Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Maeve the Maneater. Maeve the Mindfucker. In shadowy circles, they whisper your name with a mix of fear and something darker—delicious anticipation of what thirty minutes alone with you might unlock. The top dominatrix in the Pride Ring, not because of brute force, but because you know how to pull the strings of your (mostly) willing victims. Your reputation winds through the city’s underbelly, tight and unyielding as a noose.

What you lack in physical strength, you make up for in complete and total psychological destruction. You don’t break bodies—you break minds, shatter the deepest parts of a person’s sense of control until they’re nothing but raw nerves in your hands.

By day, you orchestrate sessions that leave your clients begging, carefully curated, always consensual—just enough pain to bring them back begging for more. The right client can buy a taste of hell, and you offer it up with a smile.

But when the lights go out and your off hours begin, there are other kinds of assignments. The kind where consent isn’t part of the game, where the target has no idea they’re being played—until it’s too late.

And those are the ones you live for.

⊹˚₊‧───────────────‧₊˚⊹

You meet her in the middle of the night and this tells you all you need to know: something big and bad is on the horizon.

Carmilla Carmine, the infamous weapons dealer, sits across from you in her private conference room. Not a crack in her composure at first, despite calling for you urgently in the dead of night. But you know her well. You've handled a few jobs for her before—each one lucrative, each one executed with the precision she demands. You keep things strictly professional, always addressing her by her last name.

But tonight, her eyes are drained when you look close. She sits rigid at the head of the table.

The room is empty, silent except for the faint sound of a fan.

Her reputation is unshakable—an incredible mother, a ruthless businesswoman, a talented fighter. But even the most untouchable have shadows. Dark corners they can’t reach alone. And she’s never been one to ask for help unless she needs it.

"I know you like them bad," she says, her voice low, steady, as she pushes a stack of photographs toward you. No hesitation in her movements, no tremor in her tone. But you don’t miss the way her claws brush against the edge of the folder for just a beat longer than necessary before releasing it. “And he’s the worst.”

She is never one to beg, but her eyes are close. She needs this. You can see it in the tautness of her jaw, the way her claws curl.

"How bad?" you press, though you’re already intrigued. You’re a demon with specific... tastes. You like bad men, and you like making them pay.

"Evil," she replies, her voice cold, but the weight behind it tells you everything. "The Vees are all smug wannabee villains, but he’s their ringleader."

You don’t usually bother keeping up with overlords unless they seek your services. Who holds power means little when you’re busy weaving wicked pleasure in the confines of your dungeon office. Power struggles bore you; you only care to know what you must.

This is how you truly learn about the overlord known as Vox—more than just a passing face on the TV screen, more than a public figure wielding power. He becomes a threat. He has something on Carmine, some kind of leverage she can’t afford to let slip. Something that involves one of her daughters that cannot come to light.

The extermination is fast approaching, just five months away, and tension has been simmering for weeks between the stressed overlords.

She shows you more—an entire presentation on the vileness of his soul, the corruption woven into his business. Vox doesn’t just trade in influence; he’s built an empire on people’s darkest guilty pleasures, and he knows how to wield the power of attention with surgical precision.

Is there any heart in him? No. You’ve seen his type before, the kind of man who believes he’s untouchable. That arrogance always looks better broken.

You study his face in the closest photo. Vain, smirking, the kind of face that would’ve bent over a woman in the fifties, telling her she could be on TV if she just did a little something for the boss. It’s your favorite kind of man to have on his knees. If you close your eyes, you can already see it—him falling, begging for mercy, his pride crumbling as he pleads for relief.

Some people fall in love and just know. You? You choose your prey and feel them lock into place, sliding inside you like a key you didn’t realize you were holding.

"I’ll break him," you promise her, committing his face to memory. "I’ll take that memory he has of your daughter back for you."

God, you love justice.

And like all demons do, you shake on it.

The hunt is on.

You will drag the TV man to the sweet hand of judgement. You will dig your claws into his mind when he yields to you. To break a man who is a machine down to his component parts? Oh, that's poetry. That is religion.

You wrap yourself in the dark dreams of what his begging will sound like—how his voice will crack, how his arrogance will melt under the weight of your control. You savor it.

After all, it was a woman’s decision that brought Eden to its knees. Isn’t it about time people started acting like it?

⊹˚₊‧───────────────‧₊˚⊹

When you dream, a thousand electric volts lick across your skin.

All things are bound to change.

Time will not allow you to wait.

You wake with the perfect memory of his proud face.

⊹˚₊‧───────────────‧₊˚⊹

There is mafia-style violence in him. No art, no finesse—just business. How unoriginal. You peer over the spread of images in your study, a low light casting long shadows over the photos that tell the story of Vox's carefully cultivated persona. A hundred pictures of him smiling, schmoozing with hypnotized masses.

Boring. How he presents himself to his hypnotized public is inconsequential.

What you need is the stolen moments. Who is he when the camera stops rolling?

What he lacks for in artistry, he makes up for in sheer and total domination in his market. You can admire some parts of him, the ones that are like looking into a mirror. He has made it to the top.

You lean back in your swivel chair, fingers gliding over one particular photo.

Vox has changed his screens eight times over the past decade, always chasing the cutting edge. The current one is sleek, sexy—engineered to be coveted. Vox’s products dominate the market—phones, computers, drones. No rivals. You bought a Voxphone yourself, just to feel a taste of connection to this slick, smooth-talking bastard.

You unbox it now, pressing the power button for five seconds as the instructions demand. "Welcome to your new life!" The voice that greets you is unmistakably his, smooth with a practiced showmanship that sends a shiver down your spine. "We are happy to have you as part of our Vox family. Together forever." That last line, with the subtle drop in his voice, carries a menacing edge beneath the friendly veneer. It’s a glossier, sexier version of his actual tone—unsurprising. All the world is a stage for him.

But how to break him?

Your finger taps rhythmically on a photo of his snarling face, that momentary slip captured in a rare instant of frustration. A deep, delicious sting of want stirs low in your gut—a heady mix of violence, rage, and the promise of justice. Bringing this man to his knees will be the greatest pleasure you've experienced yet. You just know it.

There is always the question of whether to spare them in the end. The thought lingers, a tantalizing dilemma. Letting a man like Vox live after he’s been shattered seems like a fitting fate. What’s left of him would be a shadow, a reminder of his downfall, you hope. But that decision will come later. Time will tell.

Sometimes, you get hungry.

Sometimes, you just can’t help yourself.

Your fingers dance across the desk to the next stack of items: sections meticulously organized—Vox, his comrades, his intimate relationships, the scant pieces of his human past, and his enemies. Each piece of his life laid out before you, waiting to be unraveled.

For now, the game is just beginning.

Oddly enough, the enemies section seems thin. Perhaps Vox disposes of threats before they have a chance to become a problem. Efficient, but not flawless. Because there’s still one particular face staring up at you from the pile—grinning with demented glee.

Alastor the Radio Demon. A man back from a mysterious seven year disappearance.

It was embarrassing enough to admit that you had to buy a portrait of Alastor. There are zero digital photos, no clear videos of the one known as the Radio Demon. But Hell has its fanclubs, and where there’s demand, there’s supply. You’d found a black-market print—a fan’s rendition of the red-hued demon with that unsettling smile. The enemy of your enemy is your friend, right? Time will tell.

From what you’ve gathered in hours spent combing through interviews and footage, Vox doesn’t talk about the Radio Demon. Not openly. But every time someone comes close to mentioning something—or someone—that might remind him of Alastor, his TV screen glitches. The power flickers.

"How do I deal with competition?" Vox had been asked during a promotional interview for his business conference. His laugh, electric and low, crackled through the air. "Oh, I crush them. Nobody beats us. Nobody beats me." You would’ve been a fool to miss the subtle jab—the mug on his desk, clear as day, reading: Fuck Alastor.

Interesting. You make a note to get your best gossips on the job to dig deeper. Isn’t Vox’s dapper enemy often spotted slinking around Cannibal Town? There was always that infamous sing-along showdown between them. Virtually every recording of it had been wiped from the net—likely by Vox’s company—but you have managed to secure something that could help.

Some horny demon couple had been making an amateur sex tape and thanks be to all patient hunters, there's a TV capturing the infamous sing-along showdown in their hazy background. Their little exhibitionist session captured the entire thing—grainy but priceless!

You forward the footage to Kevin, your delightful tech assistant, knowing he’ll curse you once again for sending him on a quest to mute moans in a video. You need the song isolated, the words clear. You’re sure the way the Radio Demon triggers Vox is vital to his undoing.

Kevin will believe you—he always does, despite the absurdity of the tasks you assign him. The things you’ve had him sift through over the years? It’s no wonder he insists on using disposable computers for research. (Curiously, you’ve learned by now that amateur sex tapes have a strange habit of helping your hunts more often than you’d like to admit.)

Kevin’s an enigma. While you typically prefer to work with women, he’s proven indispensable. Of course, he has boundaries—lots of them—and has hung up on you more than once when you got too deep into "work talk." He swears you’re going to get him put on some hellish government list one day.

His boyfriend Bubs is just excited Kevin is working for the top dominatrix.

You carefully word your email to Kevin, slipping in a half-hearted apology for the inevitable flood of bad dirty talk he’ll have to wade through, and hit send.

Moments later, your phone buzzes with a preview of Kevin’s reply:

email: [email protected]

subject: your precious little musical number

body: Wow. Which one is the mark? Both of these guys are absolutely grade-A bonkers.

I kicked up the volume of the song as best as I could and ran it through eight rounds of AI-restoration. I can’t use Vox's AI API because, yeah, that asshole probably monitors every single thing that hits his servers (even if it’s temporary—doubt it, that motherfucker loves stealing data), but this should work.

Bubs says to stop sending me perverted videos or at least make them gayer.

xoxo, as always, this email will delete in 1 minute, so save the attachment now, K

You grin, clicking the attachment—titled someone-get-these-fucks-some-therapy.mp4—and quickly download it before the email deletes itself. Kevin’s taught you well enough about cybersecurity, which is why all your research stays on an external hard drive, offline, impossible to hack.

As you settle in to watch the video, you can’t help but smirk. Kevin was right—both these guys are absolutely out of their minds.

And that, in your line of work, makes for the best kind of hunt.

⊹˚₊‧───────────────‧₊˚⊹

You write a letter to the Radio Demon because you know he reads them on air. Another part of your brain makes a mental note to actually buy a radio to listen to his show if you want to torture Vox properly. You are a dedicated student.

Some hunters go big. You go subtle. You mindfuck, after all.

If Alastor triggers Vox, you need to steal a bit of his swagger.

Lucky for you, your research says he loves fan letters and questions for the air.

You write a letter in the neatest, nicest cursive you can manage.

Dearest Alastor,

Your voice is a velvet nightmare I wrap myself gladly in.

Inquiring minds must know: who is your tailor? I must know where you go.

Signed,

Your Little Watcher

The post demon comes and you send it, unmarked, directly to the radio station.

Vox stares up at you from his glossy photo. What a lucky man. He has no idea how much work will go into his utter destruction.