14- Fallen Down
"For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you." – 2 Corinthians 2:4
There was no life to be found, but there were signs it once dwelled here.
The bag they fought over so passionately still held no impressions of her hands in its glaze, but it was joined upon the ground by things strewn where they never should be. One of the chairs was toppled over while two or more others had crept away as if they were taken aback by the terrible scene. The banjo's tightened lines touched the earth, the barrier of strings separating its surface from the flooring. As it lay unnaturally upside down, one of its roughened, metal tuning bits laid severed from the body to rest in front of Sammy's feet.
He stared ahead as he stood alone in the room meant for many.
Empty, empty, empty.
Empty.
Her parted lips glowed with a gentle white as the woman remained kneeling in the trough of tar, gawking at her trembling hands and the light that emerged from them.
There were many things to consider after Bendy had left her alone with his blessing. The presence of a god swarmed her entire being and gave her what was long forgotten, leaving her motionless and thoughtless besides a single reflexive press of the thumb.
Her phone rested in between her fingers, somehow whole and functioning- somehow in her grasp once more. It retained no signs of her previous brutalizing, not of its flight through the office window nor of its drowning soon after. It was the same as it was before the dark water stole it and its master returned it to her custody.
Unfortunately, the same.
1%.
She awaited in sorrow for it die yet again. It was hopeless, not worth an attempt to answer the questions that agonized her; it would lead only to the sudden, cruel cessation of her search before anything of value came to be. It would have tortured her until…until…
She didn't want to think how long it could be till she came home.
She blinked, expecting it to turn black upon her return.
1%.
She blinked again.
1%.
She rested her eyes, knowing it would be gone soon.
…
1%.
Humans weren't the only things granted eternal life by the ink. Soon she would know this could lead only to an equally immortal ache as desire and love tugged her back and forth in warfare.
It buzzed.
Steps eventually tapped into existence and at the entrance came to be papery trousers and slick limbs, barring the panels that framed her. No one would ever know if the breath from his fake lungs released relief, amazement, or horror as Sammy saw this haunting, ethereal display his had lord left for him to find.
Before him was the woman led astray from the flock. She was letting herself wade in the overflooded chamber that linked the domain of music to the gallery of coffins and pentagrams- the place where she first met him and battled over her fate. The only sound here was the slow chant of drips from the broken pipes overhead.
She was entirely still, except for…something. As he stepped forward in wonder, he saw there was an inexplicable flame upon her lap that stretched itself around each angle to encompass them; it seized her eyes and the stars they brewed were scattering down her cheeks.
She wept. This one only ever wept, it seemed, for her own lost soul.
The celestial radiance had enchanted her; her gaze stayed unblinking even as the ink sloshed in waves over her thighs when he crept closer and closer.
He did not know if he interrupted something divine. He was drawn closer all the same.
What did Bendy do here?
…What did she do here?
Their faded shadows splattered around them, trailing and surrounding Sammy in ritual; they eventually touched as he knelt by her side, unknowing, uncomprehending of what magic leaked from her palms. The tips of her hair clung to the wall, ends sticky with the blackness as she leaned against it; it spread behind her like feathers in flight.
Oh so slowly, a being resigned to the path of the fallen turned her head to look at him. She wordlessly reminded him through her spectral face the pain of the first trial Bendy required of him. She reminded him what it meant to let go.
He dared to glance down at the beam in her grasp, and there were etched words he did not yet understand.
But she knew. She knew.
After all, this was light written by her own mercy.
Once again, they marched together through the bowels of the studio, this giant beast of separation and baptism. Once again, he was a necessary tool to keep her moving. At least this time she was willing to walk; the man, however, found she stumbled so much and with such great unwillingness to keep herself upright that a simple arm lock was not enough to aid her.
Sammy was exerting his strength into a hold that came across her back to grasp her right side, a wrap that placed the back of her head under the support of his armpit and ribs. He occasionally shrugged the woman back upward into him as her occasions of weakness arose again and again.
She was still crying. To both his awe and frustration, the woman so far had shed tears more often than she spoke. In his life formerly vacant of such a basic form of expression, she must have bestowed upon him more than the equivalent of what he had missed over the years. But she had never kept it on for this long; there was always a break in the storms that brought about hasty, striking determination.
He didn't know if it was right or wrong, but had instinctively decided to seize her from the puddle of graves. There was something both glorious and deeply unsettling about the sight of her shining like a candle personified upon the old wood and the flow of spirits from the pipes.
He had no idea what it meant nor what it meant to rob her of it, and he hoped Bendy would forgive him.
Upon their meeting, at first the glow stayed in her palm and was gripped like a small book that couldn't bend to fit her muscle, but as he reached for her shoulders to free her from the ink the glimmer entirely left them with no warning- not even one last flicker or fade. They were abandoned in the darkness, and the streams on her face no longer shimmered brighter than the black that chewed their legs.
He remembered seeing letters before that moment, a flash of language. He didn't know yet they were literal letters, exchanges he always believed impossible within Bendy's hold.
There were some phrases among them that barely scraped his mind within the seconds he had beheld the scripture, rolling under her touch:
"Please."
"I can't"
"I need to."
"Hate."
These were all words from her mouth that had unnerved him sometime before, materializing onto this surface she held. For some unfathomable reason, every time he saw he had questions for her was when he was frozen by fear, barely able to move and never speak. And so this fear was translated into reality by taking her away from this place, even with no chosen destination.
Unknown to him, the woman now knew the lost boy was finally in the protection of her family once more. It had given her the strength to do the unthinkable.
The kindness of the decisions that followed birthed callousness, loathing, and a hope that they wouldn't miss her. She did this so no one would be stolen from them again.
By the grace of God, she was permitted to cut her ties before her loved ones' spears of affection fished back even an inkling of the truth.
"12 missed calls from Mom"
Mom (9:37 PM): FRANKIE PICK UP!
"2 missed calls from Mom"
Mom (9:40 PM): Frankie we found him!
Me (9:41 PM): oh my god
Me (9:44 PM): really
Me (9:45 PM): oh my god
Me (9:45 PM): oh my god
Mom (9:45 PM): We found him behind the grocery in the next town over
Mom (9:49 PM): He's scraped up on the knees and we're taking him to the doctor but Gabby looks alright
Mom (9:53 PM): He's safe
"3 missed calls from Mom"
Mom (10:00 PM): are you okay? Please pick up
Me (10:03 PM): Tell him I love him.
Mom (10:03 PM): Come tell him yourself! Were at home waiting
Me (10:04 PM): I can't come home yet
Mom (10:04 PM): What are you talking about?
Mom (10:05 PM): Answer me
Mom (10:08 PM): Frankie where are you
Mom: (10:08 PM): stop being moody and come home. im sick of it. We miss you. cme see Gabby
Mom: (10:09 PM): hes been asking to see you. Don't do this now when we need you. Dont do this to him.
Me (10:12 PM): I need to do some thinking, Mom. Having him gone made me realize some things. Im going to be gone for a while. Take care of him, take care of yourself mama
Mom (10:13 PM): I dont understand
Me (10:28 PM): I hate you. I fucking hate you. You never understood me. Leave me alone. Don't trry to find me. Ill come back when im ready
There was a subtle, green blink in the corner of her phone as the woman's mother and many others in her old life desperately called out for her; eventually the search for the person they had known her to be would die down, but only after pushing itself to total exhaustion. Sooner or later that time would come, but until then it was a plague nipping at her wrist with a spiteful, verdant scream.
Her entire existence was crumbling in the clutch of her hand this very instant.
The cold of the ink man flushed over her temple as she leaned against his bare side. It pierced like freezing ice all the way to her heart, and yet it couldn't numb it.
She realized that by her own volition, the man with nothing was all she had left.
He didn't recognize that she was not merely too weak to continue moving on her own, that his purpose in this moment wasn't only to keep her from falling to the ground again. He didn't see that she was weeping into his embrace.
Author's Notes: Two things going on- yes, the title is an Undertale reference. And also, I'm hoping for this to be the last excruciatingly angsty chapter for a while. I know I'm heavy on that stuff, but it's all kind of led to this; and hopefully this will lead to lighter, more tender interaction. I appreciate your patience as I set this up. I find it unrealistic to have them enjoy and trust each other immediately and have tried to do my best to make such a development come naturally.
Thanks for 600 views, have a happy new year!