Static Heartbreak

by XiiHawk

Summary:

This is a copium fic for all those emotions Season 2 stirred inside of me and my poor baby needs hugs.

Following Alastor’s devastating, calculated cruelty, Vox is at his rock bottom. He's going to rebuild himself, not for anyone else, but for him. And when the Radio Demon finally realizes what he lost? Well, we will see, no?

This takes place around a week after the finale of S2 Hazbin Hotel.

Notes:

Got the idea while wandering through Disneyland. Took a little escape to LA, and oh, what a vacation it was, folks <3

Now I’m back, smiling through the ache, already haunted by next week’s work.
O blissful holiday, where hast thou fled? Thou didst drape thy golden ease upon my days, now lingering only as a distant lover in memory.

Chapter 1: 1

The neon hum from my district bleeds into the dusk fog of Cannibal Town, a glitchy halo rattling along the edge of my vision as I step onto the cracked boulevard. Static crawls across the corners of my lenses, first part nerves second anticipation.

A silhouette in crimson waits ahead, carved sharp against the gloom like a warning sign dressed up pretty. His grin gleams first, slicing through the haze long before the rest of him strolls into focus. A cheerful melody overlaid with something cold enough to bruise.

Don’t show it. Don’t let him read it.

He takes one slow step in my direction, the air tightening around my throat like a cable pulled too hard.

“Out for a stroll?” he asks, voice bright and harmless on the surface, rot pooling underneath. “Or did you lose control of your legs again?”

My jaw creaks. “Funny, just admit that I can dance... Did Cannibal Town ask for a break from your charming presence?”

He circles, not touching, not close, but close enough that my circuitry aches as if something inside me is trying to crawl toward him without permission. A punishment baked into the air between us.

Why did those centuries go so quickly?

“You’ve infested this district with your devices,” he says, tilting his head like he’s inspecting a corpse.

“If you’re craving a souvenir, I could give you the premium tour. Maybe you’d like to browse my VoxTeK shop for a few delights?” My tone dips into velvet menace. “I’ve got plenty. You want a distraction? Maybe shop a little? I can give you a tour! VoxTeK is stacked with delights that could even put you down for good. May I interest you in my arsenal of death?”

His laugh rolls out soft, amused and cruel. “You cling to those toys like they can save you. Like they mean anything.”

The channels in my head split again, each emotion slamming into the next like they’re trying to override one another. I try to shove them down, face smooth-ish, posture loose. Always look in control when everything inside is melting.

Was it something that I said? Something I didn’t say?

He moves closer. That sickening pull, that pressure behind my ribs that makes breathing optional and resisting impossible. A whisper slips through my teeth before I can kill it, “afraid of commitment, Radio Demon?”

His expression shifts barely. Was it hunger, hatred, recognition? A sound forces its way out of me, some kind of half-laugh mixed with static.

If I begged… would you kiss me?

Something inside me cracks as I swung, because anything else would expose too much. Not a graceful move, just raw fury clawing its way up my throat and out through my hands. Electricity whips from my palms, lighting the space between us in jagged blue flashes. Alastor meets me instantly, shadows splitting like antlers made of ink. We crash, collide, tear at each other like little kids.

Pain feeds pain, while violence feeds the truth we both refuse to name.

He grips my wrist hard enough to bruise metal; I slam my knee into his ribs. His laugh vibrates against my skin like a curse. My vision fractures into shards. He slashes across my chest with a hard sweep of his cane; I retaliate with a burst of white-hot current that sends him skidding across the pavement.

It’s a miserable attempt at killing something neither of us can carve out.

We crash together again, hit the ground, roll, rip apart, strike, peel back, bleed… until both our breaths come ragged and the fog around us swirls in frantic spirals.

He throws me off eventually, enough that I slide across the concrete and land on trembling knees. My circuits burn in all the ways I used to associate with wanting, needing him closer.

He steps back bowing, the gesture too smooth, too polite. Too cruel. “Another enlightening evening,” he says. “I look forward to your next attempt.”

His figure dissolves into the fog, leaving behind the echo of that old drumming in my skull. A warm touch turned poison.

My chest caves in. The rage inside me tries to keep burning, tries to scream its way out. But something softer rises beneath it, pathetic and shaking. Something I thought I buried beneath layers of steel and static.

A glitch rips through my screen-face. I blink out of the physical world and let my body dissolve into electricity. The neon gutters at my touch as I slip through the wires, the cables, the humming backbone of my district, until I reassemble in my private chambers. Empty, cold, silent except for my own breathing.

The moment I’m solid again, the rage collapses like a bad signal.

Standing there, swaying, hands shaking so hard I can’t hide it. My chest feels crushed. My thoughts strobe through channels too fast to track; anger, regret, longing, humiliation… each one choking out the next.

I try to spit venom, to laugh at myself, to drown every emotion in wrath. “You idiot,” I whisper, voice cracking. “Stupid, needy little fool. Look at you.”

I press my forehead to the cold glass, my reflection glitching. My fingers curl into fists as my mouth twists into something mocking, pitiful. “You want him to hurt,” I hiss at myself, “but all you ever wanted was him to—”

Like keys inside my pocket these three words jingle in my head. Even though I can’t say them.

Sharp and sudden a sob rips up my throat. Knees buckle, and I fold onto the floor, shoulders shaking with suppressed emotions. Every breath comes out as static-choked whimpers. The neon from outside bleeds through the blinds, casting me in flickering blue like a broken sign.

I try to force rage back over the grief, claw at it, beg it to return but the truth pulses beneath, relentlessly. A cavity that never filled, never healed, never stopped aching for what shattered all those years ago.

Wiping at my face with shaking hands I curled into myself. My voice breaks into a whisper no one will ever hear, “I wasn’t enough… was I…?” The thought drags another sob from me, harsher this time.

A hurt, lonely little boy trapped inside a machine, that’s what I am.

Always alone, unfinished and always reaching for something that will never love me back. The neon keeps flickering, indifferent and steady, while I tremble in its light.

 

Like a broken signal longing for a station that will never tune in again.

 

---

 

The perpetual flicker of neon light from the streets seeped into the chamber, a sickly blue hue that made the velvet drapes look cheap. My screen pulsed gently on the silk pillowcase. Just my head. A glitch ripped through my screen-face as my consciousness struggled to achieve functional solidity.

This should have been my space, my command center. Instead, the silk felt foreign, saturated with the essence of the colossal parasite currently asleep beside me, his breathing slow, sickening rhythm. The air itself felt like a punishment, except this time, the punishment was inflicted by the very people I called partners.

Val. Velvette.

They had denied me my ascent. They saw the destructive potential of the chaos I unleashed and called it a tantrum.

Blind. Naive.

Failing to grasp that was a necessity to the new God that I was becoming. They refused my purpose!

The mattress dips when I scoff, a brittle flicker cracking across my screen. As if sound alone could carve me free. I twist what little of me still exists in this useless state I inch. Drag. Fail. Inch again.

The world jerks in nauseating frames as I shove myself toward the edge, each movement a violation of physics and dignity alike. Fabric bunches beneath me, silk snarling under my weight as I teeter. For one terrible second I hover. The drop feels like an accusation.

I tip. Impact rattles my casing as I smack the floor. The jolt explodes through my circuits in a white bloom of noise. My audio distorts on a sharp static gasp that barely counts as breath. Pain lands late, crawling, electrical and mean.

Good, he is still asleep.

I grind myself forward with ugly little shudders, pushing with the faint magnetic pull I can still muster. The carpet burns against my frame. Every inch is stolen. Every inch costs me. The door to the hallway looms like a dare. I keep going anyway, leaving faint scorched lines in the fibers where my voltage kisses the floor too hard.

Basement. I have to get to the basement.

Trashy bodies. Incomplete. Cracked shells that only barely qualify as me. Still better than this. Still better than being a decorative object beside that slob as he snores out his hollow little victories, way better than being her 'interactive iPad'.

Static fizzles through my thoughts, I cannot stand this anymore.

I scrape my way past the doorframe and tumble down the first few steps one ugly bounce at a time. Each impact rings through me in fractured tones. The stairwell smells like dust and old oil. My vision stutters in dim pulses as emergency lights flicker somewhere far below.

Out. I need out.

Not just from the room. From all of it. From being managed. From being denied. From being reduced to an accessory in someone else’s circus.

Mostly I want my power back. The thought roars through me, hot and feral. Power was the only thing that ever kept the rot at bay. The only language Hell ever respected when it came out of my mouth. Deals once lined up at my signal. Approval once followed my shadow.

I cannot gather strength without approval. Deals mean nothing if the crowd does not buy in. Influence starves without an audience.

A pathetic scrape of sound tears out of my speakers as I drag myself along the concrete. The basement door yawns open ahead, the air colder, damp with the scent of used and old mixed with rust and dead voltage. My discarded bodies wait down there like bad memories stacked in the dark.

What a hell.

I reach the threshold and stall, screen flickering weakly as fatigue chews through my current. The weight of everything presses in at once. The loss. The leash. The mockery of survival like this.

I grind my casing against the floor in frustrated little shoves, trapped as long as hell needs to forget all about me to start yet again.

And I am running out of ways to hide without a body to burn.

Cold light strips across the basement as I lift my gaze. Rows of me stare back. Discarded shells slumped against the walls or hung from cables like failed experiments. Some cracked. Some scorched. Some half stripped of their plating like I had been peeled apart and left to rot in stages. My reflection fractures across dozens of dead screens, each one lagging a heartbeat behind the last. The sight twists something sour through my core.

My tongue drags slowly across my teeth, and I click it anyway. “No can do.”

The words drop flat into the stale air as I scan the lineup with a critic’s eye. Bent joints get dismissed. Fractured casings earn a longer look and then a silent rejection. One with smoke stains curling out of its vents makes me snort in quiet contempt. I drift past them like a judge through a morgue, fingers of current brushing metal, checking charge levels, motor response, structural integrity.

There, not perfect. None of them ever are. But the plating is intact, the joints look responsive, the core humming faint and stubborn like it refuses to admit it is obsolete. That will do. I slip into it like ice forced down my spine.

The reconnection hits all at once. Voltage surges wrong. Sensors flood me with information that does not line up with memory. Temperature scrapes too cold. Texture arrives too loud. The sensation is like retching something ancient back up through my circuits, cold vomit from the last century clawing its way through every wire. My screen flares white. A strangled sound tears free from the new speakers as I convulsed into place. Necessary. Ugly, cold and disgraceful, but necessary.

The body locks around me with a heavy click. Motors whine low as they calibrate to my frequency. My vision stabilizes in choppy frames until the basement settles into rough coherence again. I roll my shoulders. The movement feels borrowed. Too tight in some places. Too loose in others. My flesh would grow around it in no time, and I can always make updates when I…

When I go… where?

The thought stalls me mid-motion.

Where exactly does a disgraced overlord go in Hell when half the city line up to watch him fall apart for sport? Sinners want me dead. Rivals want me humiliated. My former partners sit behind their walls and titles warm and insulated by influence I helped build. Safe… somewhat.

I scoff under my breath as I straighten. “Not a chance.” I am not taking that risk. And they do not deserve me slinking back like a busted antenna with apologies in my mouth.

A low growl builds in my chest as I tug at the crooked jacket hanging off this body, forcing it to sit right. The fabric resists. So do the thoughts.

That they were right.

I swallow hard and it feels like forcing broken glass down my throat. I overreacted. The truth presses in from all sides no matter how I shove at it. I wanted to tear the world in half over a pitiful heartbreak and called it destiny. My hand curls into a fist.

The floor does not survive the impact. Concrete splinters. A nearby table collapses in a screech of metal and wood. I barely feel it. Another swing takes out a shelving unit. Tools rain down in a shrieking scatter.

I am hiding…? From whom exactly?

My own reflection glares back at me from a busted monitor across the room, screen spiderwebbed, image warped. The mouth twisted into a snarl that does not quite mask the tremor underneath. The truth quivers in the lines of that borrowed face no matter how hard I posture.

They were right.

I stand there in the wreckage with my fist still trembling, power humming hot and unstated beneath my skin, and hate myself for every part of me that knows it.

The basement shudders. Not hard. Not dramatic. Just enough that the dust along the beams trembles and the low hum in the walls sharpens into something alert.

My head lifts slowly. Oh. You noticed, Val?

A split second later the alarm detonates. A wall of shrieked frequencies that tear through metal and mind alike, rattling my new/old body from the inside out. Every warning light erupts at once. Red floods the room in seizure fast bursts. The floor vibrates under the sudden surge of power being hurled through the building.

I bark a dry laugh through clenched teeth. “Choosed violence over finding your precious baby missing beside you, huh? Real touching, Val.”

My gaze snaps to the cables. I break for them.

Not graceful. Not clean. I slam into the nearest conduit and dissolve on impact, my image smearing into raw signal as I force myself into the line. For a flashing victorious heartbeat the world becomes speed and electricity and rushing escape.

The grid responds like a jaw snapping shut.

The system clamps down on me with violent rejection. Counter currents slam into my waveform, shredding my cohesion. My signal stutters wildly, dragged apart and crushed by suppressive code designed to tame things like me. I feel myself thinning, scattering, losing integrity piece by piece.

Too tight. Too locked. Painful.

A broken snarl rips through my audio feed. “Open the damn—!” The grid spits me out.

I slam back into my body in a violent blackout, crashing to my knees as the alarm continues its merciless howl above. My vision comes back in warped frames. The basement spins. Smoke curls from one of my vents.

I clutch the floor with shaking fingers. Of course it would not be easy. Of course it would reject me.

I shove myself upright with a staggered growl and lurch for another access point, the sirens clawing against my senses until thought blurs at the edges. The second dive is uglier. I compress harder, force my signal narrower, strip myself down to the barest viable pattern and ram into the wire like a bullet.

This time the resistance screams.

The system fights me every inch, grinding against my frequency with suffocating pressure meant to shrink me. I am dragged thin. Stretched wrong. My awareness jitters between nodes in nauseating skips. For a horrifying moment I feel small in a way I have not felt in centuries.

Static rakes through my core. “No,” I snarl into the current. “You do not get to do this to me!” I shove everything I have left into one brutal surge.

The grid buckles and I tear free in a violent burst of light and collapse into the outside world in a heap of misaligned parts and shaking limbs. Cold night air slams into my sensors like a slap. Metal screams as I skid across a maintenance platform and smash against a railing.

The alarm still echoes behind me, muffled now by layers of wall and distance but no less furious.

I push my feet clumsy and uneven, recalibrating on the fly as my limbs remember how to be limbs. The memory of him telling me with a soft smile that I can’t dance resurfaced as sudden as it disappeared. My balance lurches. I catch myself on a rusted pipe and hiss as my image stabilizes in jagged increments.

The tower looms behind me, all new glass and arrogant glow.

Mine… once.

A gasp slices through the street below. I look down. Too late. Someone stares up at me with wide eyes and trembling hands. Their mouths open. My name spills out of it like a prayer and a curse all at once. The word ripples outward. Another voice joins it. Then another. Excitement warps into violence with terrifying speed. The sound mutates. Hunger leaks into it. Promises of what they would do if they got their hands on me slither through the noise.

Kill.

Slaughter.

The mob started to move. So I had to act quick, fingers dig into the nearest wall as I pivot hard and launch myself forward. The concrete scrapes under my palms as I shove off and sprint, joints whining in protest.

Neon blurs into violent ribbons. Footsteps explode behind me. The city exhales its rot and breathless excitement as I tear through it with the tower’s light burning at my back.

It screamed run. And I ran. Oh, how I ran, until I suddenly found myself at the bottom of the hill.

 

"Just for one night,” I heard my voice whisper, “just one."

Chapter 2: 2

Summary:

Salat...

Don't mind me, having fun over here ;D

The doors do not survive my entry.

Glass bursts inward with a shriek as I slam through, momentum carrying my half recovered body straight into the chaos beyond. I stumble hard over the threshold, boots skidding across polished flooring that smells faintly of cheap cleaner and desperation. My shoulder clips a pillar. Pain flares bright and quick through joints that are still knitting themselves back together.

Why is it so crowded? The thought cracks through me as I stagger between clusters of bodies packed too tight for comfort. Residences. Lounges. Whatever this place wants to pretend it is. A stupid hotel stuffed with sinners like it is a sale day at some bargain pit. Laughter dies mid breath. Conversations snag and unravel as heads turn.

Every nerve in me shrieks that recognition is a death sentence. They are going to tear me apart too, the thought snaps through me hot and absolute.

My hand lashes out and grabs the first thing it finds a robe hanging from a hook near the wall. I yank it down and drag the reeking fabric over myself in one violent motion, rough wool scraping against my screen and borrowed skin. The smell hits a heartbeat later sweat and rot and some acidic floral someone thought counted as perfume.

Great. Now I am hiding in a stranger’s sweat rag. You go, Vox!

A flicker of movement across the lobby tells me I was not fast enough. Someone followed from outside. Their angry eyes go wide. Their mouth opens.

Blood.

The exact words did not need full shape or form to be understood.

I lurch sideways and duck behind a couch, I overturned it in my feeble attempt to hide even though everyone saw me, as the sound swells. My back slams into the cushions. I haul the robe tighter around myself, forcing the rank cloth up around my neck and screen as if it might erase me if I pretend hard enough.

Hope whoever owns this garment does not have gonorrhea. The thought slips out bitter and hysterical as my shoulders hitch with a shudder, the robe absorbs my emotional state, while the couch does not care. Some disgusting low life infecting me felt so random, yet made me almost beg for a cleaner cloth to curl into. 

My breathing rasps too loud in my ears. I force it down. One inhale through a vent that still stings. Another slower one. The tremor in my hands eases just enough that I stop rattling the furniture.

Another door flew open.

Noise continued to pour with the mob bodies colliding into the room like a wave that finally found its shore. The ones who chased me move like hunger learned to sprint. Shouts claw at the air.

Justice.

War.

My name twisted into prey.

The ‘ready to be redeemed sinners’ inside scatter under pressure. They part and stumble and curse as the mass forces itself inward, eyes wild, weapons half formed, bloodlust barely leashed by the novelty of the chase.

Six or seven left standing in the open.

Nine too many for redemption nonsense.

Not nearly enough to keep me hidden for long. I swallow hard, the sound of it loud in my own head, and peek through the narrowest gap between couch cushions and dangling robe hem. Flickers of color, sharp teeth and intent slide across the lobby. I shrink back deeper into the stink, wishing for the universe to perform one small miracle for once.

Someone take the trash out. The thought lands heavy and helpless as the shouts close in and the disaster keeps unfolding without me having any clean way out of it. The irony of it did not make it into the deeper circuits of my mind.

The footsteps are creeping towards their destination now.

Close enough that I can feel the vibration of them through the floor and into the couch frame pressed against my spine. Angry. Hunting weight. The kind that knows it has cornered something pitiful.

My eyes slide shut.

There is no route left. No wire. No shadow wide enough. No angle I can exploit with a body that still judders when I breathe too hard.

That’s it.

I should have stayed in bed.

The thought lands dull and exhausted as the echo of Val’s tower flashes behind my eyelids. I should have let the ceiling stare back at me.

Let the silk choke me.

Let myself get used.

 

Over and over until he was satisfied.

 

The noise dies.

No, it fades, thins out?

It cuts off.

Silence snaps into place so suddenly it rings. A heartbeat passes. Then another. Murmurs ripple through the lobby like confused cows. Someone lets out a breath that sounds almost reverent.

Clapping.

Scattered at first. A few bewildered hands colliding. It grows as others join in, not quite thunderous but heavy with something like awe. Whistles slip through the gaps. Cheers tangle with uneasy laughter.

My eyes fly open.

What the?

Still locked in flight mode, acting against my own disbelief, I slowly lift my head above the back of the couch. The robe slips as I move, dragging off my screen but snagging stubbornly on one shoulder. The image reflected in the far lobby mirror is obscene.

Half hidden. Half revealed.

A damsel in distress wrapped in mildew and confused panic.

The mob… it is, it’s gone?

Not retreated to the doors. Not lurking in the corners.

Gone.

Not there anymore.

Poof, magic like gone.

The space they filled has been swallowed by empty air and displaced sinners staring at something I cannot yet see. I blink hard. My display glitches once as I process the absence.

No.

They were just here. Am I on some drug?

I smack the side of my own screen with an open palm, a sharp frustrated thud meant to kick my sensors back into line. The image steadies. Yet the lobby remains the same.

Empty where the pursuers stood.

Save.

The word does not fit in my mouth yet. It feels counterfeit. Illegal.

I stay frozen behind the couch with the filthy robe still hanging off me like a bad joke, staring at the place where a death sentence stood moments ago, trying to understand what exactly just rewrote the rules around my survival.

I rise slowly from behind the couch like I am afraid gravity might remember me again.

This lobby feels wrong. The ‘redeemables’ or whatever they call themselves here are clustered in one tight knot of conversation. Not cheering. Not clapping anymore. Just talking. Animated. Riveted. As if the bloodhunt that just dissolved never happened at all.

I was left cold on the side. Forgotten.

Under other circumstances that would have carved straight through my pride. Right now thou? It feels like mercy, like a chance.

I pull the robe the rest of the way off my shoulder and let it slide to the floor, stepping out of the stink like shedding evidence. My joints still ache with heaviness but they responded good enough.

All I need is a room.

A door.

Four walls and enough quiet to stitch myself back together before I leave this delusional infested building behind me.

One step.

Only one.

And a shape blocks my path.

Broad. Solid. Irritated down to the soul. Arms crossed tight over his chest while one foot taps against the floor in a sharp impatient rhythm. Dusty eyes drag over me slow and unimpressed.

My throat tightens.

I look away before I mean to. One hand lifts to the side of my screen in a weak scratch that does nothing to ease the static crawling under my casing. I search for a lie and find nothing that fits.

He speaks before I manage it. “What the fuck are you doing here?” No ceremony. No curiosity. Just raw annoyance sharpened to a point.

Anger flickers through me in reflex, bright and dangerous and deeply familiar. I crush it down with effort that makes my jaw creak. This is better. This is so much better than a murder pack. So don’t ruin it, Vox!

I force a laugh that comes out thin and off key. My hand sweeps loosely through the air as if gesturing at the whole ridiculous place.

“Heard you had rooms… here. For…” The word catches. Snags. Dies in my throat. I stall. Sigh. My shoulders sag as my head dips forward and my arms fold around my own torso. For a heartbeat it looks like comfort. It twists into a tense angry grasp without my permission.

“Re-” I cannot even finish the lie.

The syllable rots on my tongue. Too ugly. Too exposed. I swallow hard. I feel myself shrink in on my frame as I bow forward a fraction more, arms lifting instinctively in a half shield as the anger flares again, licking up my spine like it wants to devour everything in reach.

That would be bad, Vox. Real bad.

The streets would eat you alive.

You cannot scream and claw at an employee, demanding a key. Not one that stands under his command.

I drag in a breath through clenched vents, grind my teeth until the sound vibrates in my skull, and force my head up.

“Redemption.”

The word scrapes its way out of me like broken glass, physically hurting me like watching that one Porno Val produced with the title ‘Glass up my ass? Yeah, why not?’

My hand extends before my pride can stop it, palm up in a rigid demand that barely passes for a request. “Give me a key.” Let me disappear quietly. Let me not exist in your lobby for one more second than necessary.

He does not hit me.

Nor laugh.

He only stands there, eyes heavy on my shaking hand, watching the effort it takes for me not to crush his skull or rip the room apart like I used to in my glory. A few hours as a god shaped monster some days ago.

The silence between us stretches thick and charged, realizing just how visible my restraint really is. God, this is underneath me, and still, I needed a stupid key.

The air changes before I even see him.

A pressure blooms beside Husk like a storm winding itself tight into a single point. The static hits my sensors first, thick and familiar and nauseatingly intimate. Every frequency in me prickles in protest as a shadow stretches long across the lobby floor.

I do not have to look. I felt him manifesting.

One moment empty space, the next a tall silhouette poured out of red and grin and old predatory amusement. One hand settles on Husk’s shoulder with laziness, a casual message.

My foot slips back on instinct.

The stupid robe tangles around my ankle and nearly sends me flat on my face. I stagger, arms pinwheeling once in a humiliating flail before I drop down fast under the excuse of retrieving it.

Anything to hide the way my body just betrayed me.

My fingers clutch the filthy thing and I yank it up around myself again, dragging the rank fabric tight over my chest, shoulders and everything beneath that.

Shielding wires.

Shielding empty space where flesh should be.

I am not just naked.

I am naked naked.

Exposed down to the rawness of myself.

Heat floods my screen in a mortifying rush, color bleeding bright and traitorous across the glass. The blush spreads fast, uncontrollable, a wildfire of disgrace that no amount of voltage can suppress. My hands shake as I clutch the robe closed like it might stitch me back into something respectable.

Husk just watches. Silent. Flat. Judging. And beside him?

That bastard. That absolute bastard was smiling.

Smugly. Delighted. Drinking in every fractured second of my humiliation with a patience I could barely hold onto.

I can feel his attention like cold fingers sliding along my signal.

Scratching, circling teasing me with his impeccable looks.

He is enjoying this. And he is the reason the angry flood of sinners is gone now. I might be reduced to this, but I still could count one plus one.

The anger detonates in me so fast it nearly blinds. For one perfect violent heartbeat I see it. Him beaten.

Bent deliciously.

Chained to that pretty chair I picked out for him. Grin finally wiped clean. His power caged beneath my hands as I- the thought burns hot enough that my display glitches at the edges.

Whatever expression that paints across my face only amuses him more.

Soft rippling chuckles slip from his throat, velveted in mockery and something far too pleased. The sound crawls over my casing and sinks in deep where my circuits are already raw and aching.

I clutch the cloak so tightly the fabric tears. The noise was forgotten long before it even arose.

And I hate him so damn much that it almost feels like I have to get up and lead sinners to war yet again, like a long-awaited sequel to the first season.

Too bad I was cancelled.

The word rips out of me jagged and compressed like I have to force it through clenched circuits.

“Key.”

I suppress the trembling and press on before my nerves can stop me. "And what role do you play in these childish hallucinations of this ‘silly-little-circus-Morningstar’? Ha!" The bitterness hits me sharply and ruthlessly, rounded off by a failed attempt to laugh it all off.

Before Alastor can even shape a reply, I hear a polite clearing of a throat right beside me.

I flick one hand out dismissively in the direction of the sound without even looking. Not now. Not you. Not anyone but this bastard in front of me.

His shoulders rise and fall with silent laughter.

How could he?!

The promise coils hot in my core. Just wait!

The dismissed sound resolidifies into a voice instead. Slightly strained. Still trying to be kind through it. “What do you want, Vox?”

I turn towards her with wide eyes like I got caught mid crime. A laugh bursts out of me too fast and too bright and completely wrong. My hands lifted to do the talking instead, waving useless explanations through the air as I stagger back a half step.

“Hello princess! I am just… you know?” Nothing. Everything at once, perhaps?

Charlie raises one eyebrow. Her hand moves in a small circular gesture that tells me to continue. To explain. To stop performing and start confessing.

I bite down so hard the pressure vents.

Static flares out around my face in tiny violent sparkles, cyan lightning snapping in short erratic arcs across the air between us. My fists curled somewhere along the way, and I only noticed it when my joints screamed in protest.

The snarl tears out of me raw and unfiltered. “You told me anyone-I could be redeemed.” The words shake with voltage. “You said that. Not me!”

My glare locks on her as the sparks snap brighter around my screen. “So where. Is. My. Key?” The pause between each word is deliberate.

At least talking to this naïve kid wasn’t as nerve wrecking as having to look at that ‘smug-ass-fucking-smiling-shit eating-red-thing’ over there, holding onto his pet like pfft?

I watch her chew on what I spit at her.

Good. Serves her right.

If anyone planted this whole nonsense in my head, it was her. Redemption. Yeah, sure. Complete bullcrap but the leverage dragged me straight into this fantasy ride I subconsciously ran into. I lean into the silence and study her mouth as it twists into that little pouting frown.

Oh, this is fun. Let’s see if little miss burning heart crosses her own beliefs and throws me out on my ass.

Instead she drags out a long heavy breath. “Aaalriiight… Vox.” She says my name like it weighs something unpleasant in her mouth.

Ouch. Charlie. Where are your gracious royal manners, huh? A quiet chuckle ticks through me at the thought. How pitiful she looks really. Chained to those glowing delusions like they are holy scripture. Pathetic. Just like her useless dad now that my favorite toy got smashed to dust. I tsk softly at that memory.

Charlie straightens. Shoulders back. Chin up. Trying to look big. Important.

Adorable…

what a bitch.

She starts talking. Rules. Boundaries. Redemption Bla bla. Who would have thought… even more redemption shit here and there. Oh look at that! Oh, no… still crap. And I still do not care. Some more this and structure that Participation. Bla growth some more- was there something important-no, just more bla blubb bli bloh blaaa sauce. All of it slides over me in a slurry of moral wallpaper.

I let the noise wash over me as background static while I wait for the only word that matters to show up. Key. If listening to this nonsense is the toll booth to a locked door and a few hours of silence, I will pay it.

Eventually.

A little too eventually for my taste. I exhale loud and annoyed, just about to tune her out entirely when one word finally hooks in. “-activities.” She tilts her head at me. “Do you understand that Vox?”

I nod once, sharp and theatrical, and raise one hand with a flourish I remember how to wear. My voice slips into a light sing song lilt that tastes like mockery. “Yes yes, little princess. Redemption. Rules and activities. Right?” A beat later. “So, key. Where is it?”

I tilt my head, one brow arching as my lips curve into the sweetest, most artificial smile I can summon. “Oh yes, and I’d like a balcony,” I purr, lashes fluttering with weaponized innocence. “Preferably overlooking a pond.” My fingers trace a lazy circle in the air as if I’m already curating the view. “Do you have one of those? Surely you do, don’t you since you own and control this absolute pinnacle of a functioning hotel…” My gaze slides off her, and I squint pointedly to the side, eyeing the radio demon still standing there. A tight laugh slips out. “And what about room service? A man just got to eat, right oh-OH Dear.” My jaw tightens for a heartbeat before I lean into the bit. “Is the ‘old timey wimey radio operator’ going to ‘serve me a salat’?” I tip my head toward him with a sugary side eye. “Like, is he a chambermaid here? Multitalented, I suppose.” I let out a slow breath through my nose, the kind that barely keeps the heat from spilling over. “I do hope he doesn’t mess up my order…” My smile flashes sharply. “I’m quite picky about what I put inside of me; you should know that.” The words carry just enough bite, all velvet wrapped threat and flirtation tangled together. “My room should also have a clear view of the water,” I add lightly, though my fingers curl at my side. “Not some washed up view the three-star class looks at, no no, I would like the full frontal. I like to watch sharks from my window. A habit… you could say.” A thin, almost feral spark flickers in my eyes before I smooth it away with a theatrical shrug. For a moment the irritation crackles under my skin, this place, this day, this everything, and I inhale, slow and steady, gathering the frayed edges of my nerves back into something presentable. The smile that follows is flawless, practiced, dangerous in its polish. “Oh, and before I forget,” I say breezily, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle from my borrowed disgustingly piece someone calls clothing, “I’d love some cozy spare clothes delivered to my room, ASAP!” I finish with a slow, deliberate wink, then smirk down at her adding one last line I just couldn’t hold back, “I’ve meant please?”, hands folding sweetly behind my back as I wait for a response, silk on the surface, a full-blown emotional riot underneath.

“Maybe dial down the ‘weaponized innocence’ until you’ve found some actual dignity.” It was delivered in a low, flat voice, thick with utter resignation.

Heat flared across my screen, humiliation hitting hard. I swallowed the crack in my composure, dressed it in obedience, pretty and quiet, until they finally gave me a damn key.

Chapter 3: 3

“Reception… you dumb fuck.” The words land clean. No heat. No pleasure in it as they leave the cat demon’s throat. I swallow hard and say nothing.

Rage and shame seesaw in my chest, the balance tipping back and forth so fast it makes me dizzy. I look around instead. The desk is not far, holding the angel girl behind it with her arms crossed, eyes narrowed into sharp little knives already aimed straight at my screen. Great.

I tug the rag tighter around myself and slink my way over like a guilty broken shadow, every step feeling louder than it should. I stop at the counter and keep my voice flat and stripped of anything that could be used against me. “I need a key.”

The sound of cracking bone answers from behind me.

Not sharp. Not explosive. Casual. Intimate. The kind of noise that tells me his head just turned far too smoothly and far too wrong to keep watching.

My shoulders stiffen, compressing everything inside me into a small quiet knot and keep my eyes forward. The rage claws. The shame burns. I do not give either of them air.

Vaggie slaps the key onto the desk with a motion that could qualify as a threat. Her mouth moves. I do not listen. Whatever rules or warnings or curses spill out of her do not reach me.

All I see is the number… 300. A crooked little smile ghosts across my screen before I can stop it. Three hundred. Great white sharks have around three hundred teeth. The thought hums through me with a faint private amusement.

Somewhere to my side a voice pipes up too cheerful for the tension in the room.

“Cool fun fact. So you new to the team, yeah.” I glance at the rooster like demon, lift one eyebrow in a slow unimpressed arc, and give him exactly nothing else. I must have said that out loud, whatever. But I gave no answer, no snide remark. Not now.

I turn on my heel, clutch the key tight in my fist, and make for the stairs without another word.

All I want now is a locked door. Silence so thick I can drown the rest of this place, this awful day out.

The door clicks shut behind me and the lock slides home with a sound that feels like a benediction.

“At last.” The room barely registers. Walls. A dresser. A lamp that flickers like it is on its last nerve. All my slightly buzzing vision cares about is the bed sitting there like a promise of quiet. Of nothing. Of no eyes on me.

I cross the room in a half daze and drop onto it without ceremony.

The mattress takes me and for one fragile second it feels like levitating. Weightless. Like the first cheap lie of a spa hotel that pretends it will fix you if you just lie still long enough. I wriggle out of the filthy rug with my foot and drag the blanket up over the exposed wires of my chest.

Hide. Rest. Sleep.

The edge of dreaming brushes me. Thou it does not stay gentle. The softness collapses into the memory of the last time I was thrown into a bed.

Val’s voice bleeds into the dark behind my eyes. That lazy drawl. He said he needed apologies before he would listen. That I had to be nice first. It twisted fast into heat and hands and breath crushed far too close.

No.

My body jerks under the blanket. The sheets snare around my legs as I toss, trying to rip the images back out before they root. But the taste comes with it. That lingering taste that spreads through my memory like a virus I cannot purge.

Normally I would be on the receiving side… like I would give just anybody head.

And that stupid moth. Too tall for his own good. Narrow eyes. He leaned in and I could not stop it and he just took my head and—I gag violently.

My torso snaps upright with a forceful hitch, and I clutch the pillow tight to my bare chest like it might anchor me back in the present. My display flares too bright, stuttering with afterimages. I scan the floor in frantic sweeps looking for anything to latch onto that is not his voice.

Too late. His moaning laughter floods my channels all over again, distorted and obscene, tearing through my processing like a seizure.

“Ha oh m-my Voxxy~! It's fuuuck... so sexy to watch my-ugh just dissah-ah-pear in a AH—"

Enough!

I crash my own system.

An emergency blackout slams through me like a guillotine. Everything cuts to endless black. No sound. No light. No memory. Just the soft lie of a loading screen humming somewhere in the void.

When awareness drags itself back online, I am not where I meant to be.

Half of me still lies tangled on the bed. The other half slipped off and collapsed to the floor in an awkward sprawl, limbs crooked wrong from where the shutdown stole my balance. My head lolls at a humiliating angle as the room swims back into shape.

Not the best start. The thought mutters weak and stubborn as I gather myself inch by inch and crawl away from it. The blanket trails uselessly behind me. My fingers scrape across the carpet as if it might pull me farther from the memory by sheer friction.

The bed is not an option right now.

So, I wedge myself against the wall instead, hugging the pillow to my chest like armor, eyes fixed anywhere but that mattress as the room finally goes quiet enough for me to hear my own unsteady static again.

This is ridiculous! The thought snaps sharp and loud inside my skull. I have had plenty of sexual encounters with Val. Too many. More than enough to drown in if I ever felt like tallying the damage. So why does that tiny one ugh why does that specific moment dig under my casing and rot there like a fault I cannot cauterize??!

I slam both hands against the sides of my head. The impact rattles my screen. Wires hiss in sharp offended little bursts of discomfort. Static flares and spits as my fingers scrape down the glass. I let my hands slide slowly. Weakly. Until they fall into my lap and hang there without purpose.

Limp.

“Here I am. Sitting broken in a dim room somewhere in a hotel in Hell.” A hotel made for redemption. On the floor. Hugging a pillow like a safety device. “This is the pinnacle of my entire life and afterlife. I finally made it.” dripping with bitter laughter and something darker underneath it. “This feels too good to be true. The kind of calm that comes right before something finishes you off.” So, my mind does what it always does when it runs out of hope.

It looks for a shortcut.

A bathtub would be enough… the idea floats up with a hollow little chuckle attached to it.

To drown myself in there. Yes Vox. Stellar plan. Pure genius. Gold star for effort.

But the word bathtub hooks into something else. Chemistry. If I could find the right elements. Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Calcium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Sulfur. The list ticks off in my head with clinical precision. Maybe Sodium, Chlorine, and some Magnesium? I could speed this healing up. Grow flesh over wire faster than hell ever intended. Rewrite the weakness right out of my frame…

My gaze drifts to the bathroom door without me telling it to. My body does not move yet. Only my vision does. My mind lines up and steps ahead of me with ruthless logic. Gather. Mix. Catalyze. Accelerate. Fix.

The urge presses from the inside and it hurts in a way I cannot physically feel but still recognize as pain. An itch behind my circuits. A pressure behind my thoughts. Move. Act! Do something. Get back to perfect!

Get back to powerful. The pressure spikes.

I rip the pillow apart with a hoarse cry that fractures into an angry scream halfway through. Stuffing bursts out in ugly white clumps as my fingers tear through it like I am trying to claw my way out of my own chest. My legs slam against the floor again and again in wild petulant strikes like a child denied candy. The sound thuds around the room in uneven violent rhythm.

“Like they have Sodium! Chlorine maybe, but ugh!! Fuck this shit, fuck this fucking fuck shit FUCK!!!!1!”

The words tumble out of me with each slam as if naming them will drag them into existence. My screen flares bright with erratic light. My chest whirrs in rage, grief and hunger for control. It all snarls together until I cannot tell which one is driving my limbs anymore.

I am not healing. I am unraveling. On the floor of a redemption hotel. Still clutching the torn remains of a pillow like it is the only thing that would bring me comfort.

I do not know and I do not care how long that childish storm had my whole system in a chokehold.

But it is over now, at least I hope it is.

I am still more or less where I collapsed. Twisted wrong. An uncomfortable heap of wires and ripped synthetic fluff scattered around me like snowfall in the dark. My head droops forward, too heavy for my neck joints to argue with anymore. Every movement feels like it would cost a currency I no longer have.

My eyes drift, finding the bathroom door again. A sigh crawls out of me without much strength behind it. More habit than intention. I brace one hand against the floor and try to stand. Try being the operative word. My joints respond with a dull protest and then simply… do not.

I could, I know I could. It is just too much work.

Even the thought of going in there feels unbearable now. The image lines itself up in my head anyway. Turning the tap. Watching the water crawl up the porcelain inch by inch. Steam ghosting up into the air. Lowering myself in.

Not to drown this time, just to soak. The idea alone is enough to make my eyes flutter unevenly, lids stuttering like weak shutters. The promise of warm water presses against me like a lullaby I am too exhausted to follow.

“How can I feel so empty and too much at the same time?” The question leaks out quietly.

I look down at the ruined pillow in my arms, at its exposed insides spilling out in soft white tangles, and hold it up a little as if it might answer me. As if the mess of stuffing understands anything about the hollowness gnawing through my core.

It does not speak. Neither do I. We just sit there together in this hell, surrounded by wreckage neither of us asked for.

I hook one finger into a loose strand of fluff and roll it slowly between the pads of my fingers. Back and forth. Back and forth. I watch it like it might perform some miracle if I stare hard enough. It throws silence into my face instead.

The first time I ever felt like this slips up on me without permission.

Back when I was still alive…

A lump forms in my throat so fast it almost startles me. I swallow once. Twice. The feeling does not go anywhere. My eyes slide shut and my brows knit together as the present thins and something older bleeds through.

 

Smoke.

Thick enough to taste.

A bar tucked into a narrow Burlington street sometime in the forties, all amber lights and crooked smiles. The kind of place where the air never quite clears and no one asks the wrong questions if you tip well. I am there again. Human. Twenty something. Too sharp for my own good and vibrating with nerves I pretend not to have.

Vincent.

My shoulders sit too stiff on the barstool as I cradle a glass of whiskey I barely need. The burn grounds me. The room hums with low laughter and clinking glasses and a lazy piano in the corner that cannot decide if it wants to be cheerful or mournful.

Tonight matters.

There is a dame waiting.

A fine one… or if I am lucky even two? Three?!

Pretty in that dangerous way that always makes my pulse jump even when I play it cool. I want her/them in my chambers tonight. Want the proof of it. The celebration of it! The punctuation mark to cap off the quiet triumph buzzing in my chest.

“Weatherman.” The word still feels unreal on my tongue.

Promoted, two applicants short.

The memory curls at the edge of my smile. A soft snicker slips into my drink as I tip it back. Funny how easy it is to make problems ‘disappear’ when you stop pretending you have rules. The job. The bodies. The way it all folded so neatly into place. The thrill lingers warm and illicit behind my ribs.

My hand trembles a little as I set the glass down.

It is not guilt. Not even close. It is the aftershock.

I never killed before that, did not make me feel bad. Not in the slightest. The feeling just needs to settle. Sink in. Become part of the background hum of who I am now. The way the smoke does. The way the piano does. The way ambition does.

Confidence swells anyway. Liquid courage and fresh blood on my hands loosen my shoulders at last. I straighten my tie in the mirror behind the bar and barely recognize the man looking back at me.

Hungry.

Alive.

So damn sexy with my heterochromia eyes. One of a kind! And so certain the world is finally turning the right direction. Towards me, and only me.

 

In the present, my finger still rolls that bit of fluff. Back and forth. Back and forth. The lump in my throat never left.

 

The bar shifts around me without warning. The smoke thins. The crowd softens into a quieter hum. The light loses its amber bite and turns low and intimate. Somewhere in the shuffle of bodies and glances I find a dame. Perfume heavy. Smile practiced. My first time edges closer and closer with every nervous sip and crooked word traded between us.

Twenty-six minutes. That is how long it lasts.

Not the act... but the absolute failure.

Soft skin under my hands feels unreal in the dark. My breath stutters with anticipation so sharp it almost hurts. The thought of seeing a woman unclothed for the first time makes heat crawl up my neck and into my ears. I want it. I think I want it.

My body does not agree.

The whispers come fast and merciless when nothing happens. Limptail. Loser. Each word needles where my confidence was supposed to live. I laugh it off like a gentleman. Like a professional. Inside something cracks and leaks cold.

 

Back then I thought that was what desire felt like.

I was wrong. So wrong…

 

Later that same night I wander into another bar without meaning to. My feet carry me like I am not fully present in my own skin anymore. The place is smaller. Quieter. Brown wood and low lamps and eyes that watch without the usual hunger.

Then I see him.

Innocent looking brown eyes meet mine across the dim. Curly brows. Short hair. A smile that does not try to sell me anything at first. He sits closer than he should. Close enough that I can smell soap under cigarette smoke.

He tells me he can help me feel better. And he does… not with touch, but with the promise of it.

Breadcrumbs of what he would do for the right price tumble into my ear and something in me wakes so violently it makes me shudder. The erection forms unbidden this time and with it comes a rush so pure and terrifying I almost choke on it.

Real desire.

The realization detonates straight into panic.

My body betrays me twice in one night and this time the fear is louder than the want. My pulse spikes. My breath goes ragged. The room tilts. I bolt from the stool like the floor just caught fire.

I run. Run all the way home.

I cry until my throat burns, pull at my hair until my fingers ache.

I am gay.

The word hits like a verdict.

GAY

A respected weatherman. A rising star. A man with a future so bright it could blind half the county. If even a hint of this leaks out I am finished. Dead in everything but flesh. All that work. All that blood. For nothing!

So, I bury it.

Dates with pretty women. Smiles. Dinners. Kisses that never go any further. I build a life on denial like it might hold if I stack it neat enough.

And then I die.

A television falls on my head. Electricity eats through me and my followers alike. A laughable end, really. No one knows that I die a virgin.

No one but me knows I spent a lifetime yearning for the touch of a man I never dared to try. That one man in that bar with the brown eyes and wavy hair who put a spell on my soul for the rest of forever.

A prostitute.

Millenniums ago.

 

In the present, my finger is still toying with the pillow offal. Back and forth. Back and forth. And the ache that followed me into Hell settles deeper into my core when I saw him.

Instead of brown I saw red. The color of hatred, anger, aggression but also heat, passion and love. After years I finally bullied myself into opening up a little… asking for a partnership to rule hell… "And just look where it's led me."

Chapter 4: 4

Notes:

Some 'vomiting' mentioned , if your sensible to that :o

N I try myself at humor, I guess...

Somewhere between one breath and the next I find the strength to move.

It is very elegant, how I crawl at first. Wires sliding over carpet. Metal bumping in dull awkward rhythms. The distance to the bathroom feels absurdly long for the size of the room. At some point my limbs remember their purpose and I haul myself upright in a shaky rise that leaves my balance wavering like a bad signal.

How I get inside barely registers. The only thing that breaks through is the sound of water.

I turn the tap and stand there watching the tub slowly fill. The surface ripples with quiet patience. Soft curls of warm steam drift up and coil lazily around my screen and shoulders. My thoughts thin out until there is just water and the comfortable heat.

For once I do not think, do not feel. I can’t, even if I wanted to and it somehow felt good.

Maybe the elements in this water will help. Oxygen. Hydrogen. Traces of minerals clinging to the pipes and porcelain. Maybe it will speed things up even if that is just another lie I tell myself to justify lying here instead of falling apart again.

I will need food eventually. The thought drifts in distant, practical. I feel numb and detached but I know I cannot afford to grow weaker than I already am… fuel turns into function. Function turns into survival.

For food one needs a stomach. Without it? There is nothing to break it down. That leads to even more nothing to be reshaped into power for my system to work with.

So, the first step is this, lowering myself into the tub with a careful awkward descent until warm water laps up around the edges of my wiring. The heat sinks in immediately. It is not pleasure exactly. More like a quiet loosening. A permission to stop clenching for a moment.

I let my head rest back against the porcelain. Turning on Standby as I lie there in the rising steam and shallow ripples and wait…

The knocking rips me out of the haze.

Angry. Sharp. Always three strikes in a row. A pause. Three more. The sound hammers through porcelain and water and fog and straight into my core. I must have imagined the thin manic laughter stitched between the bursts. My system is too tired to tell the difference anymore. I try to sink back, back into the void where I do not breathe, feel or think.

It almost takes me, as A male voice threads into the dark instead. Soft static dusting every syllable.

It pulls at me gently at first, like fingers through the edge of sleep, tucking me into a bed made of the sweetest red rose petals while the thorns bite at my fingertips, lips… chest and heart. They weave into my wiring as they grow around it, suffocating, draining, making me bleed in ways water cannot wash away.

His voice speaks through the door. “My my, dear Niffty, it appears our illustrious little broadcast god is too busy soaking in his own pity to remember the most elementary manners. Truly tragic when a creature built entirely on spectacle cannot even manage the courtesy of answering a door like a well trained appliance.”

The insult sinks in, personal and precise. But his tone, it was so soft… so-

The little gremlin giggles with open delight. She says she likes that.

Something dull and distant follows. Heavy thumps muffled by walls and water and my own fraying awareness. I drift back before I can make sense of it. Too tired. Too drained. My limbs will not obey even the idea of movement.

I lay there in the bed I made inside my head. In that thin imaginary world; I am on my knees in front of him. Begging him to talk to me in that soft careful, even caring voice he used for his owned soul just now, while I offer up my very soul like a gift. He looks down at me with those red eyes that devour me every time I dare to lose myself in them.

Those hands reach out… not to shake mine. No.  But to frame my face while his lips move in words that gut me clean.

“Old pal, who would ever need something as broken and useless as that?”

He would totally say something like that, I just know it. A single tear slips free and disappears into the water around me.

It has gone ice cold, and the room sinks back into quiet once again.

 

-UBB BEEP BEEP… BUBB BEEP BEEP-It cuts through the dark. Slow. Mechanical. Clinical. Like a system dragging itself back online.

The sound worms into whatever sleep I had left and peels it open from the inside. My body jerks in the tub with a sharp involuntary shudder. The water feels wrong now. Heavy. Stale. It sets my skin crawling with an itchy discomfort that makes me twitch all over.

I move too fast, too clumsy as I scramble out of the tub in a mess of limbs and slick porcelain. The crash into the toilet seat with my side was hart and painful. The impact knocks the air clean out of me. I slide down the curve of it and land flat on my ass with a shocked hitch of breath. I sit there frozen. Breathing shallow and feel.

Skin.

Real flesh. Warm and sensitive. Whole again.

My gaze drops in disbelief. Naked glory in all its humiliating fullness planted on a cold tiled bathroom floor beside a toilet like some obscene offering. I tsk loudly at the sight and push myself up on shaking legs.

“How long was I out?”  I mumble hoarse. And why does nothing ever work for me? Never clean, complete. Something always malfunctions! Something always lags…

I barely get my thoughts in line before hunger rips through me. Not a polite hollow ache.

More like a violent wrench from the inside that twists my guts into knots so tight I double over with a sound that is half growl and half gag. Nausea detonates straight up my spine. My head splits with pressure, and I drop to my knees in front of the toilet on instinct.

My fingers fumble with the lid as vomit surges up.

Nothing comes out.

Only harsh dry contractions tear through my empty stomach, each one sending sharp pain signals through every nerve. My body heaves repeatedly, desperate for the release that never arrives.

Tears spill from my eyes unchecked, burning as they streak down my face. My nose runs, vision blurs harshly. All I can do is cling to the porcelain like it is the only solid thing left in my afterlife.

Eventually the worst of it loosens its grip.

The retching fades to weak tremors. My throat feels flayed as my chest aches. I sag forward with my screen resting against the cool curve of the toilet and just breathe for a few stunned seconds.

When I feel like I can move again, I pull myself upright and find a towel draped nearby. I dry off in slow distracted motions, hands unsteady, skin over sensitive to every pass of fabric. My legs still tremble as I make my way back into the main room using walls and furniture for balance.

The dresser opens with a hollow scrape. Empty. “Of course it is.” Scoffing while I stare at it for a moment in mute disbelief. No clothes. No mercy. My wish for cozy recovery gear apparently got ignored. A grimace twists across my face as my eyes drift down.

There… by the bed. That awful rag. Still smelling awful, still the only thing to keep my modesty intact.

I sigh and immediately regret it.

The motion pulls something loose and my stomach revolts all over again. A sharp wave of nausea claws up my throat so fast I barely catch it. One hand flies to my mouth, the other clamps over my aching gut as I drop hard to my knees. The impact sends a dull jolt through my bones. My balance fails and my hand slips from my stomach to the floor just in time to keep me from tipping forward again.

I breathe like I ran miles. Heavy. Ragged and wet. I sniff and swallow with my eyes screwed shut, forcing the feeling back down purely through stubborn refusal. It lingers, then wavers. But finally thins out enough that I can sit there without gagging.

When I open my eyes again, the room swims slowly into focus. My gaze drifts, finds the thing on the floor…

I stare at it for a long second and then crawl toward it on unsteady limbs, trying not to think too much. That dirty thing looks hazardous, the way it's staring at me... like it wants to give me a nasty STD. I grab the fabric and wrestle it onto my body in awkward determined tugs. The most private parts end up secured tightly at least. The rest hangs from me like some strange, warped tunica from a sad little stage play.

I catch my reflection in the mirror on the way to the door. Unflattering. Daylight does me no favors right now. Bigger-brighter, huh? Bullseye... and I swear, if anything starts to itch, I'm going to burn this damn hotel down.

I turn away as fast as I can and open the hotel room door before I can think better of it.

Food. Food and something to drink. After that some real clothes. Then a quick nap or just some coffee and… don’t know? Whatever one does to ‘redeem’ oneself, I guess? This thinking twists into a dry mocking laugh as it scrapes out of me as I take a few careful steps into the hallway with trembling hands and steadier legs than I expected. Each movement feels wrong, weighted. Real in a way I am not quite used to yet.

I feel my age for the first time in forever, not the demon years. The human ones that never really left.

Around a hundred and fifty-one - when I am counting my time in Hell in, I guess. And the thought makes me shake my head with faint warped amusement. I died at the fine age of sixty-seven. Close to sixty-eight, if I dare to be precise in my mental calendar.

Slow and painfully, only being able to move that much because I was stubborn, I make it down the hall and to the kitchen door. Every step feels like negotiating with gravity itself, but I win by inches.

Strangely there is no one. No chatter, no clatter of dishes or sinners that would irritate me. The hallway and lounge sit in eerie stillness like the hotel decided to play dead for a few hours.

“A ghost hotel.” I pfft a quiet laugh at that and push the kitchen door open. “Well ain’t this a peach? A whole kitchen just for little old me.” Somewhere a laugh track from the forties rang through the room.

Coffee first. Priorities, bitch 💅 who needs sustains when one can function on those sweet beans instead?

I rummage through cabinets with the delicate grace of a burglar with arthritis. Mugs clink. One nearly slips through my fingers, and I yelp as I catch it against my chest.

Easy there, tiger. We ain’t Stanley from accounting trying to hold a hotdog at a baseball game. I finally found a coffeemaker that looks like it survived three wars and a divorce. Grounds take a minute to locate. When I do, the bag explodes a little too enthusiastically in my hands. “Oopsie whoopsie.” Water sloshes everywhere as I overfill the reservoir. Some of it misses entirely and spills onto the counter.

“Sensational. Gordon Ramsay would punt me through a window.” I fumble my way through brewing it anyway and hit the switch with a flourish.

Now for the sandwich… how hard can that be? The fridge opens with a long-tired sigh like it knows it is about to be disappointed in me. Inside I find bread. Questionable meat. A jar of something that used to be pickles. I take it all out and line it up like ingredients in a crime scene.

“Let’s cook like it’s 1946 but with the coordination of a confused raccoon.” I grab two slices of bread. One immediately sticks to my palm. I shake my hand, and it slaps onto the counter upside down.

I choose to ignore that.

Afterwards I attempt to spread something resembling butter. The knife slips and half of it ends up on the counter instead of the bread. This sandwich is already a union problem.

The meat goes on crooked. The pickles slide off and plink sadly into the sink. I stare at them. “You had one job…” I slap the top slice of bread on at an angle that would make geometry cry and lift the whole disaster in both hands. “It is technically a sandwich.” By Hell’s loosest definition.

The coffee finishes brewing with a triumphant little gurgle. I pour a mug with shaking hands and immediately slosh some over the rim. “Outstanding. Ten out of ten. Would hire me again.” I carry my loot to the nearest chair and sit like I just won a campaign. The sandwich looks like it might disintegrate if I glare at it too hard.

I take the smallest bite imaginable.

Slow. Careful. Like I am trying to defuse a bomb with my teeth.

My stomach tenses. Waits. Nothing happens. “Good.“ Another bite. Slightly larger but still careful. The flavor is wrong, somewhat too salty n sour. Lukewarm in places it should not be, why is it warm to begin with?

I chew like a man who respects his organs. Between bites I sip the coffee and wince.

Too strong. „Just like I like it.” Hitting me with a big ‘awake yet?’ sign.

I chuckle weakly around a mouthful of disaster sandwich. Look at you, Vox. From broadcast king to God, then straight to prehistoric Scooby Doo building lunch like zoinks, Scoob, we messed up the bread geometry. The food goes down inch by inch. Slowly, methodically. No heroics, no truck sized waves of nausea. Just survival.

I finish the last careful bite and lean back in the chair, exhaling through my nose as I stare down at the battlefield of crumbs scattered across the table.

A few of them sit there boldly, just waiting. I raise both hands into the air with sudden theatrical gravity, posture snapping straight as if a red light just blinked on somewhere above me.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are live! An existential crisis unfolds before our very eyes.” I gasp in air, “will they live? Be discarded and imprisoned by the dark bin?! Or will they suffer a greater end, absorbed by the unforgiving maw of a sponge… what will this mean for their family, their legacy? Will they ever see each other again, or is this their last goodbye… or merely the beginning of a far greater adventure?” I pause. Silence. I catch my own reflection warped in the faint glare of the fridge door. Staring. Madly.

At breadcrumbs.

A noise tumbles out of me that is half chuckle, half laugh, half something that does not quite qualify as language. I stutter through it as I push myself up from the chair and drift closer to the fridge for a better look at myself.

The tunica like disaster actually does something for me. Roman tyrant chic. I tilt my head. This toga nonsense kind of works. Then the memory of what it actually is hits.

My mouth twists into an immediate frown. I shake my head once hard as if I can rattle dignity back into place and turn toward the kitchen door.

I step over my little mess without really seeing it. Only pause for the barest fraction of a second. Should I clean? The question hangs there awkwardly in my mind like a forgotten stage cue with no follow up.

I cross my arms behind my back and take one slow circle around the kitchen, inspecting the aftermath like a general reviewing a battlefield he absolutely did not plan for.

Coffee stains splatter the counter in abstract misery. Questionable food sits abandoned like evidence in an open case. There are streaks on the surface that look like sloppy seconds gone catastrophically wrong. Something is even dripping from the ceiling.

That was not me… probably. I squint at it once, decide that is a problem for a universe with stronger morals than mine, and mutter that they have maids for this kind of suffering. A shrug seals that decision into law and I turn for the door.

One step, two was all it took for me to crash straight into a fluffy warm mess and immediately lose the argument with gravity.

Making my feet shoot out from under me, and I land flat on my ass with a startled grunt, the aftertaste of coffee and ego still sharp on my tongue.

Looking up was a big mistake. Husk towers over me with a face carved straight from pure irritation. His golden cat eyes sweep over my sprawled form like I am some kind of vermin that learned how to wear fabric by accident. His gaze slides past me next and locks onto the kitchen behind.

The mess. The crime scene.

My throat clicks and I gulp. I try to open my mouth to lie, but nothing comes out.

Before I can even fabricate a single coherent excuse in my head, something rockets into the kitchen so fast I nearly spin in place on my ass from the air displacement alone. Manic laughter tears through the room, sharp and ringing and far too delighted for a place like this. Must be this Niffty, the Adam Slayer.

But all my eyes could see was Husk crossing his arms slowly. Deliberately. His posture radiates a very specific kind of promise involving industrial equipment and my continued existence… as grind meat left to rot inside a forgotten can.

My periphery catches Niffty cleaning at a speed that borders on violent. Rags fly. Bubbles explode. She hums off key while erasing my mess with terrifying enthusiasm.

Halfway through her massacre she zeroes in on me. Her single eye locks as she climbs… directly onto me.

Tiny hands latch around my shoulders in what can only be described as a death hold. Her face hovers inches from my screen as she stares like she is trying to crawl into my soul and rearrange the furniture.

I freeze, she giggles. I never was this afraid in my whole life.

“Hehehe, you’re that very veeery bad boy that wanted to blow up Hell!” More giggles. Higher, faster as she leans even closer.

My eyes widen in pure horror as she continues in a rapid delighted hiss, remembering what she did to Val in that Club, fearing she would rip out an Antenna. Or stab me… that made me freeze in fear.

“I saw you hehehe. And him too hahaha. He always told me no no no but I sneaked out hehehahaha! I watched you two…” She leans back with a dreamy little sigh and stares off into empty space, that faraway look screaming that reality lost custody of her years ago. She twirls in place, springs off my chest, lands on the floor with a bounce and throws both hands into the air like she is announcing a convention panel.

“Toxic romance war arc!” She sing songs it with her whole body. “Enemies to lovers. Rivals! Tension, oh sooo much tension! You fight fight fight but it’s just unresolved feelings nyahahahahar!! You glare at each other like baka lovers, just kiss already! Kiss. Kiss. Kiss!” She spins again, completely gone, far away.

“Your fights are like totally foreplay. The way you look at each other? Is so kimochi spicy. It is giving slow burn toxic yaoi vibe. Tragic doomed yaoi and I ship it. I ship it so haaard man!” She claps violently and I shriek into myself, just what is she talking about?

“Kissu shinasai already…!” she whines and acts like the world is ending, while at the same time enjoying that it ends…?  I sit there frozen on the floor with her echoing voice bouncing around my skull, Husk silently vibrating with homicidal intent above me, and the kitchen continuing to drip like it is also judging me.

Just… what the hell is even happening?

Chapter 5: 5

The moment Niffty’s mouth stopped to breath, my whole system spasms. Absolutely not. Whatever this is, whatever she said. No. Just… no. She managed to crawl back on me somewhere in-between her little madness dance about something called ‘mayoi’ or some shit.

I shove her off me, not violently… I am not suicidal, but with enough force that she skids backward across the tiles like a fever-powered wind-up toy. She lands on her feet anyway, giggling as though I’d just proposed marriage.

I rise. Gracefully. Theatrically! Trying to mask the absolute chaos inside of me.

Like I hadn’t just been sitting on my ass in a kitchen catastrophe that absolutely does have my fingerprints on it. I ignore the dull murderous hum radiating off Husk. Ignore the irritation rolling off him like smoke. Ignore how my knees wobble.

Mask, Vox! Mask and pull yourself together!

My eyes flick once over the ‘battlefield’ I created. The incriminating smear of coffee, looking like bodily fluids from the world’s worst dating scandal. The pickle juice dripping ominously from the ceiling. Which I wonder myself how that even got up there… making my skin crawl.

Chaos triggers something primal in me, something that knows how easily disorder becomes a crack. A crack becomes a split.

No. Not again! I force myself upright, straighten the rag-tunica like it’s couture, and exhale sharply through my nose. To Niffty I grant nothing but an aloof snort. “Just because my fights are more cinematic than your entire existence does not make them romantic, darling. Go ship someone else’s trauma.” She squeals like I handed her fan merch. Awful.

Husk steps forward, tail twitching like a fuse burning low. “I want you out on the streets, eating crap like you deserve, after what you pulled with—" He stops only because Charlie walks in behind him. Perfect timing.

This pitiful excuse that I am displaying needs to end! I need a loophole, leverage, some story to secure my safety. And she is going to be the key.

Her eyes go wide as she takes in the carnage I apparently summoned into existence. Niffty scrubbing frantically like she is reenacting a war yet again. Husk vibrating with rage. Me radiating noble annoyance thinly while shaking in my boots.

Charlie opens her mouth, but I do not let her speak. I need to twist this, need to-I lift a hand with smooth, practiced authority. The kind meant to hush dissent long before the dissent knows it’s been shut up.

“Enough.” I sweep the room with a disdainful look, like I am judging a failing empire. “This establishment is operating at a catastrophic deficit of organization.”

Husk sputters. Niffty gasps in glee, whatever is wrong with her? Charlie blinks like she didn’t hear me right. So, I simply elaborate. “Silence and rest are logistically impossible at present. Redemption—and such, whatever you insist on calling this delusion—is clearly compromised by lack of basic structure.”

“Vox—" Charlie tried, but I just won’t let her, I needed to twist this, need to think how to use this. “No. I am speaking now, dear princess.” I gesture broadly at the culinary apocalypse I caused five minutes ago. “Evidence, if you will. This is a mess. This chaos. This… dripping. It demonstrates a glaring, humiliating absence of oversight.”

Niffty beams like I complimented her. Husk looks ready to choke me with a dish towel. I gesture to myself proudly, like I could be her savior. “And while I have been unreasonably patient regarding the absence of room service—" Charlie’s brows knit and I raise my voice over her little non-verbal act of defiance “—and despite my explicit request for clothing, I have been provided nothing but this… toga of suffering…” I grip the fabric with dramatic scorn.

“…and therefore, for the sake of my mental stability, the safety of the residents, and the continued existence of this hotel—" I march toward the kitchen exit with as much dignity as I can muster. “—I will be assessing the operational failures of this establishment myself. Effective immediately!”

Husk snarls behind me. I don’t even look back; he does not deserve my attention right now. I got bigger fish to fry, little cat.

Charlie hurries after me. Flustered probably, surely glad that I, Vox, offered her my help! Ha! “Vox—wait, what do you think you’re doing—" I turned just enough to flash her the faintest smile. That was everything I could manage right now. I was able to twist it, but that did not mean that she bought it. “Demanding fresh clothes and a functioning system. And if Hell wants me redeemed? Fine with me…  but I will redeem the hotel first.”

I walk through the halls with steady steps; my mind sheds every trace of panic and shame. I peel them away one by one until only clean circuitry remains. V Tech logic slides into place with the ease of old muscle memory. No more trembling. No more spiraling. Just analysis.

The ‘Happy’ Hazbin Hotel unfolds before me as a failing start up dressed as a sanctuary. A patchwork dream stitched together by hope rather than planning. Every corner screams amateur hour. The common areas lack flow, the lobby wastes space, the décor fails to decide whether it wants to be cheerful, Family portraits, or a thrift store accident. There are no clear systems for anything. No layout optimized for traffic. No strategy for growth. A brand without direction. A reputation without harness.

This place will starve without my help.

My steps slow as that truth land deeper than expected. This place has no audience. It has a cause, yes, but causes do not build empires. Aesthetic does. Order does. A message repeated and broadcast until it carves itself into the world!

I compare it all to the district I once ruled. My channels ran clean. My tower ran smoother. Everything in V Tech bowed to structure. To precision. To me. Even the static of Hell moved when I commanded it.

And now this… this circus. This soft handed Morningstar fantasy. This silly little attempt to clean up damnation one sinner at a time without a single scalable system in place. The thought grates across my mind until sparks scratch at my nerves.

I breathe it out and rewire the irritation into something useful.

Solutions. That’s what I need to claw my way inside of that little royal kid.

Streamline logistics. Implement hierarchy. Brand consistency. External broadcasts. Reputation management. Structural efficiency. Use the hotel’s notoriety to turn it into something profitable? Something powerful, something that could be mine once again… not as an overlord facing a city but as a strategist building a dynasty. Yes… now that’s a plan, Vox! Brilliant, just like always, I know, I know. I am… I am like totally awesome.

“Disorder is rejection. Chaos is threat. I will not unravel here… more.”

Every step tightens my certainty. If I play my hand right, this hotel becomes my foothold. My scaffolding. My rise. My new tower. My power restored through careful design and the gullibility of a Morningstar who thinks compassion can run a business.

After my little lost puppy walk around the Hotel for around an hour or so. I round a corner and find Charlie juggling an armful of papers while a toaster fire erupts behind her. Some sinner yelps, another runs for water, and yet another throws a pillow at the flames. She flaps her hands helplessly, unable to decide what to handle first.

Perfect.

She looks up, a little startled, when I step into view. I request a meeting with her. No room for refusal. No desperation. A simple necessity spoken with gentle authority. Her eyes narrow with distrust, a small glimmer of sense lighting behind her worry.

She asks if I am actually trying to redeem myself. Her tone is cautious, hopeful, and painfully naive.

I do not let the word redemption touch my mouth. Shifting the conversation. I make myself relevant instead. She hesitates, the first intelligent thing I saw her doing.

Her shoulders drop and she finally agrees to the meeting, still clutching her stack of chaotic papers as the toaster fire smolders behind her.

Her acceptance sparks a quiet current through me.

Control. That is what she will grant me with that itty bitty meeting.

I move through the lounge with an air of calm certainty, every step measured, every angle of my posture sharpened to corporate perfection. Charlie waits near the front desk, clutching a stack of folders she pretends she understands, while Vaggie stands beside her with eyes narrowed into sharp little knives, every bit of her body screaming that she wants me removed by force or by death, whichever is faster.

I ignore the hostility with a gracious smile that never reaches my circuitry.

I offer a polite greeting that disguises its condescension well enough to sound sincere. Charlie straightens, hopeful and hesitant in the same breath, the weight of her impossible dream clinging to her like a too-heavy crown. She desperately needs help, and she can’t even see it. Though I can feel that she already hates it.

I begin my pitch. No trembling, shame or disorder. Just language crafted for boardrooms and empires. What I am used to, what my whole self is made of. Destined to make it to the top! Not caring how many attempts it takes. Not caring how much it takes… not caring how much it hurts. If I come out at the top? I will take everything.

“Your current operation lacks structure that participation requires. No clear internal systems. No logistical flow. Your messaging cannot scale. Your branding is inconsistent. The entire vision collapses without strategic oversight.”

Charlie’s shoulders stiffen at each observation, her optimism shivering under pressure. Vaggie’s lips curl, ready to bite.

“You need someone with experience in media handling, public influence, crowd management, brand stability. Someone who understands the way Hell listens. Someone who can give this hotel the clear view it deserves.”

Charlie inhales, eyes flickering between curiosity and caution. Vaggie takes a step forward, voice sharp enough to carve stone without a blade. “Coming from you? Makes it sound laughable-“

“You are not managing anything here. You harmed people, Charlie. You threatened Angel’s life only to prove to me that redemption is possible. You are lucky you are still breathing without the shitstorm you so clearly deserve for those stunts.”

Vaggie’s anger sparks hot, righteous, stiff with protective instinct. She stands in front of Charlie like a shield, a blade, and a challenge. I maintain my smile while giggling softly inside, this is too easy. Using her naivety and hopeless little attempts at media. Ah, it was so refreshing how she crawled back repeatedly only to humiliate herself over and over. What a time to be in Hell.

“I am not here to discuss the past, my dear princess. I am here to deliver competence.”

Charlie raises a hand before Vaggie can start a full assault. Her face softens only a little as she looks at me. “I appreciate your offer. Really. We kind of need help... I know that. But Vox... I need to know you are here to really try. Not just perform. Not, not to manipulate. You have to follow the rules. The… the basics of actual improvement.”

Her tone is earnest but firm. Morningstar sweetness tempered by the weight of responsibility she forces herself to carry. She wants redemption to function. She wants me to fit into it. She wants to believe even I can be helped.

She is wrong. So, so wrong. But I do not let that slip into my voice. I respond with polished neutrality, nodding in all the right moments. Inside, my intent curls cold and sharp. Salvation is irrelevant. Control is everything! And I totally need her pitiful nonsense.

Charlie looks at me with searching eyes, digging for sincerity like a miner hoping to strike gold in a field of rust. “Stop performing and start confessing. I want you to try and be good, Vox.” She whispers it like a plea. A warning. A test we both know I will fail.

I give her the barest hint of vulnerability, just enough to pass her inspection without yielding anything real. A tilt of the head. A softer tone. A well placed breath that suggests honesty. “I want to contribute. To stabilize this place. To be useful. And if that requires… redemption activities… I will endure them.” Shit, not exactly what I wanted but it’s a start.

She studies me for one unbearable moment before nodding with a small, relieved smile. Vaggie glares harder, arms crossed, wings twitching with distrust.

Charlie steps forward and extends her hand. “You follow every rule. No special treatment. And you respect everyone here. That includes Vaggie, Angel, when he is back, and that includes me. As well as everybody else in this Hotel.”

I accept the handshake with a smooth nod, hiding the triumphant spark that flares through my circuits. Charlie relaxes a little, though the worry never leaves her eyes. “I appreciate you trying, Vox, really.” She means it, believes it while Vaggie mutters something under her breath about fools and devils.

Let this circus become mine piece by piece. The agreement is sealed and my temporary stay secured.

My door unlocked while my future is unresolved but open. And all it costs is listening to redemption nonsense until silence buys me time to rebuild what was stolen.

The key sits warm in my palm, heavier than its metal should allow. A victory. Small, yes, but real. Tangible. A foothold carved out of chaos. My first piece of leverage in this ridiculous establishment. I allow myself one quiet breath of satisfaction.

That is all I get before that cat steps forward, cutting the moment in half. His expression yelling rage and vile disgust at me. He does not bother raising his voice. He does not need volume. His tone is flat, steady, promising a slow burn instead of a fast death.

“You set one thing on fire, make one scene, cause one ounce of drama, and I will make your stay a living nightmare. I do not care what Charlie says. You are the lowest! And after what you did to Angel… I am not letting you ruin this place too!”

I try to laugh it off. I really do. A smirk pulls at the corner of my mouth, the beginnings of some polished insult forming with my usual flair. Something about him being a glorified housecat with a alcohol problem. Something about his threats having the creative depth of a wet napkin. But the way he looks at me silences it.

He sees through me in the way only someone who has crawled through their own ruin can. He knows exactly how fragile my peace is. How easily it fractures.

A new barrier that’s called Husk. One I cannot charm or mock or outmaneuver… yet. “I see, thank you for the heads-up, pussycat.” I close the door behind me.

But the moment I sit on the edge of the bed, the truth spills through the cracks.

My body is whole again, every wire hidden beneath new flesh, but inside there is nothing repaired. No clean seams. No healing. Just that same old cavity carved out years ago by fear and want and touch I never allowed myself to have. The hole still aches, still gapes, still hums with the lonely pulse of a boy who died longing for warmth he never dared to reach for.

I rest my elbows on my knees and hang my head, the flicker from my own screen casting ghostly neon light across the walls. It dances. It wavers. It never warms.

My past victories taste like ash. There was something missing, every damn time.

I secured a role, a presence. Some control over my environment. But the glow of the screen does not care. It hums with cold indifference as I tremble lightly under it, alone in a circus I plan to master but cannot yet escape.

I straighten, breathe again, and lift my head.

“Third times the charm, no?” smiling hollowly while staring at my door.

I did not know why, maybe I hoped someone would knock and get me out of this misery. I was so tired, if I would be honest with myself. But gods never tire, do they?

I attempted to smile, but all I could do was stare with a blank expression at that door. Wishing that something would happen… would drag me out of this spiral I found myself caged in.

A powerless huff of a laugh escaped my lips as my eyes slowly dropped back to the floor.

“As if…”