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Vox didn't even realize it until a week after. He thought Alastor was just pulling another 1988 on him and leaving him in his boredom as some kind of sick joke. The day after with no news from him was typical, he even cracked a joke with Valentino that he was old news. Two days after only saw Vox get more smug. Three days after, he was thriving. He never knew he could affect Alastor like that. Some decades of fighting and he finally got Alastor to flee like a child, admit defeat and be filled with so much shame he cannot even bear to show himself in society. Vox was triumphant.
By the fourth day, Vox was curious. Surely, Alastor would've gotten over himself and prepared a plan to get back at him, right? Surely that was the reason he was still missing. The fifth day, Velvette couldn't even get him to go out of the company. Vox was convinced Alastor was going to pull his tricks on him that day and he was not about to get caught off-handedly. He needed to be ready. Velvette rolled her eyes at him. When the night fell, Vox just thought he calculated it wrong. Six was the devil's number after all, it would make the most sense to enact his plan of revenge on the sixth day. Granted, he never took Alastor as a man who had great importance of significant numbers, wanting to make a point with visceral displays rather than tongue in cheek references to malevolence, but Vox can admit that men can change and maybe this is Alastor trying a different strategy. So, when the sixth night arrived and nothing came to bite him in the ass, he grew skeptical, and almost uncharacteristically, he grew anxious.
Where the fuck was Alastor?
That sixth night, he descended to his office and stared at every screen that monitored all of the Pride ring, hoping to catch a glimpse of a particular slimy prick and his aura. Nothing. Begrudgingly, he flicks the channels to the cameras outside Alastor's place. He doesn't like to snoop, takes the fun out of the rivalry if he just spied on him the entire time, he always says; but this wasn't really about the rivalry anymore. It was curiosity for his whereabouts, not his plans. (Although, if he managed to catch a peek at his plans, he wasn't about to complain).
The house was typical of the decade Alastor died, some time in the 1930s by the looks of the red brick exterior and sweeping roofs. The only feature that made it obvious it was Alastor's home was the radio transmitters attached to the top of the roofs, airing out his show at will. It was quaint, not really expected of the radio demon, but oddly befitting. Vox only had a few cameras planted, one of the exterior, one on the porch, and one from the backyard. No signs of Alastor.
If he was being honest, no signs of life at all. The grass in the backyard is overgrown and dust speckled in front of the house looks like it hadn't been dusted for a week. Huh.
Now, Vox didn't strike Alastor as a clean freak, they are in hell after all– people here kill people for fun, it's not like they’d care for cleanliness at this point, but he doesn't imagine Alastor to live in such filth either. He's an overlord, surely he has better standards of living than this unkempt mess. Plus, he recalls a small bug cyclops hovering about Alastor a few times, and she seemed like a stickler for cleanliness.
It just wasn't making sense.
Perturbed, he clicks off the screens and walks out of his office, meeting Valentino in the lounge. He doesn't seem to notice his agitation; he never does, but he does cock an eyebrow at him when he starts to talk about some whore and Vox never bothered to reply. Not a hum or a quip, not very typical of Vox when it came to matters involving Val. No more than a few minutes later, Valentino shows he’s actually sensitive to Vox’s whims.
"Okay, I'll bite. Whose dick is up your ass?" Vox groans in response. Valentino just raises his eyebrows in response, "Not really an eloquent answer, but okay."
"That’s not how the saying goes either, but you don't see me complaining."
"Better response, still doesn't answer my question." Vox huffs, plopping himself on one of the lounge sofas. He calls the attention of one of the employees around to bring him a drink, never bothering to remember their names. They're disposable anyway, what was the point?
Valentino grimaces at the employee too, making a point to say he'll be having a drink too, before sitting across Vox. "Come, Voxie, tell Valentino what's troubling you."
Vox doesn't waste time groaning again as the employee arrives with their drinks. He tips the liquid into his throat, swallowing thickly before smirking, "The bastard is missing."
Valentino quirks an eyebrow, "Alastor is missing? This calls for a celebration then!" He waves his hands around, summoning more demons to bring more drinks while one arm calls Velvette. Vox chuckles, he’s right, this does call for celebration, even if it isn’t fully in his heart to party.
But Vox doesn't complain. He'd love the copious amount of drinks, thank you very much!
When the drinks arrive, Valentino hands him another drink for a toast, and Vox begrudgingly clinks their glasses together. After he shoos the employees, effectively locking the floor with the exemption of Velvette, Valentino laughs heartily, “Normally, I don’t like you getting yourself drunk stupid like last week, but this is your victory, dear friend, so drink the night away.”
Vox cheers to that, though he doesn’t know why he can’t celebrate it as well as Valentino does. After all, this is his personal win; only Valentino’s in association, so why did he seem happier than he was? It’s a known fact that Alastor’s foe is Vox, the Vees only by extension, so he should feel most triumphant at the seemingly coward move his mortal enemy has pulled.
But he doesn’t.
It doesn’t feel satisfying.
Vox caught the deer in the headlights, its tail between its legs, and yet he couldn't find it in himself to drink to his victory. An overlord of Pride taken down a notch and fleeing should make headlines everywhere, but somehow, he doesn’t want to take the call. Maybe Velvette would. Less probably Valentino, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not going to be him.
He feels his lips kiss the rim of his glass absentmindedly, swallowing more alcohol. He tries to reevaluate Alastor in his mind. Call it an elegy the way Alastor is better off dead.
Alastor and Vox, well — how can he put it?
Natural foes, as if the second they descended to hell, fate drew their destinies at the opposite sides of each other. Often, Vox wonders if they’ll ever see a world where they stood by each other’s side. If the pride ring was at war, would they stand together in defense? If hell? Vox wants to laugh; he got his answer now. A resounding no. Not because Alastor would switch sides, but because he would run away.
Pussy.
Alastor would rather die than stand by his side, and isn’t that just tragic? They were both media demons; God knows what power they would possess if they worked together instead of antagonizing each other. But no, they were opposite sides of the same coin, fated to never see each other eye-to-eye. Funny.
It was complicated for Vox, because, well, Alastor has been here before him. A good twenty years before he stumbled down from Earth and started their rivalry. Alastor has lived an afterlife without Vox, Vox hasn’t.
Alastor has been here since he died the first time, been a pest and an adversary to Vox’s vying. So perhaps he’s just a little lost, because what is a hero without his villain?
Vox could chuckle at the thought of being beheld as a hero– he isn't; the role reversal wouldn’t work either, because Alastor is no fucking hero either. They are both villains in each other’s stories, a foil in each other’s plans, nuisances, pests. They drive each other mad, and yet, motivate each other endlessly.
So now that he’s fled, what is he to do? Running the company has always been part of the agenda, and the Devil knows there isn’t much entertainment in Hell except himself, so what is left for him when the longest relationship he has in Hell is gone?
Scratch that, it’s weird to refer to Alastor as someone he has a relationship with. It’s true, sure, but it’s weird, considering said relationship is nothing but grievances and petty ire.
They are natural foes, not one without the other. So what now?
He’ll relent; he’s lost.
Velvette makes herself known not ten minutes later, and Vox finds a little reprieve seeing their youngest Vee. He hands her a drink, smiling slightly when she raises it for a toast, to which he’ll gladly clink his glass too. Valentino joins them, barely tapping their glasses before pouring the liquid down his throat.
Velvette pipes up three drinks in, “How can you say it isn’t just a repeat of 1988 then?”
Valentino hums, forgetting to ask about the event he was here to witness. Velvette hadn’t even been in hell then, all she knows comes from Vox’s stories and gossip. She knows Alastor disappeared from Vox’s afterlife for half a year, not showing up to his hijinks and plans. Instead, he was always just buzzing under, slippery, not letting Vox catch him.
“He still made himself known in 1988. Always humming, still getting under my skin.” Alastor’s presence was difficult to miss, and 1988 proved that. No matter how much he hid from Vox, no matter how quick he slipped away, Vox still felt him around. “Now? Radio silence.”
Velvette hums, satisfied with the answer. After all, when it came to the whereabouts of people down here, no one would know better than Vox, who had eyes everywhere. Her gossip could make up stories as ridiculous as they want, but he’d know the truth: that Alastor just left.
“Huh. I guess your last fight was intense then. Did you hurt him or anything?”
Vox tries to remember the last time he saw Alastor, a week ago. Hm.
Well that's — new. He can’t.
Valentino sees the look in his face and proceeds to grimace widely, “Oh Vel, I doubt Voxie here will remember anything considering he was absolutely hammered last week!”
Well that’s — huh, why did Alastor flee?
With a newfound curiosity and a few more drinks than he’s proud of, he stumbles into his office and links himself to his screens, rewinding to seven days ago. Velvette and Valentino follow suit, wearing matching amused looks.
The screens glitch to the memory, hazy due to Vox’s drunkenness. Fuck, how drunk was he? The videos were terribly out of focus and from the first few seconds, Vox barely made any sense as he slurred out his words.
The memory flashes to a scene in an abandoned hotel in Pentagram City, how he got there, Vox can’t remember either. He’ll have to rewind further later to get more context. Alastor doesn’t seem drunk at all, lounging around on a dusty sofa and nursing the drink in his hands. There’s a few bottles around them, most of them empty, a few shattered. The silence is palpable.
It’s Vox that breaks it.
“No?”
Hurt laced Vox’s voice. A sort of betrayal, he’d even say dejection. Alastor remains solemn, a wide smile plastered in those lips that masked his every emotion. Vox never knew how to read him. Funny, huh? Near a century of being at each other’s throats never taught Vox how to read the prickly deer. He shouldn’t feel terrible about it; any demon who could understand Alastor was just as terrible as him, and in Vox’s opinion, he’d rather be in double hell than be compared to Alastor’s ill nature.
The demon in question’s crackly voice pierces right where it hurts, though his words are far kinder than anyone would expect from him. “Don’t make this harder for yourself, Vox.”
Vox hears himself splutter, “I don’t understand,”
He hears himself scoffing, agitation replacing the dejection in his voice. “I’m offering you the deal of a lifetime. Don’t you see it? We could rule over hell as the most powerful overlords and you’re turning it down?”
Vox’s screen probably glitches as he talks, if it wasn’t obvious by the way the memory bugs out too. Alastor remains poised. His eyes remain downcast, exhaling before he replies.
“Well, first off, my name doesn’t start with a V, so I’m really confused how you’re going to fit me into that. Call me Valastor? I’d kill you myself.”
Vox scoffs, “Is that it? Then we rebrand. You act like the market won't gobble it up. The Heathers had Veronica, why shouldn’t we you?”
“I suggest you drop it, Vox.”
“And I suggest you tell me what’s up, Al. I thought we had something.”
Alastor’s smile falters a little bit, his eyebrows furrowing. “I offered you camaraderie, Vox. A drinking buddy. Not a business partner. You are still the bane of my non-existence.”
Vox feels tears prick up his ears as the sheer meanness of that terrible Transatlantic accent stepped on his feelings. He keeps watching.
“Why?”
“Why?” Alastor echoes.
“Why can’t I be more than your drinking buddy? Why can’t we pursue greater heights together? Why are you so intent on being my enemy?”
Alastor looks away. “Don’t push it, Vox.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ll only break your heart.”
Vox laughs, “Aren’t you already?” He almost spits the words out like venom, like if the words stayed on his throat any longer it would have taken him to another death. In hindsight it is. For an overlord of Pride, he sure is feeling fucking pathetic.
And that just can’t be. Vox takes a hold of himself, and laces his next words with hypnosis. Did Alastor forget himself? Vox doesn’t take no for an answer. He feels his right eye glow and spiral to hypnotics. “Tell me.”
Alastor looks at him, eye to eye, as if he willingly got hypnotized. Vox can’t bother to think about what that implies.
“Do you forget why we were ever foes, my old pal?”
Vox scoffs, not bothering to reply properly, so Alastor takes it as a cue to continue. “It’s because though we are both media demons, you, Vox, are fake.”
Vox opens his mouth to retort, but the radio demon, chatty as ever, rambles on. “You became a TV demon because you led a cult in your living years. I’m a radio demon because I’m charming in my conversations.
“Do you ever wonder why I don’t have hypnotic powers, Vox?”
“Because you're not powerful enough—”
“Because I don’t need it, Vox. I am charismatic in my own accord, while you resort to cheap tactics to appeal to your audience. Why do you think you’re all over me when I couldn’t give a horse’s ass about you?
You’re always hopping from one tech to another like a cash grab because that’s what you are. A cash grab. An attention grab, if you will. Something that will fade when the glamor is all over.
That’s why you and I will never work. Because you’re disingenuous. Because you only relish in attention, while I am the epitome of entertainment.”
Alastor sighs, seemingly run out of breath from his tirade. His eyes still flash the spiraling red, and it takes everything in Vox not to stop the hypnosis, but he wants to hear more. He wants to pry everything Alastor thinks of him, even if it was tearing him apart.
“You’ve always berated me for not keeping up with the times, but you never considered I dislike the new tech because you make it so unappealing. Do you seriously consider your commercials entertainment? You keep up with new tech because your audience would find you boring without the constant switchups. You are a tryhard.
You say we would work well together when I know for a fact if we did, you would try to change everything my medium stands for. You’re not seeking a partnership, Vox. You want control. And Lucifer would be much faster be let back to heaven than me succumbing to your control.”
That’s quite enough.
Vox pauses the memory, to the resistance of Valentino and Velvette. It’s just too much to remember. He thanks God (if he was even listening) he was drunk for this, because he can’t bear to imagine being sober and hearing this. He would’ve pounded Alastor to the ground.
Or not.
Velvette reaches for the mouse and clicks play. The memory shows the spiral hypnosis shut off.
Alastor snaps out of it and immediately clears his throat, hoarse from talking so much. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Defensively, Vox spits out, “You will never break my heart, Alastor. You think too highly of yourself.”
He chuckles in response. “I think myself just high enough, Voxie.”
The radio demon makes a move to finish up, placing his glass on the table and dusting his clothes off. With his signature smile, he approaches Vox with a hand extended.
“Can we agree to forget this night ever happened, Vox?”
Vox takes the hand reached out to him and shakes it. “Already ahead of you, Al.”
Looking back now, what he never noticed was how the room started to dim while they shook hands. How neon green insignias started to float around the place, a telltale sign of the radio demon’s deals. Vox wonders what it entails now that he broke their deal. Alastor chuckled to himself as they let go.
“Well, I best be going, Vox. Call your friends to pick you up from here, darling.”
The conversation felt like it was drawing to an end, but there was still something tugging at Vox’s chest that wanted to know something. If he was going to forget about this night then at least he knew some version of him ever knew the answer to his questions.
“Do you think we would’ve worked? Ever?”
Alastor turns away, “Don’t miss me while I’m gone, Vox.”
Shadows swallow him from where he stood, leaving Vox alone with his thoughts. The video powers down, and neither Velvette nor Valentino know what to say. Vox frees them from the burden of breaking the silence.
“Leave.”
And so they do.
Left Vox with his thoughts, like Alastor had a mere week ago.
Anyone with half a brain could catch the hint Vox last asked his mortal enemy.
See, despite what they tell many people, Vox and Alastor’s relationship goes far deeper than natural enemies, it’s just easier to explain it that way. The real story was that Alastor could have been Vox’s mentor, being a few years older than him.
And he was; for the short time when Vox wasn’t yet an overlord, it was Alastor that showed him the ropes. It was Alastor that got him the right connections to air his first show. It was Alastor that helped him fund his first upgrades. In the earlier years, Vox and Alastor was more than their current definition of amicable.
They were friends.
Friendly enough that Vox was one of the very few people Alastor allowed to have a picture with. Back when he wasn’t so averse to new technology, which Vox now knows is because of him. Delightful.
It checks out too. He was young, and curious about everything, and Alastor sated his curiosities until Vox found the way to exploit it. Then, Alastor hated everything.
Vox always just chalked it up to boomer thinking. How the past thinks they will always be better than the present; why Alastor wants nothing to do with him. He never realized it was because in Alastor’s mind, he tainted the mediums he would have loved. In Alastor’s mind, he was the epitome of everything wrong with modern media.
And Vox hated him for that, because Alastor was one of the people he looked up to down here. Alastor was the one who let him taste power, who helped build him up to the empire he is now. How could he spit him out so carelessly?
How could he abandon him when he loved him so dearly?
It wrecked Vox not to hold Alastor’s attention anymore. So rather than friends, they swore to be natural enemies. It came naturally, at least.
That last question… Whatever it was, it was a burst of weakness, a mercy Alastor gave him when he promised to mutually forget about the night. It was a younger Vox, the one who still had a blocky screen monitor and antennae, the one who still had stars in his eyes that made that stupid question.
“Do you think we would’ve worked? Ever?”
Naive boy.
Stupid, naive boy.
Alastor never wanted him. He said it himself. He didn’t give a horse’s ass about him.
And yet, he still cared enough to make him promise to forget that night and the shit he told him anyway. Was it to save his pride? He didn’t even want to know.
Vox rewinds the tape, to the last second before Alastor gets fully swallowed by the shadows. Alastor avoiding his eyes. Then he’s gone.
Maybe this is why he never felt it was right to celebrate Alastor’s departure. Because nothing about this is worth celebrating. Sure, Hell is the Vee’s for the taking, but without the only attention that matters to Vox, the only face Vox wants to rub it on when they eventually succeed, well then, he finds the point less.
Or maybe, it’s because he’s been vying for Alastor’s attention his whole afterlife, and to know he never had it, and now never will, stings.
Because stripping everything down to its carnal truth, well, Alastor was Vox's constant. And now nothing is, and nothing will ever be. Not in the same way Alastor was, and not in the same way Alastor will always be.
Rage flares within Vox’s insides, a ghost of an amused laugh grazing his lips. How dare he.
How dare Alastor leave him like that? On a night like that, after a conversation, like that? He doesn’t bother hiding the indignant puff that escapes him. Truly, they deserved the ring of Pride, the hubris-filled beings they were.
It was preposterous. Vox’s hand tingles with the urge to slap Alastor silly across the face like the melodramas he catches Valentino watching on the occasion of an Angel Dust-related tiff. In retrospect, the events happening were not at all different to the ones played out in said soap operas. A rejection, tingling as a bee’s bite, looked him dead in the eyes and forced him to forget about it. How pathetic.
This wasn’t mercy. This was Alastor’s self-preservation. Wanting to forget a night so humiliating to serve himself alone. Everything whittled down to the fact that the only being Alastor cared about was himself, his reputation and his thirst for entertainment. Nothing else.
It wasn’t mercy, because if it was, he wouldn’t have been filled with such confusion and curiosity at his disappearance. It wasn’t mercy, because if it was mercy, it wouldn’t have led Vox to rewinding his tapes and rewatching the whole thing knowing he was supposed to forget it. It wasn’t mercy, because now he bears the burden of knowing the intimacy of that night alone.
All Alastor has given him is hurt, even when he has tried to make amends, even when he has tried to find common ground, all Alastor knows is hurt. And where did it get Vox? A broken heart and sense of trust. A shamed pride and a ridiculed power. Alastor always talked down on his technology.
Vox always wrote it off to him being old, but Alastor just simply did not want to hear the truth: that he was afraid of change. Specifically, he was afraid of not being able to keep up. So quick-witted, always thinking two steps faster than his enemy. It’s how Alastor came to be in power; through manipulation and oversight. It’s how he snagged that one Overlord’s soul, after all. Alastor has always been sharp.
But his refusal to keep up with technology leads Vox to believe he simply does not want to be left behind. He always wants to be one step ahead, and yet he’s always trailing behind. So when he inevitably feels like he is falling out of step, he leaves on his own volition, before the thought of him being left behind is even articulated. In a last ditch effort to save his ego, he took the coward’s way out.
Laughable. Infuriating. Damning.
Alastor can’t get the last laugh, Vox decides.
So he’ll wait. He’ll wait for Alastor’s return. Because he’ll be back, he always does.
And Vox won’t miss him while he’s gone, but while he is, he’s going to make sure he regrets ever leaving Pentagram City in Vox’s hands.
Alastor remembers that night in a rush of memory seven days after his disappearing act. There, he realizes Vox has figured it out. He realizes they will never be the same. That in his eventual return, he’ll have to face his immortal enemy’s wrath in the face of his fragile ego’s rejection. The feeling will only grow exponentially the more he stays gone.
Too bad. He’ll just need to grow more powerful for the time being then.