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The silence in this god-forsaken place was deafening in Valentino’s opinion.
Actually, scratch that.
The room, sanctum, whatever the fuck Vox called this massive fucking space deep in the bowels of Vee Tower, was noisier than ever.
The low, ever-present hum of electrical power permeated the floor, shaking the shitty seat Val had contorted his towering form into. Usually, such a feeling was - and he’d never give Vox the satisfaction of hearing it from his lips - reassuring. He’s used to feeling the thrum intensifying as he would cross from his own section of the tower down to Vox’s domain. A welcome reminder of his partner's power made manifest.
Right now though, it was making the acid in his stomach roil, stirring the volatile mix of ethanol and cocaine coursing through his veins. Shaken like a toxic cocktail and poured out into this seat, boneless and dizzy. Not like he’d planned on being awoken from his post-film, post-fuck slumber like this.
Bustling in front of him, tech-headed demons of every description were leant over the prone form on the table, working with no voice, but still the sound of metal-on-metal rang out as they worked. The bright reds and blues of their cybernetic implants stung his retinas even through his rose-tinted glasses, forcing him to squint. It softened the light, blurring it, but not enough that he couldn’t make out the body on the table.
If what lay before them could even still be classed as a body anymore. What had been brought in had reminded the moth-demon more of some junkyard scrap pile than his partner.
What was once a Velvette original pin-striped blazer had been slashed into ribbons of cashmere-blend along with his barred sweater vest and shirt. The red bowtie that ever-adorned the wrapped wires of Vox’s throat hadn’t been there when he had been located. Both his shoes were gone, missing. But to be fair to them, so were Vox’s right calf and his entire left leg for that matter, trouser-sleeves and all. Nothing but the snapped remains of a metal femur and sparking wire-tendons left hanging loose, fibres still spawning from misfired signals.
Coolant - ice-blue and sickly sweet-smelling - pooled below the tech overlords body. It dripped ever-steady onto the polished floor below, making Val’s antenna twitch with the quiet crashing of every drop.
To say he had been disembowelled was both incorrect and all too true. Wires of every colour and thickness were snapped and tangled, some twitching sluggishly, others sparking pathetically where they lay limp over what little synthetic skin remained over Vox’s torso. The bright sterile white of the brought-in surgical lamps gleaned off the metal endoskeleton that housed Vox’s internals, where once some organic organs had lived, over years of tinkering and upgrading now server blades and fans remained.
Or had.
The vents that lined the overlords ribs were gone, bitten out, leaving nothing but a hollowed out cavity of coolant and broken silicon-and-gold wafer. Except rising out from Vox’s exposed chest cavity was a twisting column of tines, wreathed in a sickly green glow, and snapped at the apex. Small reeds and grasses were settled in the nooks and crannies of the branching antler. Occasionally a dry blade would fall as Vox’s body was jostled, floating in the filtered air until it landed in the cavern of Vox’s torso.
But his face, his screen, Valentino couldn’t see. There was no bright blue that commanded his pavlovian attention, that narrowed down the world and made him follow. Instead there was the wall of pitiful drones in Vox’s employ, useful for this and little else in Valentino’s opinion, or maybe that was the rude awakening and drugs in his system talking.
Vox’s remains laid there, prone on the metal table, and eerily the thought of an autopsy crossed Val’s mind, making his teeth clench and the taste of copper flood his mouth.
Good, he thought, he needed the metallic taste and the sting of pain to centre him right now.
The heft of Moneyshot weighed all too heavy in its bedazzled thigh holster, rubbing against his skin with every uncomfortable minute he was left in this damned chair. It would be easy enough to rage and scream at Vox’s little assistants, scare them into handing over the footage and location, and paint the deer-tailed fucker red with his own blood. That was the least he would do.
To whatever was left of him.
Valentino knew Vox wouldn’t have given as any less than as good as he’d got, especially with Alastor involved. Not after his apparent return after the Angels defeat. He’d malded for weeks when he’d heard the news and found the footage of the radio demon confirming his rematerialisation back at the new lavish hotel.
But right now, he had to reign that impulse in.
Alastor was with the princessa , effectively untouchable.
Cobarde .
Alas, even he didn’t believe he was that stupid, he mused, despite the niggling memory of wanting to shoot the damn ratty hotel up months prior making its delightful reintroduction to his brain.
Vox had stopped him, the warbling of overblown speakers and the overlaid filter of his voice warping had dragged Val back from a costly error, even if he had them baited Vox into his own tantrum. But it had been cute at the time, seeing the older demon squirm at the mere mention of Alastor. Even cuter still when the deer had lashed back and Vox had come to him, appearing with the scent of ozone and static through the cameras, seeking a fight from the moth and in that fight comfort, before they had convened with Velvette in the meeting room.
Something so regrettable now, he thought morosely.
He licked his lip again, purposefully prodding the new cut with the thin tip of his tongue, and focussed on the taste once more. Letting himself drift into a memory of metal-tinged kisses to re-route the simmering anger. Lust usually covered all ills, placated him, but still somewhere deep in his brain, worry had set root.
He groaned, shifting deeper into the backbreaking seat.
Time slipped away. His back ached, wings cramped and ruffled, scarlet scales shedding down to the polished floor, tinkling gently, and to Val each one might has well been a bomb blast echoing round his doped up mind.
Bodies came and went, moving metal gurneys filled with tools and wires, so many fucking wires in so many colours Val thought his trip had dragged him deeper into its embrace. Kaleidoscopic.
The wreck of the antler was heaved free, and there was no viceral sucking of skin, and fluid, and flesh. Just the rattle and knock of the velvet branch hitting Vox’s ‘ribcage’ and it’s placement on a tray.
Val stared at the glowing piece of bone, and swore he saw a red eye blink back through the malaise of green as a familiar eel-like demon sheepishly wheeled it away. A malevolent trophy in a way.
Viscerally, Val wanted it burned, smashed, destroyed and out of their home.
Eventually the underlings left, trickling out from the room and leaving Val to his lone bedside vigil.
With the booze and drugs waning, he could make the assertion that now the silence in this fucking barren space was deafening.
Monitors and floating screens hovered by the head of the slab, but the flashing script was too small to read. Hell, most writing was too small to read with his shitty sight, but he tried to focus the usual ire that aroused down.
Not like he fully understood what each screen meant, what with Vox’s mechanical and computational leanings, anyhow, he thought petulantly.
There was no high colour contrast heart beat monitor to wistfully watch as each valley and peak of a trace sped by. No near perfectly rhythmic noise to painfully listen to each beep. No reason really to fret or wring his slender hands, except for the fucking body before him.
Somewhere, under the low humming of the monitors, the quiet gurgling of replacement coolant being piped into Vox body, a new noise - dry, yet somehow viscerally wet, and so very soft - made itself known, but only just.
And Valentino almost missed it.
His head lifted as his whole body bolted upwards, eyes peering blarily over his rose-tinted glasses as the body on the slab.
Again, the background noise presented itself front and centre. Bubbling, and rumbling, the dripping and sparking. The squeak of the leather of his boots, the jingle of the heavy golden chains links around his neck, the soft swish of his single feathered antenna as it twitched, the dry peel of his lips over his teeth.
Nothing new. No signs of life.
Until, as he prepared himself to fall back into that seat.
“V..Val…”
Undistorted, and barely there. Like it was trapped behind a metal door, muffled and tinny. So strained was the sound, so breathy… so organically human.
Leaning over the table, Val knew he didn’t cover his reaction to Vox’s destroyed screen well as a hiss of sympathetic pain whistled through his clenched teeth. A low groan echos, not from himself or the prone body before him, but the new dent forced into the table as his hands grip and just can’t let go, knuckles straining warping the lip of the slab further.
Vox’s head is tilted higher than the rest of his batters body, a neck support barely keeping then loose nest of wires together.
Cracks littered the dark glass like comet tails. The left side of the glass screen was shattered, left like jagged saw teeth, sharp and glinting in the bright light. Val could see a large flat rectangle with small blue lights sitting as the back of Vox’s head, wires and chips leading to and from it. A harddrive, his brain. Just laid exposed to the world.
From this angle, he could peer down over, inside the rectangle of Vox’s head, where something distinctly non-metallic lay, covered in a destroyed jacket of smashed microphone receiver. The bright white of vocal chords.
But strangest of all, a single eye, lidless and locked into some contraption meant to mimic an orbital, stared back at him where the glass was missing, bloodshot and with an iris of the deepest blue.
He could have exclaimed in horror, or recoiled in disgust, lashed out in a rage whilst the older Vee was already down for the count. Instead, his breath catches as he leans even closer to the mess before him. And say a phrase he’s all too familiar with receiving from that same voice (with a more synthesised, far louder tone).
“What the fuck were you thinking, Vox?! You could have died!”
Logically, or as logically as a sobering brain could reason, at worst Alastor would have destroyed Vox’s form. His lack of angelic weapons against Adam made one thing clear, the old fucker was still too self-assure and aloof to use ‘new-fangled technologies’ and Vox had avoided a permanent death for the radio demon long enough that he was almost certain it would never come. The deer and the shark had locked themselves in a stalemated game and neither truly wanted their playmate gone.
But still, it was the principle, Val thought. Weeks of Vox’s form remanifesting itself would be literally hell on Val.
The thought of the rescheduling of Vox’s meetings and dealings alone made him want to join this metaphorical Vox in the painful bliss of recreation. So did the thought of so long without Vox’s watchful presence, eyes in every camera on him, reassuring and ever vigilant.
“Not…. Going…. Any…. Where.” Rasped the voice, vocal chords visibly fluttering through the tangled nest of wires and broken amplifier grating.
Something so vulnerable. Flesh. Something he had barely seen in Vox’s presence. A being of metal and silicon, glass and plastic.
It made Val want to reach out and feel the warmth of the viscera around his fingertips, the difference in the hot flesh and cold unyielding metal.
It made him scared, he realises, stomach dropping like a bad trip. For Vox. For himself.
Flesh was weak in hell, fuck he knew all about that. You could carve it and stab it. Fuck it and drug it. Because that’s all they were down here, stuck in this ring built on bad choices and even worse beings.
“You’re damn fucking right you’re not, not by anyone’s hand but my own.” He snarled, covering the squeak that had bubbled in the back of his throat. Fear was easy to quash when anger could take the sparks and burn hot instead.
He had a single angelic bullet for Vox, tucked right next to one for himself. Moneyshots last scores.
Out with a ‘bang’.
End scene, hold for applause, curtains.
Valentino feels himself drifting, the high of the coke crashing hard making his spiralling back down to reality even worse.
The touch when it comes is clumsy, uncoordinated, and Valentino jerks back at the sudden contact, eyes finally taking in the scene before him.
Vox’s hand is a wreck, where it tries and partially fails to circle the slender bones of the moth demon's wrist. The claw of his first finger is gone, down to the second knuckle, leaving a whirring servo bare to the world. His middle finger is bent at a wholly unnatural angle, with only the partially-there pad of the fingers length actually touching Vals chitinous skin. Gone is the smooth polished razor edge of his thumbs claw, a claw that had so much dexterity and such fine motor skills. All that remains is a jagged mess of broken glass and inner metal skeleton. But still, the media overlord tries to rub at the hollow of Valentino’s wrist, the delicate skin tattooed black.
“Val” the soft whisper croons. “Baby…” it soothes, and right now there are no ulterior motives, no schemes or plans. Like a useless marionette, Val collapses to his knees, the length of his body still leaving him towering over the table. The coolness of the metal endoskeleton and living wires under the synthetic skin grounds him, quenches the fear and rage as he bows his forehead to the back of Vox’s broken hand.
“Just… shut up.” It comes out as more of a sob than an order, echoing round the chamber. “Fucking shut up, you asshole.” You worried me, you scared me, how could you be so reckless. You could have left me.
He rages on blindly, words flung from his lips like bullets and knives and gut punches and grenades. Turning the air blue, cursing a streak, or whatever old ass adage Vox would probably use.
He rages until pink spittle drips from between his teeth, till his lower arms ache where they’ve white knuckled the table further, till the stinging of his eyes brings him sharply back to this empty room full of noise.
And all that time, Vox’s mangled hand never leaves his wrist, never stops it’s syncopated stoking of the bones of his hand. And Valentino never moves too far, never flinches away.
Deflating, as the fire of his emotions petered out, the moth demon just kneels there. Head bowed, and the destroyed hand barely grazing his chin. Either the power of the tower has kicked up a level, or Val is shaking, he’s not calm or sober enough to be sure but he can hear the loose bolts and wires of Vox’s arm clear as day, the vibrations running up the bone of his jaw to his inner ears.
The whir of servos makes Vals head tilt slightly, enough to rise Vox’s cool hand further up his head, where a crooked finger jerkily brushes his antenna. A shiver starts through him at the uneven stroking.
The eye - of living flesh and piercing blue - is staring at him, through the jagged edges of the dead screen. The servos sound again as the metal contraption that houses the orb tilts and shifts, a macabre softening of features. A look of rarely offered apology and a welcome gesture of soothing.
There’s enough of Vox’s shattered chest left that Val can pillow his own head there, used to the slight give of the circuit stripped skin and the unyielding bite of metal beneath softened by synthetic tendons, when Vox tries miserably to pull the towering demon to him.
With his non-existent ear to the mechanical demons chest, Val listens. To the softest whisper of an unfiltered voice, the vibrations of those vocal chords that resonate down the metal of his mangled skeleton and through the thick skull of Val.
He gets lost in the voice. It was always easy to, with Vox. Just let go and give in to the hypnotic lilt of his consonants and bite of his vowels. No need for the eye trick, the man had a way with words that rivalled his own. Spun sugar and honey sweet, delicious until you realised you were caught in its viscous grasp. A saccharine way to die.
Val sighed, and let himself relax further, as Vox’s split palm rested uncoordinated and heavy on the curve of his jaw.
Alone together in the chamber, Val stretches out the membrane of a wing, the bright white of the surgical lamp muting to a brilliant pink through the delicate scales and tender fleshy membrane. Carefully, he draped the wing over what remained of Vox’s torso, adjusting its placement until they were both wrapped in its embrace.
There’s a beat, Val’s own heart, before a familiar sensation slithers around Valentino’s chest, looping and smooth. The cable twines itself around the moth, before it’s pronged head ends in the palm of his lower set of arms.
The coils squeeze, once, twice, reassuring and warm where electricity courses through their copper interior. Above them, the sterile white of the light dims, bowing to Vox’s whim and leaving them in a cocoon of soft blues, red, and deep endless black.
Silence falls again, as the soft voice whispers on.
-
Hours later, after the return of the horde of minions and boxes upon boxes of replacement parts, Velvette calls. Bitching over the speaker about the loss of such a fantastic suit to the world. But really, deep underneath the arrogance and self-flattery, they both know she’s worried, checking in and seeking some confirmation as to Vox’s status.
Vox’s chest reverberates with a choppy laugh, jostling Val from his near slumber, enough that he can make out the call.
Vox’s voice returns to that too-chipper, showmanship strength. His new voice modulator working a treat. He spins a placating yarn for the younger Vee. She definitely doesn't buy it, and they definitely don’t call out her lie as she lets Vox’s story hang in the ether between them, berates his actions, and then tells him to stay alive.
The call ends, and there’s a soft muffled click under Val’s cheek, as the microphone is powered down, and the low voice - so achingly organic and alive - soothes Valentino back off to sleep.