Chapter Text
Dying sucked. That wasn’t really a particularly hot take these days, by most standards.
But apparently it wasn’t enough to just die, not for Brie. No, she had to go out with fucking rabies, after a horribly mutilated and barely-alive fucking bunny rabbit had bitten her at that stupid fantasy zoo she’d been investigating for her true crime vlog series. She’d known from the start it would be bogus, but when she had gotten there and seen these poor animals had been surgically altered by the psycho owner, she’d tried to get them out, as fruitless as that had proven. And that rabbit, head heavy with genuine fucking deer horns stitched onto it in a pale impersonation of a jackalope, had used the last vestiges of its own life to give her the bite that would claim hers.
The small vindication she felt over calling the police, the scam operation getting shut down, and the owners getting arrested for a number of counts of animal abuse that bordered on sickening, rang hollow when she started feeling sick just after posting the video all about it. She’d been convinced her shots were all up to date. She would later learn that she should have had further shots at first exposure, and even then it may not have been enough to save her. She had recorded the saddest and shortest video ever for her vlog channel, posted it, then tossed her phone across the hospital room where it clanged noisily into a garbage can, waiting for things to happen.
Yep. Dying sucked.
And as it turned out, it wasn’t even the end.
—-
Brie had been in Hell for… maybe a week? She wasn’t too sure. Time passed strangely here without clear day and night cycles. She had found her new form honestly a little offensive at first, but she supposed she was growing used to it. She still got startled sometimes by the sight of her lop-eared, antlered self in reflections and shadows. A mockery of her downfall. At least she could be grateful she was still kinda hot, her ginger hair and her curvy figure a holdover from her human life, although she lamented the fact she’d been left still needing her glasses to see. Overall though, she honestly assumed the extra features would make her more attractive to certain people. But she hadn’t wanted to stay on the smelly, crowded streets of Pentagram City to find out. Instead she had taken herself to the outskirts, finding a small wooded area that was just big enough to get a bit lost in if you weren’t careful. It was further in among these trees that she had found a very small cabin. It had been empty, mostly. No identifying features of the decor seemed to give away an owner or inhabitant. So for the last week, she’d hunkered down there, popping out occasionally to forage for food.
On what she assumed must be around the eighth or ninth day she’d spent in Hell, though, things changed.
Someone knocked at the cabin door, while she was asleep. She cursed and hoped silently that she’d left no outside indication that she was in here. She weighed her options and instead of staying motionless on the couch she’d been asleep on, she scrambled behind it.
A knock came again, followed by a voice this time.
“Alastor? Al? It’s… it’s Vox. Are you here? I just… I’m sorry to try and seek you out like this… you disappeared really suddenly last year and I thought… maybe you might be out here right now? Hiding out for the next extermination?”
Brie felt panic rising in her chest. Extermination? What the fuck was that supposed to mean?!
The voice continued outside, sounding gradually more hesitant. “Alastor, please, if you’re there, I… I just don’t want you to get caught, and I don’t want you to be alone, and I don’t give a shit if that’s what you think you want, because you always used to say that and you didn’t mean it, not really. Not when it was me.”
Another pause. Then clearly, the person outside made a snap decision.
“Oh, fuck it. I’m opening this damn door myself and if you’re really not here then I’ll have seen it with my own eyes.”
Brie clapped a hand over her mouth, desperately trying to slow her panicked breaths as the person carefully and efficiently picked the lock. The door swung open with a creak, illuminating the cabin in a vague glow. It wasn’t very light outside - did this person have a flashlight, maybe? Brie couldn’t really tell. There was a long silence as the source of light seemed to sweep the singular room, then the individual sighed heavily.
“Fuck. Where the fuck are you, Al?”
The cabin door swung shut again with a clunk, and the person audibly moved towards the couch. Brie squeezed her eyes shut and curled up as small as she could.
Then the person sat down. And a blinding pain shot through Brie like a thunderclap.
Her stupid tiny fluffy bobtail was trapped under the leg of the couch, and she couldn’t fight back the screech of anguish that ripped from her, something akin to an eagle being shot right out of the sky.
“What the fuck?!” The person scrambled off the couch, moving it forward, and Brie reached around to cradle her tail, feeling a wetness that could only be blood seeping onto her fingers. Tears pricked at her eyes and she lay in a whimpering heap, waiting for this stranger to… she didn’t know what. Kill her for trespassing? … Could you die a second time? The glow the person had brought into the cabin with them shone in her direction and she didn’t even dare open her eyes.
“Oh shit, fuck… who are you? Are you okay? Fucking fuck you’re bleeding, I’m so sorry…”
That was… unexpected.
Brie just about dared to lift her eyelids a fraction. Her glasses were slightly askew but squinting through the lens, she could just about visualise a glowing shape above her, and a body that seemed to be attached to it. Try as she might, words wouldn’t form for her. All she could feel was the pain. The glow dulled, and the figure seemed to be moving frantically around the room.
“Hold on, hold on, fuck, I swear there’s a… shit, where the fuck is it??”
The sound of cupboards and drawers being flung open echoed in the air, until suddenly…
“Ah-ha! Fucking finally.”
Brie still couldn’t move, or speak. Opening her eyes any further seemed like it would make the situation more real. So she stayed put.
“Move your hands.”
Brie panicked even more. She was already visibly shaking, and her breath started getting shallower.
“Look, I can’t fucking help you if you don’t let go of your fucking tail, so just… fucking listen to me. Please.”
Unsure of what else she could even do, Brie moved her hands. To distract herself, she tried to focus on the voice, attempting to describe it to herself. It was… authoritative. A little anxious. Strangely… familiar? Now that was odd. She didn’t know anyone in Hell. She hadn’t been here long enough to try.
The train of thought was interrupted by a feeling other than pain at last. A pair of hands gingerly moving her tail around, dabbing around with something - maybe a cotton swab? She suddenly felt very vulnerable as she realised she wasn’t wearing much, just a pair of tight sweat shorts and a tattered plaid button-down. Suddenly the object caught the wound square on, and she wailed again in pain.
“Shit, sorry, sorry! At least I know where it is now…”
A moment or two later, pressure against the wound site.
“Fuck, how do I bandage and hold the gauze down at the same time…”
Acting on instinct, Brie reached a hand back, tapping the one currently causing the pressure.
“Fuck, of course, oh my god I’m stupid, I keep thinking you’re fucking unconscious ‘cause you’re not talking… ok, take over from me here…”
A second hand gently guided Brie’s into place, then both the hands moved away. As Brie held the patch of gauze down, the hands worked away at binding a long strip of bandage around her tail. Once it was tied off, Brie finally felt like she could start to take deeper breaths again.
“Can you still move it? Your tail?”
Brie thought about that. Then she managed to give it an experimental wiggle, slow but still successful.
“Good girl.”
The atmosphere in the cabin felt suffocating all of a sudden and Brie felt herself blushing.
“Shit, fuck, that sounded… no, damn it, I didn’t mean… ugh, please just don’t fucking sue me.”
Pain subsiding enough for her to move, Brie adjusted her glasses and opened her eyes properly.
A sharp suited man with a television for a head looked down at her. He was kneeling beside her, putting things back into a well-worn first aid bag. The face on the screen looked embarrassed, heterochromic eyes unwilling to fully hold her gaze, and on the already blueish glow of the tv, a pixelated smattering of cyan glowed across the space where one would expect cheeks to be.
“Why would I sue you…?” Brie asked quietly, very confused.
The display of the tv glitched in an almost unnoticeable way. The face was now showing what seemed like equal confusion to Brie’s own.
“I mean… People usually try to, if I do something stupid like all this. It doesn’t work most of the time. Basically any lawyer in Hell can be bought off by whoever’s got more money. I’ve done it enough times to know.”
The voice had a different energy now, a sort of easy confidence. Brie sat up, resting on her knees to avoid putting extra weight on her tail.
“Uh-huh…”
Something came rushing back into Brie’s mind, something that the man had been saying before he even walked into the cabin.
“Hey so… what the shit is an extermination?”
“Oh, fuck, you must be really new. When did you get to Hell?”
“Like… a week ago? Give or take a day, anyway…”
“Hang on…”
The face vanished from the television screen and in its place a video began to play.
“VoxTek Productions presents; Angelic Extermination; what the fuck is it and how do I survive?”
The video lasted maybe five minutes, if that. Brie looked dumbfounded by the end of it.
“So there’s too many people in Hell and they’re just gonna… double-dead us? That’s… fucking insane.”
The face returned to the screen. “No shit.”
“So this year’s extermination is approaching. And you…” Brie hesitated. She didn’t know if mentioning that she’d heard even more of what he had said outside was a good idea. But what did she have to lose? “You were looking for someone here. A friend?”
A laugh escaped from the man in front of her, but it was strained. “Something a lot more complicated than a friend.” He paused. “He disappeared. About a year ago. But there’s no way the angels got him. He… he’s the most powerful sinner in all of Hell. And he’s smart, too. So if he’s not here… I guess wherever he’s at, he doesn’t want to be found.”
He spun around, and sat down against the wall next to Brie, the pair of them facing out into the cabin. The two sinners sat in silence for a long moment.
“Sorry you got here and maimed a stranger instead.” Brie eventually joked.
This time he let out a genuine laugh, and any remaining tension between the two people in the cabin rapidly dissipated.
“Yeah, really not my style usually. I at least get consent for the real freaky shit first.” he choked out through laughter.
Brie found herself laughing too.
“So when you heard me being an idiotic sad sack outside, did you hear my name?”
Brie racked her brain. “Uhh… you know what, I think whatever brain cell I stored that data in got shorted out when you crushed my tail.”
“Oh ha ha, real fuckin’ cute.” His hand lazily reached out and pushed against the tip of one of Brie’s antlers, and she swatted it away lightly.
“Hey! Hands off the merchandise, you already got a free sample today!”
“Ugh. Fuck you.”
Maybe, she thinks idly. The tv head thing could be a challenge, but he had a really nice body…
“Anyways. It’s Vox. My name’s Vox. CEO of VoxTek.”
“Well shit, my guy, you weren’t kidding about having money. I’m guessing that wasn’t the name your parents gave you?”
“When I was alive? No. Could you imagine a kid named Vox in the fuckin’ 1900s? I gave myself the name when I got to Hell.”
Brie furrowed her brow. “Do a lot of people do that? Change their name in Hell?”
“Some.” Vox replied, shrugging. “Depends how desperate you are to start over in eternal damnation.”
Brie considered that for a moment. She’d never really liked her name. She’d had to say “Brie, you know, like the cheese” one too many times in her years spent alive. She wondered what she could call herself that didn’t just sound like she’d pulled it out of thin air. She glanced across the room, catching her jackalope-esque reflection in the dark window in front of her.
“I’m Jax.”