Chapter Text
The corner had become Vox's entire world.
Not by choice—never by choice—but by circumstance, by punishment, by the cruel geometry of an existence reduced to its most fundamental component. A head. Just a head. His flat-screen face propped against the wall like discarded electronics waiting for e-waste collection, gathering dust in the shadows of the Vee Tower penthouse while life continued without him.
His antenna lay flat across his screen, lifeless as dead wires. They used to stand proud, crackling with electricity and ambition, broadcasting his presence to every corner of Hell. Now they were just another reminder of everything he'd lost, everything he'd destroyed with his own hands—hands he no longer possessed.
The flickering had started three days ago. Or was it four? Time moved differently when you couldn't move, when you couldn't feel your body because your body was somewhere else, locked away, kept from you like a privilege revoked. The screen that comprised his face stuttered and glitched, horizontal lines of static cutting across his vision at irregular intervals. It happened when electronics weren't maintained properly, when connections degraded, when systems were left to deteriorate.
No one had cleaned his screen in weeks.
The bags under his eyes—rendered in pixels and light—had deepened to bruise-dark shadows. Even in Hell, even as a demon, even as a television-headed Overlord, exhaustion found a way to manifest. Sleep was sporadic, fractured by the phantom sensations that plagued him in the dark hours.
The phantom limb pain was the worst part.
Vox had researched the phenomenon once, back when he had hands to type with, arms to gesture with, a body to inhabit. PLP—Phantom Limb Pain—occurred when the brain continued to send signals to limbs that no longer existed, creating sensations of burning, crushing, twisting agony in appendages that weren't there. The medical literature said it affected amputees, people who'd lost arms or legs to accident or disease.
The literature said nothing about what happened when you lost your entire body.
The pain came in waves, unpredictable and merciless. Sometimes it felt like his non-existent hands were being crushed in a vice. Sometimes his absent legs cramped so severely he would have collapsed if he'd had knees to buckle. Sometimes his missing arms burned as though dipped in acid, and he could do nothing—nothing—but endure
it, because you couldn't clutch at pain that existed only in the confused firing of neurons, in the ghost-map of a body his brain insisted should still be there.
He'd tried to scream the first few times. The sound that emerged from his speakers was so broken, so pathetic, that he'd stopped. Valentino laughed. Not cruelly—or perhaps cruelly, it was hard to tell with Val—but dismissively, as though Vox were being dramatic, attention-seeking, playing for sympathy he didn't deserve.
Maybe he was right. Maybe Vox didn't deserve sympathy.
He certainly didn't deserve the patience his friends had shown him.
The memory played on loop in his mind, projected against the inside of his screen where only he could see it. The intervention. The confrontation. Valentino and Velvette sit him down, their faces serious, their voices careful. They'd tried to talk to him about his behavior, about the way he'd been treating them, about the escalating cruelty and control and manipulation that had poisoned their partnership.
He had no patience for it. None. He'd dismissed their concerns, gaslit them about their perceptions, turned their words back on them like weapons. He'd made Velvette cry— Velvette, who never cried, who was all sharp edges and sharper tongue. He'd made Valentino flinch, and Val didn't flinch for anyone.
They'd tried to give him a second chance. And a third. And a fourth. He'd squandered every single one.
So they'd taken his body. Removed it. Separate him from it like you'd separate a child from a dangerous toy. And honestly? He couldn't blame them. If he'd been in their position, he would have done worse. He would have done so much worse.
But they hadn't done worse. They'd just... removed the problem. Contained it. Put him in a corner where he couldn't hurt anyone anymore, where his venom had no reach, where his manipulation had no leverage.
And they'd kept him anyway.
That was the part Vox couldn't understand. That was the question that circled endlessly through his processors, wearing grooves in his thoughts like a record stuck on repeat: Why?
Why were they still here? Why hadn't they thrown him out? Why hadn't they tossed his head in a cardboard box and left it in an alley somewhere for the lesser demons to find? Why hadn't they destroyed him completely, wiped his hard drive, shattered his screen, ended the problem permanently?
Anyone else would have. Anyone with sense, with self-preservation, with a shred of dignity would have cut their losses and moved on. But not Valentino. Not Velvette.
They still included him in business meetings—when they remembered, when they needed his input on media strategy or network infrastructure. Velvette would carry him to the conference room, her hands careful despite her obvious reluctance to touch him, and prop him up at the table like a grotesque centerpiece. They'd discuss quarterly earnings and market share and expansion plans, and occasionally they'd turn to him and ask his opinion.
He'd give it. Quietly. Subdued. None of the grandstanding or showboating that used to characterize his contributions. Just the information they needed, delivered in a flat monotone, his screen dim.
He was afraid. Terrified, actually, in a way he'd never been before. Afraid that if he acted out, if he showed any hint of his old behavior, if he pushed back or argued or tried to assert himself, they'd finally be done with him. They'd finally reach the limit of their patience and decide he wasn't worth the trouble.
And then what? Then he'd be truly alone. Then he'd be nothing.
So he stayed quiet. Compliant. Subdued. He made himself as small as a disembodied head could be, tried to take up as little space as possible, tried not to be a burden or a problem or anything that might tip the scales from tolerance to abandonment.
The irony wasn't lost on him. He'd spent decades building an empire on the principle of taking up as much space as possible, of being the biggest, loudest, most unavoidable presence in Hell. And now he was trying to disappear.
After the meetings, they'd return him to his corner. Sometimes Velvette would set him down gently. Sometimes she'd be distracted, scrolling through her phone, and she'd place him a bit roughly, his screen scraping against the wall. He never complained. He had no right to complain.
Sometimes Valentino would be the one to move him. Those times were harder. Val's hands were less careful, his grip tighter, his movements brusque. There was anger there, simmering beneath the surface. Hurt. Betrayal. All the things Vox had inflicted on him over the years, coming home to roost.
Vox wanted to apologize. The words built up behind his screen like pressure behind a dam, desperate for release. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was wrong. I was cruel. I was everything you said I was and worse.
But the words wouldn't come. They stuck in his throat—metaphorical though it was— because what good would they do? What could words possibly accomplish now? Sorry I didn't undo the damage. Sorry I didn't erase the scars. Sorry was just another manipulation, another way of trying to make himself feel better, and he didn't deserve to feel better.
So he stayed silent.
The hours bled together in his corner. Day and night lost meaning when you couldn't move, couldn't change your perspective, couldn't do anything but stare at the same section of wall and ceiling and occasionally the room beyond when someone passed by. His screen flickered. His antenna drooped. The phantom pains came and went like tides.
And through it all, one thought crystallized with increasing clarity: I want to die.
Not metaphorically. Not dramatically. Just... genuinely, desperately, he wanted it to end. He wanted the pain to stop—both the physical phantom agony and the psychological torture of existing like this, reduced and helpless and utterly dependent on the mercy of people he'd abused.
But he couldn't even do that. Couldn't end it. Couldn't reach for oblivion because he had no hands to reach with, no body to destroy, no way to pull his own plug. He was trapped in existence, forced to endure, sentenced to consciousness without the possibility of parole.
Sometimes he thought about asking them to do it. To finish what they'd started, to put him out of his misery. But that felt like manipulation too, like emotional blackmail, like one more way of making his problems into their burden. So he kept that wish locked away with all the others, hidden behind his flickering screen.
The phantom pain hit again, sudden and vicious. His absent right arm erupted in sensation, as though someone had driven nails through the palm and was slowly, methodically twisting them. Vox's screen glitched hard, static consuming his face for a full three seconds before his image resolved again. Tears—rendered in light and pixels —streamed down his screen.
No one was there to see.
No one was there to care.
And that was exactly what he deserved.