Work Text:
He had no instruction manual for what he was feeling right now.
A pleasant, dim gloom reigned in his office. The only sources of light were the monitors hanging everywhere, yet even they emitted nothing more than a barely audible hum.
Signal lost.
This day had been too long since it began, and after—he glanced at the clock tower visible from his windows—a decidedly excessive amount of hours on his feet, he was exhausted.
He rubbed his forehead with his fingers. Even the usually cool glass of his screen felt overheated now. He blinked a few times, but the documents before his eyes did not become any clearer.
“I need rest…” he muttered to himself, right before the screen froze. When he shook himself out of it, all he saw was a large dialogue box proudly proclaiming his own words:
“Rest is for the weak.”
He sighed so heavily that the papers shifted across the desk. Finally, he rested his cold claws on the screen one more time to dismiss the notification.
“You are weak!” a sound suddenly boomed across the room. A cruel screech, a little too mechanical to be real—but he knew from the first second whose voice it was. He knew because he had edited it himself. He had placed it in the NoRestUntilRatingsRise.exe program and had just temporarily forgotten.
“Alastor.”
He swallowed hard.
He sat for a moment in the pseudo-silence he had created: the hum of the screens, the mechanical laughter of the Radio Demon seemingly coming from a distance. He leaned back in his chair, and only then did he realize he was holding his breath. When he opened his eyes, he saw a cartoon Alastor circling the screen, laughing at him.
“Fucking pile of red fuzz,” he hissed, growing increasingly irritated.
And of course, now he plays the hero. The Radio Demon, a legend of Hell… reduced to a toy in a princess’s hands. Bravo, Al. Spectacular degradation. He shook his head, but the notifications did not disappear.
Of course not. Even his own systems now despised him and ignored him. Just like him. He preferred to spread rainbows alongside that mediocrity. How did it come to this?
He desperately rubbed the screen with his hands to wipe the notifications away. He spun too hard in his chair, slamming into his desk. A distinct clank rang out, and a chill ran down his spine.
“Fuck!” he cursed, trying to pick up the spilled coffee cup. Trying to save the documents lying in the coffee’s path. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
The screen flickered again.
He said screw it. Let it soak — he’d have Ethan prepare a new copy, he thought, irritated, and stood up.
He took a few slow breaths, then let his legs carry him to the large window. The city was sleeping, if you could ever say that about this place. The world had seemed intense in his final years of earthly life, but that was nothing compared to the intensity of living in Pentacity. Here, it was never truly dark.
He calmed down enough to glance once more at the caricature of the Radio Demon on his screen-face. Slowly, he slid his fingers across the glass.
“Administrator permissions required. Enter password.”
“Bambi.”
He said it so coldly that it even surprised him slightly. But what was he, if not a professional through and through?
“Permissions granted. Are you sure you want to terminate SoftSpot.sys?”
“Terminate.”
“Warning: closing may cause system instability.”
“Close. Immediately.”
“Attempting to terminate…
… Error. Access Denied.
… Critical process. Restarting system kernel…”
In an instant, his screen flickered, then went silent. He only heard the hum again.
“I am not weak.”
He clenched his hands into fists.
“Look what I’ve built!”
His arms shot up, as if wanting to show literally everything he had created.
The screen froze. For a second, he saw a reflection that wasn’t the face he wanted to see. Not the one he wanted to show others.
“I did all of this without you, without your help,” he ground the words out through his teeth. “I didn’t need you for anything. You can shove those outdated radios of yours right up your ass.”
His smile twisted into something strange, almost painful. He rested his hands on the windowpane. It was somehow harder to take a breath now.
“I could have given you everything you ever wanted. But no! You prefer to hang out with Lucifer’s little brat… Really, Al, what happened to you? Are we getting old, perhaps? Are you looking for a nice nursing home for these last few years?”
He sneered venomously and squeezed his eyelids shut tight.
Why did that ginger fool reduce him to this state? Normally, he wouldn’t react like this, so what was different this time?
He didn’t hear the door to his office open.
“Boss?”
The gentle voice reached his ears as if from another world. He flinched. Where the hell did this kid come from? Did he call him and forget? Did he overlook some notification in the rush of… feelings?
He cringed at the thought. He couldn’t show anything, not in the eyes of his assistant. In the blink of an eye, he disappeared into one of the nearest cameras as pure energy. Then he reappeared by his chair, his back to Ethan, suddenly exceptionally engrossed in the blank screens.
“I’m busy, what do you want?” he snarled.
“Oh, right, I know,” Ethan nodded, knowing it wasn’t worth arguing. “You just left your sandwich in the conference room…”
Sandwich?
He placed a hand on his stomach and ran a quick analysis. The grumbling was subtle, yet noticeable. When was the last time he ate something?… No data.
“Completely illegible…” Ethan muttered, glancing at the soaked papers. “I’ll print new versions for signature and—”
“Leave them on my desk, I’ll review them in the morning,” Vox interrupted, but he could practically feel his assistant relax in the air.
“Of course, I’ll prepare everything for the morning. Please eat when you have a free moment.” He placed the sandwich next to the now-empty coffee mug. “Good night, boss.”
Then he vanished from sight as quickly as he had appeared.
Still, Vox waited a moment. When he was a thousand percent sure he was alone, he minimized the player window. The folder “Automatic Replies — Employees” was still open. The pre-recorded responses didn’t come in handy often, but in moments like these, they protected his good name.
“It’s all because of you,” he muttered. “We could have had everything; we could have ruled together… What didn’t you like about that so much?”
He wasn’t sure if the words left his mouth or stayed in his head.
He reluctantly looked at his hand. Now slightly trembling. Exactly the hand he wanted to offer him — and the one Alastor rejected.
He took a deeper, ragged breath. He dragged that hand across his screen, almost as if he wanted to scrape that face off and reveal what lay beneath.
“Access Denied,” chimed in his ears.
For a moment, he wanted to remove the security he had put in place years ago. He gave up.
He glanced reluctantly at the sandwich Ethan left for him.
“You’re just hungry. That’s the only reason he’s on your mind,” he told himself.
Not because he hurt you. Not because he left you. Not because he has a life out there — a life without you.
No. It’s just hunger. That’s all it is.
“Time to go to sleep.”
He grabbed the sandwich carelessly, almost dismissively. Yet when he unwrapped it and took the first bite, he felt an immediate, embarrassing wave of relief. Something like a smile even flickered across his screen.
True, he had no procedure for what he was feeling now — but maybe he should devise one at the next opportunity.
And you’d better get on that right away, Vincent.