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That Liar LIES!

Summary:

Angel Dust was never a spy for the Vees.

What if the 'sleeper agent' claim was solely to mess with Angel's head? Vox is a sadistic manipulator who repeatedly demonstrates that he will twist the truth or outright lie for his own benefit. We're all just supposed to accept his word at face value? What if his hypnosis is not only in-the-moment mind-control, but also lets him plant false memories? (But then, how did Vox know that Lucifer couldn't smite him?)

Vox's perspective of Episodes 3-6 of Season 2.

Notes:

In canon, I think that after Charlie showed up at the studio in s1e4 trying to get Angel time off, Vox decided she was a Legitimate Threat To His Business Interests (if sinners are trying to get redeemed, who will stay and work for him?) and decided he needed to keep a closer eye on the hotel, to sabotage the princess if she ever looked like she was getting close to success. Prior to this, Vox's only interest in the hotel was Alastor's presence there.

I also think, if the writers had more than eight episodes to play with, that the reveal in s2e3 about Baxter working for VoxTek would've been expanded to make Baxter a red herring, with more scenes foreshadowing that Vox had an inside source of information at the hotel.

But wouldn't it be messed up if none of it was true, and Angel cut himself off from his friends for ultimately no reason?

Work Text:

Vox could hardly believe that the Princess of Hell was so trusting. She just let him and Velvette walk right into her little passion project and send their drones and cameras and microphones everywhere!

(Well, not quite everywhere. She did tell them to stay out of the guests' rooms. But even if Vox had honored that request, a good microphone could pick up a lot through thin hotel walls.)

She invited them. She was practically asking for him to bug the place. If she kept the giant TV he'd, ahem, donated, it would be a handy relay point for all the data signals, but even if Alastor broke it, Vox still had a link to basically every cellphone and laptop the guests brought in. Industry monopolies were fun like that.

And then, then, Alastor had turned himself over to the Vees! He was probably up to some shit, because it was Al and Al was always up to shit, but Vox could dance circles around him and finally show off his full power to one of the few demons he actually cared about impressing.

With Alastor out of the hotel, and no one else there able to sense and manipulate airwaves (as far as Vox knew, but he would've noticed something like that, like how he'd noticed Velvette when she first died), he could spy with impunity. Even if someone noticed and destroyed one or two cameras, they wouldn't have the network connection needed to track down all of them. Many of the micro-drones had taken advantage of various damage the building had already accumulated to burrow inside of the walls, following the wires and pipes to key locations.

But even Vox couldn't have imagined the fucking platinum mine mother-lode of information he gleaned from the king's room.

"I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I cannot smite him."

Holy. Fucking. Shit. Vox could do anything and even the Devil himself couldn't stop him. The few concerns he'd ever had about repercussions for messing with the princess evaporated. Alastor's hands were bound as long as Vox didn't physically hurt the girl, Lucifer's hands were bound by Vox being human before he died, and the princess herself was too desperate to seem kind to properly strike back at him.

The angels finally answering the princess' calls was a curveball he'd had to come up with a plan for nearly on the fly. When she asked them to come to his rally, Vox briefly considered simply opening fire with angelic steel bullets before they could announce redemption was real … but then one of the six-winged ones had started talking about gift baskets as recompense for Extermination Day, and oh, he'd have actually been offended if the condescending stupidity of that plan didn't spin to his advantage so well.

(And if one of rally attendees had happened to have angelic steel weaponry, and had decided to take a potshot at the angels, that could hardly have been Vox's fault, could it? They came to an anti-angel rally while knowing angels could die. Taking that risk was on them.)

The worst any angel could do to him, while they were trying so hard to back out of consequences of their own actions, to avoid the war Heaven had started when they decided to make an annual holiday of visiting Hell to kill sinners, was harsh words. Unlike the princess, Vox had an actual spine. Their insults couldn't hurt him.

For the final psychological blow against the princess, Vox would be taking away her father and her first guest. Her reputation was in tatters, her 'business' (if the hotel could be called that, when she didn't even charge guests to stay there) was floundering, her last family member would be gone, and the effort and faith she had poured into Angel Dust would be all for nothing as VoxTek's star performer denounced her and her dream on live television.

Not that the spider made it easy for him. Stubborn people were harder to hypnotize. Getting in someone's head was so much easier if Vox could start out by telling them something they wanted to hear.

But an unfortunate side-effect of becoming a better person was feeling guilty over things you thought you'd done wrong.

Vox knew enough about Angel Dust's background from Val to know how to get him off-kilter. And decades of hard drug usage had left him with plenty of memory gaps for Vox to exploit.

He spooked the brat a bit to get him uncertain, smacked him around (Vox didn't have to do that part, but it was fun), and planted a few memories fitting his chosen narrative as the spider subconsciously pleaded for answers. Even if the answer was one he hated, it was still something he wanted to hear, giving Vox an in. And Vox finally got to break Valentino's favourite toy.

He hoped the princess' breakdown would be even half as entertaining to watch.

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