Chapter Text
…
Despite popular belief, even The Radio Demon has his limits.
It is a feat, of course, to get him to break. Many have tried, few have ever succeeded, and even fewer live to tell the tale.
The searing pain of a steel blade being lodged into his bicep after he'd miscalculated the strength of one of his quarries? Child's play.
Disfigured by bloodthirsty hounds, his weeping flesh pricked by the frigid airs of winter before he'd kissed the barrel of a shotgun? He’s still here, isn't he?
Even being hypnotized and abducted by his ex-friend-turned-obsessive-stalker he found more funnily pathetic than anything.
But being held immobile while a rivulet of uncontrollable tears wet his cheeks as aforementioned ex-friend-turned-obsessive-stalker breaks every phalange in his finger is, admittedly, a bit overboard.
“FFF– FFUCK!” He feels the very moment overextended muscle splits, revealing ghastly, meat-covered bone in wake of the gore that sputters onto the tiled floor like puke. The scene is reminiscent of a homicide, which is a truly ludicrous thought! There is no crime in Hell, only business.
“I, FUCK– I CAN'T–” He cuts himself off, harshly sucking air through his clenched fangs. If it were any other situation, he'd feel disappointed in himself for such inarticulation. But as it is, the flash-bomb of pain freezing his vocal cords is enough to preoccupy his ego.
A growl, he hears the snap of bone before he feels it. “BULLSHIT! God fucking DAMMIT, Al– y’know what? You can say bye-bye to this hand if you're going to be THIS fuckin’ stubborn!” Vox spits, dropping the finger from where it was bent unnaturally backwards over Alastor's knuckles and leaving it dangling by threadbare intrinsic muscle to ensnare Alastor's wrist, his grip wet.
Eugh.
“I can keep going like this all night until I turn every bone in that pretty little body of yours into dust.” He leans closer, sneering. “Is that what you want? Maybe by the time I’m finished I won’t have to ask for permission– maybe I’ll just rip your soul right out of your limp fucking corpse. Is THAT what you want? HUH?”
He squints, turning away from the icy light pulsating from Vox's screen in overt disgust. This is becoming much too overwhelming, even for Alastor. In his prime, he himself had shattered many a finger, never understanding until now what it feels like to be on the receiving end.
Whether to feel guilty or proud is still out on trial.
“Is your head really so thick? I told you, even if I wanted to, which I certainly don't–” A searing pain douses his arm, a warning. “Ah! I truly can't!”
He says it with such veracity that Vox pauses, squinting. The farthest thing from anger Alastor has gotten this entire torture session.
“What do you mean, you can't.”
Alastor's smile tightens. “You've wasted your time.”
And mine.
Vox’s eyes dart around Alastor's face, inspecting the validity of such an admission. He stands up and steps back, looking at the floor like he's trying to solve a challenging math equation. Then back at Alastor, then the floor again. Reverently puts his hand to where his chin would reside if he had one.
Half expecting his ports to start smoking, Alastor watches with impatience as Vox's screen begins juddering, producing a keening, motorized whine that does nothing to soothe his migraine. But eventually, even that stops, and the room– if you could even call it that-- a single mirror, naked walls, and one lone, sad chair fitted with restraints isn't much to write home about-- falls into silence, disturbed only by throaty, laborious panting Alastor barely recognizes as his own.
“...no way.” Alastor must squint, his eyes again accosted by a nauseating blast of synthetic light as Vox invades his space.
“No way, not buying it. Not even for a second. The Radio Demon wouldn’t sell his soul.”
“Oh, goodie. Please do tell him the news the next time you see him,” The Radio Demon drawls. “I'm sure he'll be thrilled.”
Vox's eyes widen, and the expression that gradually befalls his face is one that fills Alastor’s shriveled black heart with pure delight. It's the shock of witnessing a bad accident– the first tower collapsing, the nuclear bomb dropping; the pedestal crumbling. Rose-tinted glasses have broken and fallen away to reveal the true colors that had been hiding in plain sight the entire time.
It strums at something deep within Alastor's psyche– something he quickly suffocates and shoves back down.
Contracted or not, he's still the same Radio Demon as he was a century ago. Vox finding out about his little temporary arrangement doesn't change a thing– and he will learn so, all in due time.
Vox's claws are latched onto the chairback, bracketing Alastor in. He's staring into him with such intensity that for a second Alastor is convinced he's seeing right into his soul, purple chains and all, but then he steps backwards, unsteady, chuckling, smearing blood down his screen as his claws leave scratches in the glass. Shaking his head in disbelief.
Alastor rolls his eyes at the sorry display. He longs terribly to put the television out of its misery, but, ah, restraints and all. Another time.
“Even if you refuse to believe me, there's really nothing more I can do for you.” Alastor feigns nonchalance, turning over his other hand to check his nails, his skin grating uncomfortably against the metal cuff, strapped to the chair as he is. “Although, since you seem to crave my company so desperately, perhaps we could discuss what sort of background instrumentals you'd like to accompany your screams for my upcoming broadcast. I've always appreciated a bit of cool jazz, but considering your growing track record of horrible decisions, I can only imagine your taste may differ.”
Vox has always been entitled, but surely he understands the impending consequences of crossing such a stark line in the sand as he did today. Forcing himself on Alastor was one thing– and he'd paid the price for it years ago– but blatantly hypnotizing, abducting, and torturing him is another offense entirely. To think he would be intimidating enough to scare The Radio Demon out of his soul is laughable. Alastor pitied him. But even more than the pain he felt in his (rather sluggishly) mending fingers, he is more insulted at the fact Vox had hardly even tried.
Waiting until the moment Alastor was weakened from Adam's attack to strike, Vox cornered him at the remains of his broadcasting station, doing none of the work yet taking all the credit like the vulture he is. Where was the finesse? The showmanship!
Oh, what more should he have expected from a man whose entire business model is dependent on holograms and cheap tricks.
Luckily, Alastor has all of eternity to slip these restraints (as if he would need that long) and he would be happy to give the media Overlord a lesson in theatrics during his next show!
Suddenly, Vox lunges forward, slamming into and sinking his claws into Alastor's shoulders with such ferocity he suspects he may have hit bone. He feels the blood begin to leak from the new wounds, slithering down his back and seeping through his shirt. He hides a pained wince in the upturned corners of his smile.
Then, voice trembling from nothing short of rage, Vox utters one, quiet word:
“Who?”
Alastor scoffs, looking to the side.
“I can't say.”
Vox's claws dig deeper into his shoulders, past lean muscle– and, oh, now he's reached bone.
“Oh, don't tell me you'll throw another tantrum because you don't get to play toys the way you want to,” he spits. “Are you expecting to bleed my autonomy out of me like a leech? Dig through my remains until you find the needle?”
A nasty smile slinks up his cheeks.
“Have you tried checking under my shoe?”
His lungs are knocked empty of air as Vox's metal first collides with his chest, something– likely a few ribs– snapping, the sound echoing off the metallic walls as loud as a gunshot. Vox buries his nails into the sides of Alastor's skull, lurching him forward before slamming him into the metal chairback so violently his eyes reverberate in their sockets.
He groans, trying to blink away the way the tiles are swimming – and, when had he lost consciousness?-- but he is barely afforded time to process what’d occurred before his cheeks are gripped by those same shaking claws and he's tugged forward again, the restraints around his thighs digging horizontal crimps into his skin.
“You wanna play that game? Fine,” he spits. Vox's left eye activates with an infinitesimal blink, dragging Alastor in before he has time to act. “I'll play that game. Tell me who your dealer is.”
He tries, he truly does, to reel back, out of range, away from the rolling incandescent spiral. Though much like a moth to a flame, once caught he is powerless to resist its magnetic heat. The racing of his thoughts slows along with his heart, and a blanket of calm envelops him. It branches outwards from his core, soothing the ache in his bones and gently shushing his crying wounds. He floats, becoming weightless; a feather in the breeze.
With a whimper, Alastor retires his muscles.
“Oh, now isn't that a sight…” The fingers squishing his face together fall back. He misses them immensely.
“Doesn’t that just feel so much better?” The look in Vox's eyes is nothing short of religious adoration. He directs Alastor's chin up with his index.
“C'mon, Al, you can trust me, just one name, that's all... you'll feel so much better after, hm..?”
Feel so much better. So much better. To get that weight off your chest, weight off your chest. It's weighing you down. But you can trust me. “I can trust you.” Your best friend. “My best friend.”
Let me help you.
His brain is gravy pouring from his ears. Ah, he doesn't need it anymore, not here. Au revoir, burden of thought. The frigid room warms, a familiar orange light slowly seeping through the anemic florescents and encompassing him in a nostalgic glow, the plush heat of a nearby fireplace soothing him like an old friend.
His lips part, numbed as he is. Everything is fuzzy and... yes. He confides in Vox for everything. Why hadn't he thought of this before?
That's a good buck. C'mon, Al. Don't you wanna stay here, with me? Let me help you. “You know how much I love helping you,” his best friend says, looking at him so reverently with that silly boxy head of his.
“I do.”
“Me too.”
“Her name…”
The noise ripped from his throat isn't so much a name as a gurgle. And suddenly there is green, green everywhere. Jagged green flame– hellfire– bursts into essence, twining through his lips and yanking them shut, bagging the regurgitated screams of a thousand stolen souls and forcing them back down his throat like puke. It feels like suffocation, like a ball of steel wool being shoved through a straw, Her name shaving away the lining of his esophagus as fire bakes pus-filled blisters up his throat and down the backs of his eyes, blinding him. In the span of a moment he's sure he's already lived a hundred deaths, resurrected again and again into a charred, leaking body to experience the pain anew, spasming on the floor like a worm as his skin and muscles meld together through fire into a mound of wailing flesh.
“--LSTOR!”
Tinnitus. A flat palm striking his face, his soul sucked back into his body like a vacuum. He cries out, the phantom stitches tangled in his lips tearing through phantom skin that dangles and dances and spurts blood as they come undone. Someone grabs him by the shoulders, their own cries muffled. He reaches for them like a lifeline, forcing his eyes to roll forward from where they had glued to the back of his skull.
“ALASTOR! FUCK– WHAT THE FUCK! HEY– NO, LOOK AT ME.”
Familiar claws grab his cheeks and he gasps, steadying him in the very real blood they prick from his skin. Though the fire is gone, his lungs are still burning, and he realizes, as consciousness returns, that he had never once stopped screaming.
His head is released and he can do nothing but succumb to gravity, chin resting against the top of his chest as he heaves for air, begging to be let off this carousel as the floor continues to spin. One eye closed, he is incapable of anything but to wallow in his own sick as acrid vomit prods at his sphincter. Drool gathers at the corner of his mouth and drips forth in a pathetic string. He makes no move to wipe it away.
A hand comes up to his lips, relieving him of his embarrassment and wiping the spit clean. He is a toddler without a bib to catch its mess and he almost wishes the flames would return so he could fry such a thought from his brain.
“Christ, Al. Fuck, that wasn't– I didn't think–” Finally able to see, he tiredly makes out the television pacing in front of him, hands pushing against his mouth and brow furrowed in a silent prayer, clearly distressed. What about, Alastor couldn't be certain. It's not as if he was the one burning alive only moments ago.
“God, that… was disturbing as fuck.”
So Alastor hasn't truly died and woken up in some Hell where Vox is no longer a boxy, bumbling pill? Well, all good things come with a pinch of salt!
“Please, take your time. I expect your apology to be at least halfway literate--” his throat clogs around a clot of blood. Not a good time. He forces it back down. “And preferably conferred while I am unrestrained." Too lazy to move, he can only roll his head to the side to signal the restraints still eating at his wrists and thighs, noticing the bruising hue of purple beginning to flower across his hands, no doubt having seized and caused them to tighten.
The unpleasant whine of rubber chafing tile reverberates around the empty space as Vox abruptly halts, pausing his worrying to level Alastor with an indiscernible expression.
“Apology?”
Ah, no, not indiscernible. He's angry.
"YOU want an apology? For THAT?” The laugh that fizzles from his speakers is grating.
“You’re so fucking– that wasn't– how about you apologize to ME? For– oh, and this is rich. The big, bad Radio Demon is fine with taking everything EXCEPT responsibility! What? You really want MORE of me, Al?? Bending over backwards for you for over fifty years wasn't enough to feed your obese fuckin' ego? No, this is so typical– all I've ever done is GIVE and IT'S STILL–”
The one, truly great thing about having cupped ears? Marvelous at catching sound and just as well at blocking it. Alastor watches the scene unfold in front of him, ears reared back, observing a man of technically over a hundred years in age throw an honest-to-goodness tantrum, whipping his hands about and kicking his feet and running a hand through his hair only to realize he has none and checking to see if Alastor had noticed (he had) before silently yelling and stomping towards the exit, absolutely livid!
Perhaps theatrics classes could wait, after all.
Alastor does manage to catch one thing, however. Stopping at the door, Vox whips around dramatically to point directly at him, his lips writ large, making sure Alastor hears him: “You're NEVER getting out of here, Al. WELCOME TO FUCKIN' HELL!” Before childishly glaring a last time and strutting away, slipping on the blood he's been tracking with his shoes as he goes and leaving unsavory scratches in the steel doorframe.
It is the saddest thing Alastor has ever seen.
He laughs and laughs until every camera along the room falls dark.
…