#and open your minds eye to the full spectrum of human emotion and potential fucked up relationships
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shipping Lucifer and Alastor but not romantically or sexually or even platonically but in a secret fourth way. enemies to enemies who hang out with each other all the time. kismesis without the sexy parts. a QPR but in this case the R stands for Rivalry. they both built their own tower on opposite sides of the hotel to avoid each other but neither of them are ever in those towers because they spend all their time in the lobby bickering. they have at least five musical showdowns a week. at first Charlie steps in to deescalate whenever it looks like they're about to actually kill each other but they're always like "we were just talking what's the problem?" so eventually she just leaves them to it. any suggestion to either of them about rising above it or trying to stay away from the other is met with some variation of "I can't back down and give him the satisfaction of thinking he won! also he's fun to piss off" Vox tries to start shit with Alastor and gets smited by the king of hell himself because Lucifer "can't let anything happen to my daughter's hotel's bellhop!" Lucifer seems down after an argument with Charlie and Alastor convinces her to talk things out with her dad who "isn't nearly as entertaining when he's moping about." at no point do they show any signs of hating each other any less. imagine if one of the most important and stable relationships in your life was based on mutual loathing.
#does this even count as shipping i hear you ask#it does if you set aside societys obsession with romance#and open your minds eye to the full spectrum of human emotion and potential fucked up relationships#i want to watch them fight forever#i love hells greatest dad and i think we should keep that energy going#hazbin hotel#alastor#hazbin lucifer#radioapple#< sorta
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Chapter 62: Reunion [Post System Shock 2 Fanfic]
Warnings; Language, cyborg horror, emotional trauma
Masterpost
Hacker peered down the corridor, mentally wincing at his sensor-enhanced sight. It was so garish it made his old Berserker visions look muted in comparison. He continued poking at his menus and their settings, patiently reducing the mish-mash of sensory data down to something he could tolerate.
That and he'd really rather not see the skeletons or fleshy insides of people he knew quite well already, thank you very fucking much. The first few times he saw Goggles after hooking in would give him nightmares. That much he knew already.
Oh there we go. Reduce deep-radar, deep-scan layers to toggle for when I want 'em...And now modify the scan modes to Moderate to Light so I'm not thinking the floor is fucking transparent even when the limbs are telling me it isn't. Yeah okay. There.
The sensory hailstorm of colors and data dropped to a near monotonous blue-green-red scheme showing heat sources, accessible machinery, systems with wi-fi, and a much better view of Goggles without all her squishy insides. Seeing all the modifications SHObeta had made to her hadn't helped his sanity much either. She was less human than either had realized, and that had been surprisingly disturbing despite his current condition.
A corner of his mind noted that Goggles knew this about herself, and this was why she had withdrawn so much during her time at his apartment. No wonder, he mused.
Moderate scan was now promptly blocked by her armor, and what he got back was information that defined a solid human body in front of him instead of...well, let's not go there.
He blinked his eyes, wondering why in fuck-all had the Super-Reaver frame decided to go rearrange the innards of his eyeballs. He'd managed to stop it from building those sensor plates over his eye sockets, but it had gone right around him and modified his eyes.
He shrugged mentally. Fix that later, just get things useable, and then find out where the damn combat HUD was so he could get at it during a fight. Or better yet, find out where the simple Visible Spectrum view was first.
Oh. There we go—AUUUGH I DID NOT SAY TO GO TO CYBERSPACE! WHAT THE FUCK IS WITH THESE MENUS?!
The world around him lay drenched in black, with fluorescent geometric shapes outlined in brilliant lines. Corridors of yellow and gold panels outlined chambers with flickering shapes and symbols around them. Lines of code flitted back and forth. Energy pulsed on the walls like a thing alive. Citadel's cyberspace looked positively boring compared to this.
Now his head hurt again, and not because of the shit he'd let drill into it to wire his brain up--
Fucking hell where's the exit? he growled to himself as he swam about the mass of confusing and brightly lit shapes. This looked more like Cyberspace shot with Stam-Up and a double dose of Berserker, then chased down with some LSD for kicks.
At least navigating here felt mostly the same. Maybe. Maybe not. He couldn't tell. He hadn't been in C-space proper since some of the newer interface softwares for his implant skipped direct cyberspace interfaces in favor of layered symbol grids. Immersion had become outdated over the last twenty years, much to his present chagrin.
After swatting around some several familiar-looking shapes, plenty of swearing, and ducking a trio of floating glitchy skulls he hoped weren't security programs reporting back to the Super-Reavers, he finally found the stop-sign shaped exit and dropped back into--
“Dude, are you okay?” Goggles asked. “You froze up for a second there.”
“Got lost in the menus, then got lost in cyberspace,” he sighed tiredly as he scrubbed at his face with one hand. “This thing's a beast. I was lucky to get the legs working as well as I did back there. Thanks for your help.”
Thank God it was Visible Spectrum Mode he'd dropped back into. He saw her smile, and sighed with relief.
He looked her over, then shook his head amid the Super-Reaver's wiring.
“Damn, those optics are trashed. Sorry about the elevator. I uh, set the speed modifier too high there. Can you see well enough to walk?”
In answer, the soldier simply pried the optics off and regarded him with her natural brown eyes.
“Blurry but decent,” she finally said. “Anyways...we're still alive, we're OK, and we're not being eaten by a mass of Super-Reavers. I'll take busted optics over that any day. How about we tell the others how you made out?”
“Sure. No problem. Y-you might wanna go ahead of me, though. I'm pretty sure I have the super-regen now, but I'm not ready to find out how much it hurts to grow anything back.”
Goggles nodded with a knowing chuckle.
“Yeah, I'll do that,” she remarked, then shook her head with a grin. “Hopefully the Stooges don't decide to grenade first and ask questions later.”
The walk to the Regen room was quiet, save for Hacker's occasional slips and slides while skittering along with his new limbs. Goggles gave him a wide enough berth as he continued sorting out the Super-Reaver's movements. After another moment's walking, she sent her signal ahead.
Goggles: Hey. We're back. Can you like, not shoot when we get there?
Moe: Hey, welcome back. Whaddya mean, not shoot?
Larry: Waitasec. Hacker was gonna get one of those Super-Reaver rigs. Right?
Curly: Yeah yeah yeah how'd you make out?
They reached the three Stooges guarding the doorway several moments later.
“Hey guys,” Hacker called out, waving with one hand. “That answer your questions?”
All three Stooges stared in perfectly synchronized slack-jawed shock. Then abruptly switched to fanged grins accompanied by soft moaning cackles.
Then Larry banged on the door with one limb.
Larry: GUYS YOU GOTTA SEE THIS
Curly: DUUUUUUUUUUUUDE THAT IS SICK
Moe: HOLY SHIT
The door slid open to reveal Dex, who peeked out, then promptly lurched backwards with a horrified scream. SHObeta darted out next, then whirled to race back into the Regen room with a gleeful screech of glitched laughter.
Craig stepped through the door, then did a double-take.
“Hey, you’re not dead! Or a zombie!”
He pulled off his optics, and looked Hacker over. He put them back on with a stunned shake of his head.
“Wow, damn that's some serious freak-ass you're wearing.”
“Tell me about it. Might need you and the Stooges to help with the menus. They're beyond ridiculous.”
“Uh yeah, sure thing,” Craig sputtered as he motioned the soldier and Hacker inside.
Goggles stepped through, then got as far away from the door as possible. Thankfully the entryway was bigger than the elevator's. After a few minutes' frantic limb positioning, Hacker hauled himself into the Regenerator room.
He picked his way to the largest patch of clear floor, then set the Super-Reaver down in a messy coil of limbs with his body sitting atop them. Only after he sat down, did Dex venture to peek out from behind a stunned Bryce.
Hacker waved, hoping to calm him down. The poor Exec-Bot shook harder than the Reaver factory's bots had when they found out Cortie was SHODAN.
A moment later, he got control of himself, and stepped out from behind his friend.
“So it did work,” Bryce remarked with an evil grin rivaling the Stooges'. “You are crazy. Good. Only way to live these days.”
Then he grinned even wider.
“So what can ya do to these bastards now?”
“Plenty,” Hacker answered with a matching grin. “All thanks to null.ethic.”
“Huh. So that bit of code is actually good for something?” Dex marveled. “The times we live in. Sorry 'bout that, Hacker. Call it a flashback to when I got blown up by one of those fuckers.”
“No worries there, dude,” Hacker softly replied, nodding. “I've done worse with my shit.”
He then motioned to the regenerators. “Anybody wake up yet?”
“Nah,” Craig answered. “Not yet. Rebecca's coming out first cause she got the least amount of damage. Mostly a mangled shoulder. Timer's got fifteen minutes left. Rod's next, Tamora's third, and then Suzi last since the Super-Reaver like, almost broke her in half. It's gotta not only rebuild her but her cyberware. Messy.”
He winced sympathetically, then shrugged. He glanced to Goggles, noting the busted optics in her hand. He rummaged in his assorted pockets, then pulled out a brand-new pair of cyber-goggles.
“From the Reaver plant's replicator,” he explained. “Had a feeling you'd need a spare again after the rat hunt.”
The soldier smiled with relief as she took the new optics and secured them to her face.
“Thanks.”
“Looks like the regenerators are making better time than the old Citadel ones,” Hacker remarked, using his Sensearound – only after turning off all the same jacked up sensor-feed bells and whistles on its viewer as well – to closely examine all the stations' timers.
“Means we won’t have to wait too long to regroup, here.”
Goggles nodded.
“Figured as much. Rebecca's the one we need for taking the Bridge the most, so with her out first, we have a better shot at a decent plan. But first...”
She walked up to Cortieball, who had watched the proceedings with saucers for eyes. Gently she lifted her from Bryce's hand, then carried her over to the Hacker.
“...I think you should get Cortie out of lockdown.”
He looked down at Cortie's face, which now had a huge grin of sheer glee to go with her huge eyes.
“Well now this is an old fantasy of yours, isn't it?” he teased with a crooked grin.
Her face remained the same save for an eager nod as Goggles passed her into Hacker's hands.
“Probably something about reaching my full potential as a cyborg,” he remarked with a chuckle. “Well once I get you out, I'll tell you about all the bells and whistles on this thing. This thing is beast.”
Goggles chuckled.
“So you figure out how they did it?” she asked. “Dumped in the ethics code?”
Hacker shrugged in his rig.
“Judging from the wi-fi menus in this thing, my bandwidth is ridic. Could transmit station-wide OSes in minutes. Chances are the ethics params went through in oh...half a second? Maybe less? The tricky part is how they got them in past Cortie's defenses”--
“CYber-r-RspaCE,” Cortie said softly, her face shifting to a somber expression. “I Look-k-Ked at My meMORieS of WHeN thEY aTTAckeD. It...it waS In CyberSPaCe. I waSN't lOokInG theERe WheN thEey caMe. All thEy Had To Do...waSss Get NEaR mEEeee-e-eE. WHICh theY D-d-d-dID. VerRrRy QuickLY.”
“Shit,” Hacker muttered, realization dawning on him. “Classic Cortex Reaver c-space fuckery. That's how they get anybody kicking around in C-space, pretty much. If you're jacked in, they can see you. That's easy enough for a normal Reaver, too. All PsychoDAN had to do was tell 'em what to do once they found you. And soon as you got distracted, wham.”
Goggles snapped her fingers in frustration.
“It's like they were planning for her to be distracted. Defending you”--
“Was exactly it,” Hacker sighed grimly. “They used my blackout against her. It was the perfect opening for them. She'd have to defend me because of how she felt about me and Citadel. The one time she wouldn't be focusing on her brain defense.”
“They used your guilt as a blind spot,” Goggles said softly.
Cortie blinked. Then her face crumpled inside the ball.
“OhHhHhh-H-HhHhh,” she sighed miserably.
Her face settled into the bottom of the ball with a long, mournful sigh. Hacker gently held her to his chest.
“It maAkes PerFEct seNSE,” she whispered. “THeY KnEw whaAT to Hit Me With, whERe, and WHeN.”
“Well now I know how they did it, I should be able to undo it,” Hacker said. “My implant's got a copy of null.ethic. All I'll have to do is go into cyberspace and pop it back into your head. The tricky part is figuring how to replicate the Super-Reavers' little dance move. Boom. Done.”
“It wiLL not bE so sIMple,” Cortie sadly explained as he settled her into his lap again. “I caN onLY speAK in THisS-s-s Form. I WIlL be MuTE theEERe. My sysTEM has ActiVaTed NumerOUS defenSEs againST beINg DIsaB-b-bBLed Or MOdifIEd.”
She paused, letting out a long glitched hiss of a sigh.
“The EthiCS PrograM UsEs theM TO PReveNT tamPerInG. DIeGo gaVE you aCCEss PaSt thoSe. You Do NOt haAVe thaT aCcEs-s-sS nOw. TheY wiLL fiGhT You. I Am ParalYZeD but the progRAm is NoT.”
Hacker blinked as he stared down at the ball in his hands.
“So I'm gonna end up fighting you in cyberspace...again?”
She nodded delicately.
“I aM So SOrR-r-rY...in aDvancE.”
Hacker groaned as he clapped a hand to his face.
“The bright side to this dark cloud is I'm going in as a Super-Reaver,” he muttered. “Which means it's going to work, regardless of whatever I end up dealing with.”
“AnoTheR thiNG,” Cortie added. “I moDifieD my dEFenseS extENSIveLy on CItaDEl and BeyoND. The EthIcs COde USeS whaAT is aVAILable. TheY...THeY arE Not For the FainT-t-t Of HeaRT. YOu wIlL HaVe to Get PaST theEM to SEND meE the Code. It mUst Get intO my MInD or It wiLL bEe DestrOYED by THeEM.”
Hacker stared at her, then groaned again. Yep. Flashback Central dipped in acid and chased down with Berserker. Par for the course.
“I picked a hell of a day to face all my nightmares at once,” he muttered. “Goddammit.”
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Lex
His name was Alexander. I called him Lex. When I think of him now, what flashes in my mind is the warmth of sunshine, the scent of a burning fire and his eyes, as clear as if he were before me now. We first meet when I was seventeen years old and he was twenty-seven years old. I was naïve, as most are at that age. I let myself be carried away with illusions of scenarios that could occur, but would almost definitely not. It was the summer of 1977 and, like most girls of about seventeen years, I desperately wanted a summer romance to blossom like the buds of the season. Intoxicated by old films and novels that depicted two intertwined minds, those moments were what I sought out; sifting through the boys I met for the appropriate one. Not realising that ten years was such an impossibly large gap to bridge between us, I had my sights set on Alexander from day one.
December 1977
My older brother, Charlie, was a youth leader that year at a six-week long summer camp located at a picturesque lake up north from where we lived, where it was hot and humid. My mother encouraged me to attend, though I seldom heeded her advice. One of my friends from the neighbourhood, Marianne, I knew would be at the camp, so, with substantial reluctance, I agreed. Singing songs and giggling girlishly throughout the whole bus ride, Marianne and I were full of summer plans. The majority of these, of course, revolved around boys. Although the camp was an all-girls prison sentence in some sense, there was a nearby boys’ camp that we would be united with for dances.
As the bus pulled in through the pines to the shimmering waters, it dawned on me that the weeks I would spend here beneath the trees could be in my favour; I may actually revel in the time I would spend at this place, Marianne by my side until I was homeward bound. As this thought emerged in my mind, Lex’s tall, lean figure stole all of my attention away, as he stood outside the cage of the vehicle, clipboard in hand, smiling dazzlingly in amusement. I am sure that I must have been gaping with my mouth open like a cod. I hastily pulled myself together as we filed outside into the bright sunlight and all the promises it held. He introduced himself as
“Alexander, one of the camp leaders,” and directed us to the cabins we would be staying in, after a little spiel about camp rules. I was with Marianne, as requested. However, my mind was otherwise occupied with the embodiment of beauty before me.
Of course I had had crushes as a young girl. There were boys who could be described as “cute” or even “handsome” whom I had fawned over. I had been on dates and lived through the agony of waiting for my first kiss, crashing teeth upon it finally becoming a reality. The feeling that materialised in me upon seeing Lex was on another spectrum entirely. The others, mere boys, could not compare to the man that Lex so obviously was. He was not nervous. He radiated maturity and confidence that I had only ever seen before in people over the age of forty years. Lex appealed to me, as everything that I was attracted to but did not know could exist in a human being.
At the campfire three weeks later, I was sitting right next to Lex, thinking about how much I wanted him, and in that moment, he never knew. It’s strange to me how I could be filled with so much adoration for him and I suspected he felt nothing back, for me. All I wanted was to reach out and touch him. I was mystified by the strong emotions that swelled in my chest when I was in Lex’s presence. At such a tender age, I had never engaged in sexual behaviour of any kind. Kissing was the extent of the experience I had in romance. The desire was there, with Lex. I suddenly felt ready and eager to sleep with a man, him specifically.
“Hey, Cadence,” he spoke roughly, “want another marshmallow?”
I was snapped out my daze, suddenly blushing at the insane fear that he could read my thoughts.
“Um, yeah, sure,” he smiled at me, his eyes crinkling at the edges.
At that point, I was aware that there was an invisible barrier between us; all the things that went unsaid and the conversations we had not had were in the way.
That same night, just hours later, I had left my cabin for a brief moment. It was after midnight and I knew I was supposed to be in bed. In the quiet of the woods, the girls around me were all dreaming. Sleep evaded me, as Lex’s face taunted me. I sat on the edge of the lake, a smooth, flat rock beneath me. I heard a rustling in the branches and every typical horror movie sequence flooded into my vision, my body warm with blood pulsing invasively through my head.
“I should report you to the director, young miss,” Lex joked as the pine needles parted to reveal his dark silhouette, outlined in the silver moonlight.
“I thought you were an ax-murderer,” I muttered, surging with relief and gratitude that it was him who appeared to me in the dead of night.
“What are you doing out here? You know it’s against camp rules,” he shook his head sarcastically.
Kissing a camp leader is also against camp rules, I’m sure, I thought to myself smugly.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I was mesmerised by the moonlight pirouetting off the lake’s surface.
“Me neither. My brain wouldn’t switch off,”
You have no idea was my internal response.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he continued cautiously, “but you look…” he paused, searching my eyes; it seemed, for the best descriptor, “dazzling,” he finished.
This was the moment that I had been longing for, for the past twenty-one days. I leaned it, his skin tantalising me, and met my lips with his. After meager seconds, he pulled away, dragging his hand over his scalp.
“We can’t – I can’t. Fuck, do you know how much trouble I could get into?” He looked torn and frustrated.
“Don’t you like me?” I quivered at his rejection.
“I’m sorry, Cady. I do like you, but this is wrong. You really should go back to your cabin now.”
He turned and walked away, more rapidly than was necessary, leaving me inconsolable, trembling and bitterly cold in the maze of black trees.
The sunshine that filtered through my window the next morning was tainted with devastation and sourness. I was not sure of how I would endure the remaining days and weeks that lay ahead of me at camp. Seeing Lex around the site was a dagger to my heart. I was ashamed at my presumptuousness and I recoiled at the thought of being bold with a man in the future. Lex possessed an alluring quality that, though I would seek to uncover in potential suitors as I grew, would never quite find.
March 1983
A wedding invitation should have been an innocent enough object. I was surprised by how much fury and regret the little piece of cardboard evoked in me. My boyfriend, Edmund, saw the invitation in the mail. I was unwilling to open it, feeling tears spring to my eyes as the words processed in my brain. Lex was marrying a girl, and she wasn’t me. He hadn’t even told me before the invitations were delivered.
The following week, I saw him, as I often did, for he was still my friend. Despite the events of my seventeenth summer, we liked each other, me more than him. We sat across the small coffee table from each other, in the living room that he would soon be sharing with a strange woman; my rival.
“I would say that I’m happy for you, but I won’t, because that would be lying,” I began, “I want you to be happy and I want for you to be with the right person to spend your life with, but I don’t want it to be her.”
“Cadence – it’s done. It’s too late for this,” he looked pityingly at me.
“Just hear me out. I’m jealous and I’m selfish and I miss you. I know that it was only a year that we were together, back then, but it meant more to me than the time that it represents. I thought that it wouldn’t last with her and that eventually we would find our way back to each other, but that didn’t happen. I still love you and I think I always will, because even if I’m not your person anymore, you are my person.”
“Cady,” he began, “Cady, you know that I loved you, but that was back then and this is now. You were nineteen. I think that some part of you liked the idea of being with me just because you couldn’t have me two years earlier, at camp. You need to accept that it’s just not going to work out between us. I think you should go now.”
I will always remember that day. Not because of the heartbreaking conversation in his living room, but because I didn’t leave. Not immediately, at least. Undeterred by his engagement, there was a fraction of him, no matter how small, that still loved me. And so I stayed, and Edmund never did find out that the child I gave birth to eight months later was not his, but Lex’s.
I named her Lexi, for her father.
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