently than strictly necessary. He reached for the controls and shut the program down.

The office returned to its usual hum. Vox stood there for a moment longer, then saved the file.

He didn’t name it. Didn’t need to. It’s not like he was going to use it again.

He filed the contract away, smoothed his sweater vest, and turned back to the work waiting on his desk. There was still so much to do. So much left to build.

And plenty of time to grow into it.

____________________________________________________________________________________

(2024)

The drone’s camera feed showed an empty stretch of the Hazbin Hotel’s roof.

No dramatic fade. No lingering static. Just a sudden emptiness, followed by the chaotic sounds of the ongoing fight around them.

Vox stood motionless in the control room, hands resting flat on the console, eyes fixed on the darkened screen. Around the sides of his display, damage reports began to scroll in neat, color-coded columns.

The hotel was in rubble.

Not destroyed, exactly, but altered beyond recognition. Heaven’s exorcists had rewritten the map. The power structure Vox had understood for decades no longer existed in the same configuration.

And Alastor…

Vox swallowed.

There was no body on the ground. No confirmation that would satisfy a forensic standard. Just absence. Just dead air where there had once been a voice that refused to stay quiet.

The radio demon was gone.

That was the assumption spreading fastest. Vox watched it propagate through the socials in real time. Speculation solidifying into certainty, certainty hardening into narrative. Even now, Vox could feel it happening. History deciding how this would be remembered without waiting for permission.

He turned away from the screen, leaving the lounge and his companions behind. He stalked down the hall to his office, kicking the door open.

The room was immaculate. Bigger than his old office, brighter, lined with displays that responded instantly to his presence. He had grown into this power. Earned it. The city depended on him now in ways it hadn’t back then.

Vox crossed the room and braced his hands against the edge of his desk, head bowed for just a moment. The sounds of the battle outside filtered in faintly through the tower’s shielding. Distant explosions, distorted shouting, the hiss of angelic weaponry tearing through air and stone alike.

Alastor was dead.

The thought landed with a dull, clinical finality. It was over. A door closed, locked, and removed from the building entirely.

Seventy years of rivalry. Of measuring. Of recalibrating his own growth against a fixed point that refused to move. Alastor had been a constant. Unpredictable, infuriating, undeniable. A voice Vox had spent decades arguing with in his head, chasing in every escalation, every expansion.

And now…

Now there would be no response.

No cutting remark. No smug dismissal. No moment, someday, where Alastor might finally look at what Vox had built and see it.

Vox straightened.

There was work to do.

He moved through the office with practiced efficiency, pulling up feeds, rerouting resources, issuing commands with clipped precision. Damage control. Narrative control. Opportunity analysis. Heaven’s attack had destabilized half a dozen power structures at once, and Vox was already calculating how to capitalize on the fallout.

He was very good at this.

The city needed him steady. Present. Untouched.

When the last urgent directive was sent, the room went quiet again. Too quiet, now that the adrenaline had burned off.

Vox stood there, staring at the reflection of himself in one of the inactive screens. His image stared back: immaculate, composed, eyes bright with static that never quite settled.

This was the moment.

He recognized it with the same detached awareness he brought to everything else. A fracture point. A place where something would calcify if left unattended. He didn’t hesitate. He knew that if he didn’t dole himself out a small dose of medication, he’d end up much more desperate later.

The interface came up instantly, familiar enough that he didn’t have to look at it directly. The workspace loaded with parameters already in place, the voice profile waiting where he’d left it.

He didn’t think about how recently he’d last used it. That wasn’t relevant.

He activated it.

“Well, hello again.” Alastor’s voice said lightly, as if surveying the chaos from a safe distance. “That was… dramatic.”

Vox closed his eyes. The relief was immediate and sharp, cutting through the tightness in his chest before he could stop it. He exhaled slowly, grounding himself against the desk, letting the sound fill the room.

“They think you’re dead.” He said.

A pause.

“How unimaginative.” The voice replied. “One spectacular little fight and they’re already writing eulogies.”

Vox huffed out a short, humorless laugh. “You always hated being underestimated.”

“I hated being misunderstood.” Alastor corrected smoothly. “There’s a difference.”

That familiar edge…amused, offended, superior, settled something inside Vox. He straightened, shoulders squaring as if the city itself were watching.

“I watched everything.” He said. “The whole fight. I’ve already sent out my own posts calling you a coward. Preemptive framing and all that shit.”

“Of course you did.” The voice replied. “You were always excellent at seizing opportunities, weren’t you?”

“Not always.” Vox said automatically.

A brief pause.

“No.” The voice agreed. “I suppose there were a few missed opportunities along the way. Although, that was likely more out of my own stubbornness than yours.”

Vox hadn’t realized how badly he needed that until it arrived, precise and unsentimental. He swallowed and nodded once, as if acknowledging a point in a boardroom discussion.

“I did everything right.” He said. “I prepared for this. I saw the possibility.”

“Yes, my dear.” Alastor said. “You did.”

Vox opened his eyes. The city lights flickered faintly in the glass of the windows behind his reflection, Hell still burning, still turning, still very much alive.

“If you’re gone.” He said, carefully. “I actually have to get over you.”

The quiet stretched longer this time. When the voice spoke again, it carried something Vox had rarely allowed himself to imagine hearing…approval, stripped of mockery.

“Then I shall hope I’m still lurking somewhere in the darkness, for your sake.”

Something tight drew across Vox’s throat. He ignored it.

“That’s enough.” He said briskly, already reaching for the controls. “He’d never fucking say that.”

He shut the program down. The dose had been sufficient.

Vox stood there for a long moment, hands resting on the desk, breathing evenly.

He didn’t delete the file.

There was no reason to.

Alastor was dead, after all.

And Vox still had a city to run.

___________________________________________________________________________________

(2026)

The tower was still standing.

That felt important, somehow. Proof that not everything had collapsed just because Vox had. The upper floors were scorched, glass fractured and hastily reinforced, but the structure remained intact. Systems idled in low-power states, waiting for instructions that no longer came from him.

Vox remained where Valentino’s people had left him.

A reinforced cradle bolted to the remains of his desk held what was left of him in place. Cables fed into the back of his screen, bundled with care. Temporary and functional, sure. But, far from dignified.

He didn’t bother trying to move. There was nowhere to go.

Across the city, the Pentagram was already reorganizing itself. Vox could feel it happening even without the feeds open. Momentum shifting, attention rerouting, his influence bleeding away in real time. He had watched it earlier, watched his name recontextualized with unbelievable speed.

Hero. Traitor. Liability.

Alastor had walked away.

Not limped. Not fled.

Walked.

Vox processed that slowly, the way he processed everything now. He had that luxury. Being just a head while waiting for your body to regenerate kind of gave you that.

There was no spike of anger waiting beneath the thought. No denial. Just the dull understanding that something he had built his sense of gravity around no longer orbited him.

He opened the interface.

The workspace appeared immediately. Familiar. Preconfigured. The voice profile waited where it always had.

Vox stared at it for a long moment.

Then he activated it.

“Well, old pal.” Alastor’s voice said mildly. “That was an unfortunate miscalculation on your part.”

Vox stared at the wall. “Yeah.” He said miserably.

“You should have known better.” The voice tutted. “You always overcommit when you believe you’ve won.”

Vox said nothing. He watched the volume bar rise and fall, steady and familiar. He had tuned it carefully once. Kept it honest. Kept it cruel where it mattered.

“I let you go.” Vox said eventually. “On a technicality.”

“Yes.” The voice agreed gleefully. “You did.”

“And you didn’t hesitate to leave me.”

“No.” It said. “Why would I?”

Vox’s screen flickered faintly. “I gave you leverage. A way out of your own bullshit.”

The voice responded instantly. “You made yourself useful.”

Vox let out a short, broken burst of static that almost resembled laughter. “Is that all I ever was to you?” He asked.

The voice paused.

That pause used to comfort him. Used to feel like thoughtfulness. Now it felt empty.

“You were predictable.” The voice said. “It was easy to see what purpose our companionship could serve.”

“I built an empire.” Vox snarled. “I became the strongest sinner in Hell. I did everything you respect.”

The waveform wavered. “Baby, you only became the strongest sinner in Hell because I made it so.”

Vox stared straight ahead. For a long moment, he said nothing.

Then…softly, without venom, he asked. “Why wasn’t I ever enough?”

The room held its breath.

The voice did not answer immediately.

That was new.

Vox swallowed. His screen dimmed a fraction.

“Why.” He continued, the words coming out wrong, thin. “Do you hate me so much?”

Silence.

Real silence. Not programmed. Not delayed.

The voice tried to fill it.

“He doesn’t hate you.” It said carefully, the programmed radio filter falling away. “He simply never wanted you.”

Vox’s laugh this time was unmistakable. A short, broken sound that cut off too fast. “That’s worse.” He said.

He found his internal controls and shut the program down mid-sentence.

The waveform vanished. The screen went dark.

Vox sat there, immobile, cables humming faintly, staring at his own reflection in the glass.

He didn’t delete the file, knowing somewhere deep down that he’d use it again. Knew that this wouldn’t be the last time he wanted to hear Alastor’s voice.

And this very well may be the only way left to do it.

Outside, Pentagram City kept rebuilding.

Alastor thrived.

And Vox survived.