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"You know what?! Fuck Hell, fuck Heaven, and fuck all of you! As long as I wipe that smile off Alastor's fucking face, I don't care what happens."
He had done this. It was an unmistakable, unequivocal fact: he had done this. Alastor's concern for Vox, his lashing out, his destructive condemnation of that partnership to get Vox to stop getting closer out of worry that Vox might figure out some things Alastor didn't want him to know? That had ended them here. Alastor, bleeding out, in the sights of an angelic nuclear cannon, anybody who was anybody in Pride within the blast zone of a bomb, and Vox, screaming his rage to the skies for how broken his heart was. Vox never known anything else, a man like him was fucked from birth, unable to ever fill that gaping wound of inadequacy that would eat him alive until the day he died the second death. His missing piece, also broken, unable to fit the mold Vox had made for him.
Guilt was a rare feeling, for Alastor. He felt it now, gnawing away at him, worse than hunger, worse than loss, guilt. The weight of it kept him down, as well as the literal bisection of his body. His insides were only staying inside through a complicated webbing of green stitches and writhing black tentacles, and though he was dragging himself across the dirt, stones and broken masonry wedging into his wounds, he knew escape was impossible. Despite it all, Vox would have his Pyrrhic victory. Vee Tower? Gone. All of Hell's Overlords? Gone. The Morningstars, any chance of Heaven's mercy, Vox himself? Every last bit of anything resembling power in Hell would be wiped out, in an instant, all so Vox could prostrate himself before Alastor and say, aren't I strong? Don't you believe in me now? Am I worthy of you, Alastor?
Am I worthy of being loved by you?
Love. What a pitiful, messy, horrendous emotion, right up there with guilt. Love was the weakness of the world, an infection, something nobody could live without and yet the cause of so much pain. For not the first time, Alastor wished he had loved Vox, was capable of feeling love in the way Vox wanted from him, demanded of him. He didn't. He had tried, when he saw Vox look at him with such unguarded softness, when he'd spoken about this new 'movement' that pushed for acceptance of love between the same gender in a way that offered a back door if Alastor expressed disdain for the opinion. He had spent countless nights with him, drinking, smoking, laughing, dancing. He had let Vox touch him, tried to feel that same warmth, attempted to shirk the crawling under his skin at the contact but he couldn't. Face-down on the pavement, unable to move another inch, Alastor wondered how it might have turned out if he'd been able to love.
That wasn't the world they lived in, and the fantasy was dangerous. The fantasy of waking up next to Vox, coffee, toast and eggs and radio shows and a house for them, a fishtank in the living room and a record collection in the study, it was so enchanting that Alastor knew it was the dream of a dying man, and he would not die. He would not taste freedom to waste it, his afterlife was just beginning, the chains that choked him were gone. The way out was clear. He had made this monster, he would need to kill it. Only he could save himself, and everyone else.
First came himself.
Every movement was a new exercise in agony. The shark had broken most of his fingers and shredded flesh off the ones that still worked. The wound from Adam had never closed, the force and busted bones from being thrown around and dragged across multiple buildings had caught up with him. His clothes were tattered. His radio was ruined. Static ruffled through it, choppy pieces of screams and laughter surrounded him, drowned out the other noises, save for the droning in his ears. Alastor knew, if he put his head down, it wouldn't matter if Vox blew up the world, because he would die that instant anyway. His only choice was through. His only choice was to get up.
Knowing it would hurt, internalizing and accepting this fact, and actively choosing it was different from thinking about it. His bones ground together, popped more out of place than he could typically regenerate, and he let himself cry like a dying animal as he moved his hands beneath him. Bits of his flesh caught and were left behind on the pavement, he felt pebbles bite into the exposed nerves and moved anyway. He was soaked in his own blood. The sight of it pooling onto the ground made him so dizzy he fell back into it, splashing it over his face, but he fought against the urge to succumb. Alastor tried again, succeeded, got both elbows under him and then moved his less-damaged hand to lift his chest from the floor, shaking, ears tilted back. He looked to Vox.
Tears were streaming down his face, from his bad eye, laughter broke from his throat like a flock of ravens, hoarse and raw. Whatever sanity he'd held onto in Hell was well and truly lost. Against the light of Heaven, the glow of his angelic cannon from underfoot, and the setting sun of Hell, he looked every bit a fallen angel, forever reaching up.
Alastor reached out to him with his broken hand.
"Vox."
One word, tiny and faint against the hum of the cannon as Vox supercharged it and himself to prepare to blow them all away, but it was enough. Vox stopped laughing. The cannon flashed, once, primed to go at any moment, but he stopped. The cables flowing from his back and into the weapon rippled and thrashed. Alastor coughed, felt something solid come into his mouth and spat it up without looking, it was probably flesh or a broken tooth. Maybe blood, but Vox had beaten him so thoroughly he couldn't taste anything else, so there was no use in trying to determine if it was fresh. His face hurt from trying to smile. He would smile until he died again, and if he had it his way, he would leave a corpse in grinning rictus.
"Vincent."
The moneyshot, a salvo for the safety of the world. Vision obscured by haze and the loss of his monocle, Alastor could hardly see, everything was a smudge of color and indeterminate light, but he held his hand out, he waited, he baited his trap like he always had and hoped he'd be able to do it again. Manipulate Vox, so easily molded, so hungry for his attention, his friendship, his-
"Al?"
His affections.
Alastor's eyes shuttered, just for a moment, but when he opened them he was bathed in dim blue light. He'd seen it, flitered through his eyelids, but his brain felt very much sluggish and he hadn't parsed it. Vox had come down from the cannon. A quick glance proved that he was still connected to it, wires almost pulled taut, but he wasn't on top of it anymore. He hoped Vaggie and Carmilla would take this distraction to continue whatever they were doing back there and break the thing so nobody could use it again. In order for them to have that time, he needed to buy that time, so he dragged his gaze up to Vox's screen.
His expression was guarded. Completely fair, the last time Alastor had called out for him, he'd tricked him, just like he was doing now. He was drawing closer though, leaving his death machine behind, made utterly useless by Alastor's siren call. He was injured too, limping, dragging one of his legs and trying not to let it show. His knee was already swollen. Alastor must've kicked it out at some point during the fight. The front of his suit was torn open. "What do you want."
The second he drew too close, the instant their signals met, Alastor convulsed. His jaws split open as all the information flowing through Vox hit his internal transponders and he was helpless to stop himself from re-broadcasting it all. It felt like a lungful of subzero air, being kicked in the stomach and punched in the throat at once. Tears sprang to his face and his antlers felt like they might vibrate out of his skull for the force of it. Every feed, every bit of data that could possibly be turned into an audio format and distributed over the radiowaves poured out of Vox and into him, his teeth glowed hot and bright as a star. He twitched, muscles spasming, exhausting him like he was at a full sprint rather than prone and bleeding on the earth. It went on for longer than Alastor thought was really necessary before Vox disconnected from the broader world to limit the transfer, played into his hands, using his own weakness to make Vox weaker.
Now if he could breathe, that'd be swell. Salt stung his eyes, his mouth, he'd fallen to the ground again, arm outstretched, spit and more blood dripping out of his lips. Vox put his boot on Alastor's broken fingers and put weight to it, further pulverizing what splinters of blackened bone were still hanging on, visible through his gaunt skin. He writhed like a poisoned rat, but did little else. He could do little else, but Alastor knew he could do just enough to put an end to this spiral. "What do you want," Vox repeated, harsher, voice doubling over on itself as his audio drivers began to give up the ghost. He knelt, picked Alastor up by an antler and lifted his head. "What could you possibly have to say to me? Insults? More manipulation?! I won, Alastor, face it. Look around!"
He stood, dropped Alastor, and pivoted on his toes, the ones pressing down on Alastor's broken hand. He whimpered like an elk, the note wobbling high and breathless. "Fuck the Pentagram, fuck ruling Heaven, the only thing I ever wanted was for you to see me for what I am: worth something!"
Vox leaned down again, got into his face and picked him up by two spiderish claws. His eye swirled and stabbed into Alastor's skull, putting on so much pressure he thought it might simply explode. His brain was too mushed to be solid enough to grasp, it was just to hurt him now, a power grab that would prove his greed. "Say it, Alastor!" He roared, spit and tears flying from his face to Alastor's cheeks. "Say I'm worthy."
Alastor looked up into his eyes, only marginally helped along in that by the hypnotizing effect of his pulsating eye. He tried to clear his throat of blood and mucus and bile, coughed, and croaked.
Too long.
Vox hauled him up with a fist in his shirt and swung on him. He was too overloaded with pain to process the blow as anything other than mass colliding with his cheekbone, fracturing it under the weight. Through the pervasive hollow wind in his ears, he thought he heard Charlie gasp behind her safety bunker of rubble. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth when he tried to form words.
"Say it!"
"You..."
Vox's mouth was a maze of broken blue glass, liquid from his screen dribbling out of the cracks and chips Alastor had beaten into him not long before. The other Overlord leaned in close, wanting to catch every feeble sound Alastor managed to force out. His radio made a moaning howl, volume cresting higher until his speakers, and eardrums, blew out with it, leaving him momentarily deaf and blind and immobile. He had to try anyway, dangling from Vox's hand as he pulled back his arm to punch him again. He had a single shot at a cutting remark before Vox beat him to death, or maybe slit his throat as he'd promised, expecting an 'I told you so' before the end.
"I'm proud of you."
It hit the mark.
Vox's expression did an immediate backturn. The sneer, the domineering loom, all of it vanished like it was never there. His hold slackened, his arm fell to his side, and the pitch and slant of his eyes went from sharp to round. Bit-compressed hissing steamed out of his speakers. "Really?"
How hopeful he said the word, how gentle, really. Alastor grunted and winced, the stitches holding him together beginning to fray and loosen. His limbs lolled, neck unable to support his head any longer. "Keep me up, Vincent."
The ever-easily manipulated monster got his arm under Alastor's unbroken shoulder and lifted him like a doll, though they both staggered under their combined weight. Vox was as weak as he was, maybe weaker. A stolen glimpse caught over Vox's back told Alastor he had disconnected a few of his cables from the doomsday device, Carmilla and Vaggie bobbing behind it, still attempting to destroy the weapon. It pulsed dangerously, like it had a mind of its own and was deciding if it wanted to blow on its own accord.
Alastor swallowed, thickly, gasping for breath. Vox held him, how his touch made him boil inside, it was almost worse than bleeding out. The things he did for these people, these people who hadn't bothered to even attempt to rescue him. Had Charlie tried to come for him, used that bleeding heart of hers to make a foolish decision in a way that benefited Alastor earlier, none of this would have happened. No, his deals were done, this would be the last time he ever saw Miss Morningstar.
First, he had to save them all to make 'the last time' actually mean something.
"I'm proud of you," he repeated, closer to Vox's speakers, nestled almost into his neck. It took a few attempts for Vox to set him on his hooves in a way that didn't have him keeling over backwards, but they settled on a mutual lean. Alastor's broken arm was cast over Vox's shoulder, nothing more than dead weight and meat. Their heads nearly collided. Alastor made sure to put his back before Vox could do something stupid, stupider than he was anticipating. "You truly are the strongest. You've done what no other Sinner ever has. United Overlords. Captured an-"
Midway through his dialogue, his radio filter arced again. His neck snapped and jerked, he laughed, he spat up snippets of broken sound effects and music until it died entirely and took his vocal overlay with it, leaving him exposed. Alastor couldn't hear it anymore, the pervasive song of the radiowaves. That wasn't good. He couldn't control his tone anymore, couldn't obfuscate the sickness and rage that bled into his words. If Vox noticed, he didn't care. His eyes were wet again.
"… An angel. Spit in the eyes of Heaven itself," he finished, weak and low.
"This could have been ours, Al."
Could have, would have, should have. World's most common epitaphs. They were so near now, too near for Vox to escape him. The power it took to keep them both upright was too much for Vox to handle, not this and the weapon, and as Alastor was hoping for, he would choose him. The last of his wires retracted, back into his body, he felt them snake and slither through his mangled paw, disconnect and lose contact with the cannon so the others could decommission it. Alastor's semi-functional hand crept to his jacket, hooked in the fabric there, where his chest ached. It was cold and damp. He'd bled through his stitchwork again. He pressed hard against it, as if trying to keep his ribs from opening and disgorging his organs. He felt the exposed end of one, sharp, and almost whited out as he rubbed against something that was never meant to be touched. "Maybe it could have, yes."
"It would have been."
"It would have," he agreed, for the sake of being agreeabale.
"It should've."
He ran the trifecta, there. Alastor's mouth sagged, grin fading as what was left of his lifeblood leaked from his veins. He didn't have much time now. The machine continued to rattle dangerously, with everyone still in the fallout. His fingers fumbled around a cold, wooden handle, slipping as the nerve damage settled in and he couldn't close them properly.
"It should have," Vox implored, angrily, shaking Alastor's body as it rapidly became more corpse-like. "Al, I fucking loved you. I still do. Why did you make me start a holy war to see that?!"
Yes, the blame game, Vox was excellent at playing that, and continued to participate as Alastor's world condensed to a pinprick. Always Alastor's fault for unrequited feelings, always Alastor the one who wasn't built right. If he had tried harder, hadn't been fucked from birth and unable to love, this wouldn't have happened! The blame laid with him, insisted the world, he was the problem. Not Vox's obsessive nature, not Vincent's inability to see something higher and not want to take it for his own. Alastor was the problem.
Alastor was done being told he was the problem.
"Because I hate you."
He got a grip on his angelic knife and wielded it like his own holy sword, thrusting it from his chest pocket into Vox's neck. Vox let go of him, tried to jerk back, but Alastor hooked his leg around Vox's wounded knee and they both went down, Alastor landing on top. Vox swiped at him, but Alastor broke through the miserable attempt at offense with ease, batting his arms out of the way. He put a hand to Vox's neck and once, twice, carved holes in the side of his throat. Vox lunged at his face with his claws, gave as good as he got and endeavored to throw Alastor off, but only one of them had an angelic knife, only one of them had experience. It was oddly intimate, feeling Vox scramble beneath him, bucking and twisting and getting nowhere fast. He reared back to avoid the attack and slammed Vox back down, ears twitching as Vox's casing cracked against the stone.
Lift the knife, plunge it in, repeat until his prey stopped moving and all his senses perceived naught but blood, until he was sure his victim was dead.
Alastor split his legs over Vox's hips and kept going, well aware that this was probably fulfilling one of Vox's depraved life goals. Blood sprayed from center mass as Alastor split him open, over and over, making every strike count, made it hurt more with a flick of his wrist, twisting the blade before he ripped it out, moved two inches, and drove it in again.
"I have always hated you!" Alastor screamed, not caring that it was mostly a lie, lashing out because he wanted to make Vox feel how he felt, aware he was now playing by Vox's rules of retribution. At one point he had been fond of Vox, as fond of him as he could be of anybody, but over the years it had festered into this homicidal rage, kept barely at bay with regular petty fights. Not this time. This time, they had both gone too far.
Vox's pixelated face was the very picture of shocked despair, fingers plucking weakly at Alastor's vest. The exposed wires in his torso zapped him, but it was nothing compared to the world-shattering torment he was already in the throes of. He tasted the wires he'd ripped out of him between his teeth. He brought the knife down again.
"Prideful! Obstinate! Unable to listen, to take criticism, to understand when some things were not meant for you!"
Bring it down again. Faces and bodies popped into place where Vox laid, old victims of his, young, pretty things, wrinkled old entitled ones, a parade fifty corpses long as his immortal and mortal lives flashed before his eyes. He'd been here before. He loved this. Joy flooded his chest, didn't he love this? Didn't he love Vox for being part of this? Was there blood running down his face, or tears? The puddle under them was black and red, coolant fluid seeping from Vox's mechanical body, his vents blasting scalding air and burning the fingers wrapped around his throat, the knees at his sides.
"You were always yearning, Vincent, always wanting when you were told no! You can't take no for an answer!"
Again.
"And always touching me, I hated it! I told you to stop, I told you I didn't like it, and you'd do it anyway! You fucking wretch!"
Again. His fingers slipped down the blade, bit into his abused flesh, but what did he care? His guts broke from containment, loose against his ruined clothing. Vox hadn't fought back in a while, but Alastor had more to say. The lack of claws trying to take out eyes was refreshing. That meant he could now put both hands to handle and throw his back into it.
"If you had ever been able to respect me, maybe we could have been friends! Maybe I could have trusted you! But there are no friends in Hell! Nobody will understand you, nobody will come to save you when you fuck things up for yourself, nobody will help you when you end up in trouble! You are on your own, Vincent, and you always will be because you can't- Fucking- Listen!"
The knife dropped from his hands. He'd severed off a finger in the attack. Alastor didn't even notice he'd lost the weapon until now, he'd just been swinging blind. He brought both fists down onto Vox's screen and smashed it, repeatedly, until it went black, then a few more times for good measure. Broken bits of glass and plastic were stuck into his bony hands, but no blood came from the wounds, he had no more to give. Then he curled his arms to his chest, a pitiful attempt to stop the bleeding, held them over his fluttering heart.
"I wanted to trust you," he spat, more quietly than he would have liked, but oh well. Not like Vox was hear to employ the lesson about listening. "I wanted so badly to trust you."
He had wanted a friend.
Alastor pitched sideways to the ground and had a very strong premonition that he'd never be getting up again, the concrete felt like cotton, he couldn't stop shivering. The white light from the weapon ceased, oh good, his outburst had actually done something. He was roadkill, that was glaringly apparent, just as apparent as Vox's own death. Something about this was morbidly funny. Laying side by side, Alastor's legs tangled in Vox's own, fingers limp over the corner of his screen. Like they were sleeping.
Vox had wanted him so badly he'd doomed them both to death, and in trying to save his own life, Alastor had killed them both. There would be no freedom for him, no secondary killing spree, the fruits of his labor would not be his to harvest.
The only thing he'd succeeded in doing was saving a bunch of empathy-poor do-gooders who didn't deserve his help. Alastor smeared blood over Vox's screen, the tip of his finger severing on a razor-sharp edge.
"If there's a Hell after this, Vinnie, I'll see you there. Let's do this again sometime."
He shut his eyes before Princess Morningstar could try to get some heartfelt last words out of him, seeking absolution for her failure.