Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You’re still bleeding, Vee.”

“I know.”

“Want me to wrap it?”

“There’s no point, Vel. It’ll bleed through again. I’ll be fine in an hour.”

She clicks her tongue, eyes flicking to the red seeping between his fingers. “You’re not young anymore. You can’t keep battling everything alone. Especially not when he’s decided to make your life hell again.”

“I know. Twenty years and comes back to kill me. I hoped it would be different.”

Velvette doesn’t smile. “Why does he hate you so much?”

Vox exhales, slow and tired. “That’s a long story.”

“You say that every time. I just want to help you.”

“I don’t need help, Vel. This will be over one day. I’ll be standing over his body, or he’ll be standing over mine.”

“I hope it doesn’t end the second way.”

“I know.”

She studies him for a moment, softer now. “At least tell me who he is to you. Why does he know everything about you.”

Vox shrugs, already turning toward the door. “I know everything about him too.”

“Yeah,” she says, not letting it go, “but how.”

He doesn’t answer. Just keeps walking.

Murder came easily to Vox.

It provided pleasure, gave him new opportunities and was the easiest way to get rid of a problem. Death was final. Clean, in its own brutal way. A line drawn and crossed and never revisited.

But this.

This had been different.

Twenty years ago, Vox had built a world and locked someone inside it.

A functioning virtual reality, self-sustaining, endlessly rendering, fed by Vox’s own power and voice. A place with weather and time and memories and pain. A place where the body could not die, but the mind still aged. 

He told himself it was containment. He told himself it was justice. He told himself anything except the truth.

That he had been too afraid to kill him.

So instead, he archived him.

Left him conscious. Left him aware. Left him alone with nothing but Vox’s systems and Vox’s voice as the administrator of his reality. A mercy that felt worse than execution. He thought it was kinder, a life better lived. Maybe overtime, he could change what had been done. Bring him back to normalcy.

And now, after twenty years of silence, the world he built had cracked.

The man he never killed had finally found a way out.

And he was not interested in forgiveness. He was interested in Vincent. The time spent in the simulation didn’t cure anything, it let it cultivate.

Velvette is the only one who knows what happened that fateful day. Hell felt cold and Vincent made a choice he may always regret. But would never undo. For killing him would be like killing himself.

Denial was easier than fear.

Fear required action. Fear meant admitting something was wrong, meant preparing for it, meant bracing for the moment the past finally caught up. Denial just meant pretending everything was fine and continuing on as if the static in his head was nothing more than bad signal.

Vox was tired.

Not the kind of tired that came from long days or overworking or too many broadcasts stacked back to back. This was the kind of tired that settled into the bones. The kind that came from never sleeping, from never letting his systems power down fully, from existing in a constant low-level state of alert that never shut off. He stayed awake until the screens blurred, until the noise in his head softened into a dull, constant hum. It was easier not to sleep. Easier not to dream. Easier not to risk seeing him again in the dark.

Life became something careful.

He stopped walking without thinking. Stopped moving through Hell on instinct. Every reflection was checked twice. He looked over his shoulder more than he looked in front of him. The last time he had seen him was the day he escaped. The day he got stabbed with a promise that he would never see the next month.

Slowly, then all at once, he stopped leaving the tower.

At first it was just fewer public appearances. Then no live broadcasts. Then no outings at all unless Velvette forced the issue. Meetings were handled remotely. Apologies were prerecorded. The city still saw Vox every day, still heard his voice, still watched his face on every screen in Pride, but Vincent himself did not step outside anymore.

The tower became everything. Yet it was nothing, it was monotonous and plain.

The truth sat heavier in his chest with every passing day.

Because no matter how many walls he built, no matter how many cameras he installed, no matter how tightly he controlled the signal, Vox knew how this ended. He had known the moment the static came back. The moment the system responded to commands he did not give. The moment a voice he had buried in code for twenty years finally spoke again.

When it came down to it, when the thing he had locked away finished tearing itself into reality, when denial finally ran out of places to hide, Vox knew exactly where he would be.

No he wouldn't be standing Victorious, he would be the one on the ground. And he refuses for it to be otherwise.

He lied constantly.

To himself first, because that was the easiest place to start. If he believed his own stories, if he repeated them often enough, they almost sounded real. The static was nothing. The glitches were manageable. The threat was contained. Everything was under control. He was still trapped.

Then he lied to the media. Smiling through interviews, spinning half-truths into narratives that made sense, selling confidence like it was still something he had in surplus. VoxTech was thriving. Security had never been better. There was no reason to worry. Pride was safe in his hands.

He lied to Val.

That one came naturally. Val liked pretty lies. Liked certainty. Liked believing Vox was still untouchable, still sharp, still exactly the same man he had always been. So Vox gave him that version. The confident one. The one who did not flinch at doors opening or pause mid-sentence because a voice had overlapped his own.

He could not help it.

Lies felt safe. Safer than the truth, at least. The truth meant admitting he did not know who was compromised, who was watching, who might already be feeding information back to the thing wearing his past like a skin. The truth meant accepting that any system he controlled could already be turned against him.

Anyone could be looking for his downfall.

Anyone could already be part of it.

So he trusted no one.

Except Velvette.

How could he not. She had been there when it started. She was the only one who knew what he had done, the only one who knew what he had trapped, the only one who understood what it meant for that world to crack open again. She saw the fractures before they became faults. She knew when his smile was real and when it was just another broadcast.

She may not know who he is, but she knows it's important he's locked away. And that's enough.

Everyone else was a risk.

Every conversation felt like a test he might fail without realising. Every interaction carried the possibility of being recorded, replayed, analysed for weaknesses he did not even know he had anymore. He second-guessed his own thoughts, his own memories, his own voice. Sometimes he caught himself mid-sentence, unsure if the words were his or something bleeding through.

He did not know what to do.

He was losing himself in the noise. In the lies. In the constant performance of being fine when everything underneath was rotting. The version of Vox the city saw was still sharp, still loud, still in control, but Vincent felt like a ghost haunting his own signal.

He wakes up with claw marks on his throat.

Three of them, deep and angry, burning red against the pale glow of his screen. They sting when he touches them, not enough to hurt, just enough to remind him they are real. Or at least, real enough to exist.

He does not remember doing it.

That is the worst part.

He does not know if they are from a man standing above him as he sleeps, waiting for the perfect moment to kill him. He does not know if they are from his own hands, dragging down his throat in a panic he does not fully recall.

He does not even know if there is a him anymore.

He stands in front of the mirror for a long time, tilting his head, watching the marks shift with the light. They look wrong on him. Too organic. Too physical. Proof of something that should not be able to touch him at all.

There is an overlord meeting today.

He considers not going. The thought lasts exactly half a second.

Velvette finds him in the dressing room, already dressed, already composed in the way that fools everyone except her. Her eyes flick immediately to his neck.

“Vee.”

“I’m fine,” he says automatically.

She raises an eyebrow. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Those are claw marks.”

He exhales slowly, adjusting his collar just enough to hide the worst of it. “Doesn’t matter. I can’t afford to look weak.”

Velvette’s expression tightens. “You can’t afford to get killed either.”

“Looking weak will get me killed faster.” He meets her eyes in the reflection. “If they think I’m unstable, I’m a bigger target. Looking strong buys you time.”

Time to lie. Time to plan. Time to survive.

She hesitates, then steps closer, straightening his jacket with careful hands. Not gentle. Just precise. “You’re shaking.”

“I won’t be in there.”

“You always are these days.”

He does not argue. They both know she is right.

The meeting room is already full when they arrive. Too many voices. Too many overlapping signals. Too many eyes tracking him the moment he steps through the doors. Vox smiles anyway, wide and polished and perfectly rehearsed.

“Sorry we were late, we didn't want to be here.”

A few laughs. A few glares. The usual.

He takes his seat with Velvette beside him, close enough that he can feel her presence anchoring him to something real. The windows stretch floor to ceiling behind the other overlords, showing Pride in all its glowing, corrupted glory.

He keeps looking at them.

Every few seconds his gaze flicks back, scanning reflections, watching the glass for movement that does not match the room. His hands tremble when he gestures, just slightly, enough that he curls his fingers into his palms to hide it. The static hums louder in his head the longer he sits still.

He talks. He jokes. He argues policy and territory and power like he always has.

But everyone can tell.

He is on edge.

His smile is a fraction too slow. His laughter cuts off too abruptly. His eyes keep drifting to corners of the room where nothing is supposed to be. He flinches at overlapping voices. At echoes that linger half a second too long.

No one comments on it.

Not because they do not notice.

Because in Hell, weakness is something you wait for.

And right now, every overlord in that room is doing exactly that.

They almost make it out.

The doors to the meeting room are already in sight, the noise behind them fading into a low, distant hum, when Alastor’s voice cuts through the air like a blade.

“Well now, leaving so soon?”

Vox freezes for half a second too long before turning, smile already snapping into place like muscle memory. Alastor stands in the corridor, hands folded behind his back, posture relaxed in that way that is never actually relaxed. His eyes flick between Vox and Velvette, sharp and amused.

“Alastor,” Vox says lightly. “Didn’t realise this was a social call. Thought you hated networking.”

Alastor hums. “I do. But I couldn’t help but notice you were a little… distracted in there.”

Velvette’s jaw tightens. “We’ve got places to be.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do,” Alastor replies pleasantly. His gaze settles on Vox again, more focused now. “It’s just, you seemed rather on edge today. Fidgeting. Watching the windows. Not your usual fake composure.”

Vox scoffs. “Please. I was just incredibly bored.”

Alastor’s smile widens a fraction. “Is that so? Because from where I was sitting, it looked more like paranoia.”

Vox opens his mouth to snap back.

And then something warm spreads down his chest. He doesn't pay any mind, just levels a glare at Alastor.

Velvette sees it instantly.

“Vox.”

He blinks. “What.”

“You’re bleeding.”

He looks again. The red is brighter now, dripping onto the floor in slow, steady drops. He hadn’t felt it open. Hadn’t felt anything at all.

“What the fuck,” he mutters.

Velvette grabs his arm, hard. “We’re leaving.”

“Vel, I’m in the middle of a conversation-”

“I don’t care,” she snaps, already pulling him down the corridor. “You’re bleeding through your shirt.”

Alastor’s eyes follow the movement, his expression finally shifting from amused to something sharper, more intent. “How very dramatic. Do you require assistance, Vox?”

Vox barely hears him. The world feels too loud, too close, the static in his head screaming now. Velvette drags him around the corner, out of sight, her grip tight enough to hurt.

“Why aren’t you healing?” she hisses under her breath.

He presses a hand to his chest. It comes away soaked. “I don’t fucking know.”

Her eyes flick over him, scanning for the wound, for anything visible. “That’s not normal. You should’ve regenerated by now.”

“I know that,” he says, voice strained. “That’s kind of the problem.”

Behind them, just out of view, Alastor slows to a stop in the corridor.

And for the first time, he does not smile.

Chapter Text

Vox wakes to the sensation of weight.

Something heavy presses against his chest, damp and clinging, the sheets cold in places they should not be. For a few disoriented seconds he lies there, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember when he went to sleep, trying to remember the last time he had felt tired enough to justify it.

Then he shifts.

The fabric drags against his skin with a sound that is almost sticky, and the smell hits him all at once. Metallic. Sweet. Thick enough to coat the back of his throat.

His breath stutters.

He pushes himself upright and looks down.

The bed is dark beneath him, the silk sheets ruined, saturated through to the mattress. Blood has pooled around his waist and shoulders, seeping into the pillows, matting his hair at the nape of his neck. There is too much of it. Far more than any wound he can remember earning.

A low, involuntary sound escapes him as he swings his legs over the side of the bed and stumbles toward the bathroom, bare feet sliding slightly on the floor where droplets have already fallen.

The lights flare on.

The mirror shows him in pieces, reflections stacked within reflections, every screen surface in the room catching a different angle of his face. His chest is smeared red, the blood already drying in uneven streaks across his skin.

His hands fumble with the buttons of his shirt. He abandons them halfway through and simply tears the fabric open.

The wound sits just below his collarbone.

The cut was deep. Crimson flowed from the wound in a steady pour. It should have stopped days ago, he should have been healed. He's had it worse and healed quicker. What's wrong with his body?

The flesh around the injury has begun to fracture.

Fine cracks spread outward from the centre, delicate and precise, like stress lines in porcelain. The colour is wrong. Not bruised, not inflamed, but darkened from within, a deep, unnatural black that seems to absorb the light rather than reflect it.

At the edges, the skin is no longer holding its shape.

It is disintegrating.

Tiny particles drift away from his body, flaking off in soft, grey motes that dissolve before they reach the sink. Vox watches, frozen, as part of his own chest quietly turns to ash.

He lifts a hand without realising it.

The moment his fingers brush the cracked surface, the skin gives way completely. It crumbles beneath his touch, collapsing into dust that spills through his fingers and vanishes into nothing.

The sensation is wrong.

There is no pain where there should be pain. No clear signal. Only a strange, hollow pressure, like touching something that exists half a second out of sync with the rest of the world.

His breathing turns shallow. The room feels too bright, too sharp, every reflection showing the same impossible detail. He presses his palm over the wound, instinctively calling on regeneration, on systems that have never failed him before.

The black spreads.

Slowly. His screen flickers, the image in the mirror warping for a fraction of a second before stabilising again. For an instant, his reflection lags behind his movements, mouth opening a moment after he feels it move.

He stares at himself, chest rising and falling, blood still dripping into the sink, skin quietly disintegrating under his hand.

Something in his chest tightens, a pressure that has nothing to do with the wound and everything to do with recognition.

Vox’s hand curls into a fist.

He brings it down against the glass.

The mirror explodes.

Shards scatter across the counter and floor, reflections splintering into jagged fragments that each hold a distorted version of him. A hundred broken Voxes stare back, all bleeding, all flickering, all beginning to come apart at the seams.

He stands among the wreckage, blood soaking into the tile, ash still drifting from his own skin, the fear settles fully into his bones. His lip quivers as he stands there frozen.

He thinks back to that night.

—

It had been a few days ago. Close enough that the memory still feels warm around the edges, close enough that his body reacts before his mind does. He remembers how normal it had been. How quiet. How rare that felt.

He had been in his office, buried in work, surrounded by screens and reports and projections layered over one another until the room barely felt real anymore. He had been overworking again, of course. He always was. But that night it felt almost peaceful. The kind of exhaustion that came from routine instead of panic.

The door had opened behind him.

He did not look up.

“Vel,” he had said absently, eyes still on the data streaming across the main screen, fingers moving automatically over the console. “I promise I’m nearly done.”

No response.

He had sighed, rolling his shoulders, already preparing himself for whatever comment she was about to make. “If you’re about to complain about me skipping dinner again, you can queue it for later. I’m in the middle of-”

Still nothing.

The silence stretches in the memory. Long enough that irritation turns into unease.

Vox had looked up.

The room had not changed. The lighting was the same. The screens still glowed softly. The city still flickered beyond the glass walls of his office.

The person standing in the doorway was not Velvette.

For a second his brain refuses to process it. The image sits there, unreal, like a corrupted frame in a video feed that should not exist. A shape wearing a familiar outline, a face he knows too well to accept.

His body reacts first.

Vox springs to his feet so hard the chair skids backward, crashing into the desk. He backs up instinctively, the edge of the console digging into his spine as he searches the room for exits that suddenly feel too far away.

“How?” The word comes out hoarse, scraped raw from his throat. “How are you here?”

The man in the doorway smiles.

It is not a warm expression. It does not reach his eyes.

“Locking me away for twenty years is really mean, Vincent.”

The sound of his voice makes something twist painfully in Vox’s chest. It is wrong. Familiar in the way a voice from a dream is familiar. A voice he has not heard in real space in two decades, only through filtered code and archived audio loops. It hurts hearing that voice devoid of emotion when in life it was the only other voice he had.

Vox shakes his head, slow and desperate, like movement alone might fix it. “Please,” he says. “Don’t. This isn’t you.”

The smile widens.

“Yes, it is. Twenty years is a very long time to be alone with your thoughts.”

“It was mercy,” Vox begs tears in his eyes. “I didn’t kill you. I saved you.”

“Mercy,” the sinner repeats softly, tasting the word. Then he laughs. The sound echoes strangely in the office, slightly out of sync with itself. “Mercy in Hell. Don’t be pathetic.”

He steps forward.

Vox does not move. His hands hang uselessly at his sides, fingers twitching, power coiled in his body with nowhere to go. He does not raise his shields. He does not summon anything. He only stares, eyes burning, chest tight with something that feels too much like grief.

“Now that I’m free,” the man continues, voice calm, almost conversational, “I need to hold up my end of the deal.”

Vox’s stomach drops.

“Which means you die,” he adds lightly. “But I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I don’t want it to be quick. I want it to be interesting. Think of tonight as a free sample. All the days that follow are just… reminders.”

“Please,” Vox whispers. It comes out smaller than he means it to. “You don’t have to do this. Not you please.”

The sinner looks at him for a long moment.

Then his gaze shifts downward, and his hand slides into the pocket of his coat.

Vox barely notices the knife at first.

He is too busy searching the other man’s face, trying to find something familiar beneath the emptiness. A memory. A crack. Anything that looks like the person he once knew. The person he archived. The person he convinced himself was still in there somewhere.

The blade catches the light.

Not in a clean way. Not a simple reflection. There is a strange sheen along the metal, a shifting, oily shimmer that moves even when the knife stays still. Colours slide across its surface at the wrong angle, bending light into something iridescent and sickly, like a glitch in reality rather than a reflection of it.

The air around it feels heavier.

Vox’s vision stutters, just slightly, the edges of the room blurring as his eyes try and fail to focus on the weapon properly. It looks out of place in his office. Too sharp. Too present. Like something imported from a different layer of the world.

Then he sees the liquid.

Clear at first, almost invisible, but glowing faintly where it clings to the blade. It pulses softly, not quite a colour he can name, darkening as it slides down the metal in slow, deliberate drops. Each one distorts the surface it touches, leaving faint ripples in the air as it falls and vanishes before it hits the floor.

His stomach twists.

By the time he realises the knife is not just a knife at all, the sinner is already moving.

—

It takes him longer than it should to accept it.

At first the thought sits at the back of his mind, half-formed, easy to ignore beneath everything else. The fear. The pain. But the more he replays the memory, the clearer it becomes. The strange sheen on the blade. The way his regeneration never triggered. The way his body has been behaving like it no longer remembers how to fix itself.

By the time the realisation settles in, it feels less like a theory and more like a verdict.

The knife was laced with something.

He does not know what. He does not know how it works. But he knows, with a certainty that makes his chest tighten, that whatever touched him that night is still inside him. Still active. Still interfering with systems that have never failed before.

Something is preventing him from healing.

The fear comes after that.

Not the sharp kind. The kind that spreads slowly, quietly, filling the spaces between thoughts. The kind that makes every sensation feel suspicious, every signal feel compromised. His body feels unfamiliar now. Unreliable. Like a machine running on corrupted code.

He wants to panic.

He does not let himself.

Panic will not help. Guessing will not help. Lying to himself will not help. If he is going to survive this, he needs information. Real data. Something concrete he can analyse instead of spiralling around worst-case scenarios.

So he makes a plan.

He taps his communicator, keeping his voice steady. “I need a scalpel and a sterile container. Delivered to my room. No questions.”

There is a pause on the other end. Then a nervous, “Of course, sir.”

He disconnects before they can ask anything else.

The wait feels longer than it is. He paces the length of the room, fingers twitching, aware of the way the wound on his chest pulses faintly, warm and wrong beneath his skin. The blackened edges have spread another millimetre since he last checked.

When the assistant arrives, Vox takes the items without a word and dismisses them immediately.

The door seals shut.

Silence settles.

He stands in front of his bed for a moment, staring at the scalpel. The blade is small. Clean. Ordinary. Nothing like the weapon that started all of this.

His reflection in the darkened screen opposite looks pale. Focused. Tightly controlled in the way he only ever gets when things are about to go very badly.

He exhales once.

It's not him. It's not him.

Then he presses the scalpel to the edge of the wound.

The sensation is distant. Muted. His body does not react the way it should. There is resistance where there should be pain, a strange softness to the corrupted flesh, like cutting into something that is already half gone.

He does not hesitate.

He slices away a small piece of the deteriorating skin and drops it into the container, watching as it settles at the bottom like a fragment of ash suspended in glass. Even separated from him, it continues to darken, the edges crumbling slowly, quietly, as if still connected to whatever is eating him alive.

His hands are shaking now.

He grabs a bandage from the drawer and presses it over his chest, wrapping it tight, not bothering to wait and see if the wound responds. It doesn’t. The warmth seeps through the fabric almost immediately.

Vox stares down at the container.

“Fuck man.” He groans, putting his shirt back on. 

He does not know who to trust with it.

That realisation sits heavier than the fear, heavier than the pain. Vox can analyse markets, manipulate systems, rewrite entire networks with a thought, but he is not a biologist. He does not know how bodies fail. He does not know how curses metabolise. He does not know how long something like this can take before it stops being manageable and starts being permanent.

Soon, he won’t be anything at all if he guesses wrong.

The container on his bed feels like a ticking clock. A piece of himself sealed in glass, quietly decaying, proof that whatever is happening to him is not theoretical. It is measurable. It is progressing. And he has no one he trusts enough to hand it over to without risking it ending up in the wrong hands.

He is still staring at it when there is a knock at the door.

His shoulders tense automatically.

“Vee?” Velvette’s voice filters through the speakers. “Are you alive in there or did you finally implode?”

He moves too fast. The container disappears under his covers, the scalpel vanishes with it, the bandage under his shirt pulled tighter as he straightens. By the time the door slides open, he already looks like himself again. Composed. Smiling. Untouchable.

Velvette steps inside, eyes immediately scanning him the way they always do lately. “You’re late for work. No one's seen you today.”

He lets out a soft laugh. “I overslept, I think I've been cooped up too long.”

“You okay?” she asks. “Becuase im sorry its best if you stay cooped up a bit longer”

He lifts his hands in a lazy shrug. “I know. And yeah I'm good.”

She narrows her eyes. “That wasn’t convincing.”

Vox waves it off, already turning back toward his desk. “Oh by the way, it turns out not sleeping for three days and surviving on caffeine and spite is not great for your systems. Who knew. But I'm healing now.”

Velvette studies him in silence. He can feel it. The way her gaze lingers too long on his posture, on the way he keeps one arm pressed faintly against his chest.

“It’s fine,” he adds smoothly. “I ate something. Took a break. I’m basically cured.”

He smiles at her.

It is the right smile. The one everyone believes.

Inside, his body burns.

The wound throbs beneath the bandage, a deep, spreading heat that feels less like pain and more like something actively working its way through him. His head bangs with a migraine, the edges of his vision fuzzing slightly, his systems lagging half a second behind his thoughts.

His reflection in the dark screen across the room flickers.

Velvette hesitates. “You sure.”

“Positive,” he says, too quickly. “I’d tell you if it was serious.”

That part is almost true.

She sighs, clearly unconvinced but not pushing it. “You’re a terrible liar, you know.”

He grins. “I’m an excellent liar. You just know me too well.”

She watches him for another moment, then nods slowly. “Get some more rest. I mean it.”

“I will.”

She leaves.

The door slides shut behind her, the room falling quiet again.

Vox’s smile fades the second she is gone.

He exhales, hand drifting back to his chest, fingers pressing lightly over the bandage. The heat beneath it pulses in response, steady and wrong, like a second heartbeat he never agreed to.

He falls back onto the bed, eyes closing for just a second.

His body is screaming at him.

And he is still pretending everything is fine.

He reaches under the duvet for the container and holds it above him. His hands are trembling now. Not violently. Subtly. Enough that he curls his free hand against his side.

His breathing stutters, uneven, the kind that never quite fills his lungs properly. The heat in his chest pulses again, slow and deliberate, a reminder he cannot ignore no matter how hard he tries.

“I don’t want to die.”

The words slip out before he can stop them.

They sound wrong in the room. Too small. Too human. He hasn’t said anything like that in years. Maybe ever. He laughs weakly after, like it was a joke, like the sound didn’t just crack something open inside him.

“Fuck.”

He drags a hand down his face, fingers catching briefly on the edge of his screen where the image glitches for a fraction of a second before stabilising. His reflection looks exhausted. Pale. Rendered too sharply around the eyes, like the system has overcorrected the details. And he just laughs. 

A thin, fractured sound that burns on the way out, sharp in his throat, too loud in the quiet room. It feels wrong even as it’s happening, hysterical and hollow, the kind of laugh you make when you’re standing too close to something you don’t want to look at. It is the fakest he’s been since this started, a performance with no audience, and he cannot seem to make himself stop.

Eventually the sound dies out, leaving his chest aching and his head buzzing. The silence that follows is heavier than the noise ever was. He stares at the darkened screens for a long moment, breathing slowly, forcing his systems to settle, forcing the static back down into something manageable. 

He can’t solve this alone. The thought slips in quietly, unwelcome but persistent, and once it’s there he can’t quite shake it. He hates it immediately. Hates needing help. Hates the idea of someone else touching this, analysing him, opening him up and seeing how badly everything is misfiring. Hates the vulnerability of it, the loss of control, the way it would turn him from a problem-solver into a problem. The thought of anyone seeing him like this, failing and frightened and very obviously not invincible, makes something in his chest twist uncomfortably.

But he doesn’t have to tell anyone. Not yet. That’s the safer option. He can handle this for now. He always handles things. This is just poison, that’s all. Something foreign in his system that needs time to be processed, filtered out, neutralised. Bodies do that. Even his. It doesn’t mean it’s fatal, it just means it’s inconvenient. He’s been stabbed before. Shot. Electrocuted. Cursed in at least three different ways across the years. He’s survived worse than this. 

A couple of days of instability doesn’t suddenly mean he’s dying. Maybe he just needs rest. Fluids. Something simple, something stupidly mundane like painkillers and sleep and not running himself into the ground for once. The idea almost makes him snort. Imagine. Vox brought down by something a paracetamol could fix.

Not telling anyone means Velvette doesn’t have to worry. She doesn’t have to look at him with that expression she’s been wearing lately, the one that’s halfway between anger and fear. It means he doesn’t have to explain himself, doesn’t have to justify choices he made twenty years ago, doesn’t have to admit that something he thought was contained is now very much inside him. 

And more than that, it means no one else gets the opportunity to sell him out. No doctors. No specialists. No well-meaning strangers with loose morals and big mouths. In Hell, information is currency, and Vox refuses to become a commodity. He convinces himself it’s strategy, not avoidance. Control, not denial. He’ll wait. He’ll monitor it. He’ll fix it himself.

He always does.

Maybe sleep will do him good, a couple of pain reliefs and water. When he wakes up everything will be okay.