The prophet becomes shepherd for the cartoonist.

/

Everyone had an instrument. Everyone. From the simple triangle to the most impressive pipe organ. As a musician since childhood, Sammy Lawrence could pick the right one for anyone. He could play a tune that fit a soul to the letter if given the chance!

Henry was easy to pick from the repertoire of his inner orchestra. Henry, the resilient and stoic cartoonist, was the G minor chord on a steel stringed guitar. More work went into that chord when it came to finger-work than some would think. But once that work was put in, it was an exquisite, melancholy sound.

That word fit Henry too; melancholy.

Agonized as he was in his current form, Sammy wasn't oblivious to the pain of others. He'd been the guiding light to so many searchers and lost ones. He knew pain better than he knew himself.

Henry swung the ax with a skill born of forced repetition. He sighed from frustration more than exhaustion. He cleaned his glasses when he needed to do something, and he wouldn't slow down to eat, popping the tops from cans and tossing them quickly.

Exhausted. Driven. Melancholy.

Henry.

It didn't help that the musician was remembering… bits. Just bits. Nothing enough to jog anything more than disappointment. Not enough to give him more than what the last memory gave. The worst thing was knowing who he had been, but only just. Like he had been given a mere pamphlet to take the place of a novel. He needed his chapters, not just his highlights.

"Hey, my old desk." Henry gave the desk a fond smile. "I wasted so much time here." He'd stopped questioning how his old office kept appearing on different floors about the fifth time it happened. The room was always the same as he'd left it thirty years prior.

Sammy strode into the room, masked face taking in the small space. Desk, lamp, Bendy drawing, chair, a door… why did he know that door? "Where does that door lead?" asked the ink man as he walked towards it.

The cartoonist shrugged. "Supply closet. You can look in there if you want."

"Mm." It couldn't hurt. The ink man twisted the knob and pulled the door open-

Henry merely glanced up when Sammy Lawrence bolted into his office and stared ahead with wild blue eyes.

"Hide me."

"Mm. Supply closet." He knew better than to ask at this point. The composer had his moments of madness, and Henry was used to being the port in many a storm.

The blond made it in two long strides and shut the door quietly. Not even half a minute later, Joey Drew popped in.

Funny. Neither of them knew how to knock.

"Henry!" Joey drew out the name in a slow and happy greeting, but his smile was tight. "Say, old friend, you wouldn't happen to have seen a certain musician come by here, have you? I need to discuss something with him about the upcoming cartoon!"

Henry shrugged. "I've been here all day, Joey. No one's stopped by."

"Darn." The mans mustache twitched. "That Sammy Lawrence has pulled a Houdini. If this newest cartoon is gonna hit theaters on time, he needs to stop fooling around and hop to it."

"What's the holdup?"

"His music is on par with what I'm looking for, but it's just missing… something." Joey frowned at the cartoonist. "You sure you haven't seen him?"

"Wait. He's the tall, thin, blond man, right? Ponytail?"

"That's him!"

Henry pretended to think, eyes glancing at the supply closet briefly then back at Joey. "Oh, that one. I think he was heading to your office? Or that way, at least. I think he went by a minute or two before you came in."

Joey grinned and slapped Henry's shoulder a little too hard. "Knew I could count on you! Keep up the good work!" He turned on his heel and headed out of the office without even a thank you. Not that Henry expected one.

"...you're safe, Mister Lawrence." Henry called out when the footfalls faded.

The supply closet popped open and a scowling Sammy emerged. "Thank you."

The cartoonist leaned back in his chair and quirked a brow. "I didn't realize Joey was hounding you so bad."

The blond gave a sharp bark of a laugh. "He loves to tell me he loves my music, but there's always something missing. He can never explain what it is until something else is snipped, bumped, or cut." Sammy glanced at Henry and his expression relaxed from frustrated to something a little calmer. "Don't misread this. My life is my work and my work is my life." He took a slow breath and ran a hand through his hair. "But if Mister Drew has me rewrite this single bit one more time I will explode and take half this building with me."

Henry set down his pencil, brows furrowed. "Joey can be a bit much-" The musicians glare cut him off. "Okay. He's a pain most of the time." The cartoonist adjusted his glasses and smirked. "Here's an idea. If you have free time, pop by my office and look at the pencil tests. If you have an idea what's coming, you might be a step ahead of Joey."

The slender man blinked. "I'll take any offer if it means I get some quiet." Hands folded behind his back, he leaned over the desk to observe Henry's latest work. Bendy, with a hand to his stomach, flat on his butt and grinning at something to the left. Such a cute, lively pose. "You draw beautifully."

Henry smiled. "Thank you. You play beautifully."

"I know." Sammy stood and stretched with a series of pops. "But I'd best get back to the music room before anyone thinks I'm playing hooky."

"Come back any time you need a place to hide."

"Noted."

Back at the moment, tremors shook Sammy. Such a simple, vivid memory. Something inconsequential to the matter at hand but- well if it were inconsequential why did it crop up?

"Sammy? Find something?"

Henry's voice pulled him back to the studio. He turned, holding the wrench at the ready. When Henry didn't make a move to raise his ax, Sammy shuddered.

"I used to hide in here."

The cartoonist looked at Sammy over his glasses. "I know. You'd watch me draw upcoming films to keep Joey from ambushing you."

"You had a talent to your poses, a puff of life to your creations that made putting music to them so fulfilling. I could feel your excitement when you'd show me your latest pencil tests." The ink man tilted his head down in question. "That… makes me wonder. Why did you leave something you loved?"

"Uh..." Henry pulled off his glasses and cleaned a lens on his shirt. "I had my reasons. My wife was pregnant, I wasn't being paid enough for the hours I worked, and Joey-" He took a breath, feeling his face heat up from the memory of that anger. That betrayal. That threat. "Joey took all the credit, I did all the work."

Sammy tilted his head. "Be glad you weren't turned into a monster."

The cartoonist turned and left the room, mumbling bitterly. "At this rate, I'm one already."

Sammy's head tilted the other way, and he followed Henry out of the room, wrench swinging freely. "You're human, save some ink spatters and a strong aversion to staying dead."

Henry cracked his neck but didn't slow down. "I've killed off more searchers than I can count. On more than one occasion I've killed you when Tom didn't show up in time."

Sammy shrugged at the cartoonist. "Mm. They're more ink than man, you know."

"I've still killed people."

"Oh… you realize that no one's died because of you, don't you, Henry?"

Henry turned and scowled. "How am I supposed to know that?"

Sammy huffed, arms spread in question. "You seem inclined to not ask questions and just assume you're terrible!" Sammy thumped the wrench to his free hand. "Searchers don't die. They go back to the ink. Lost Ones like myself are much the same, but we lose more of ourselves each time we go to the ink. We were all human once." His focus went from Henry to the rafters above. "But a few blows with an ax won't do most down here in for good. Not really."

Henry furrowed his brows. "But what about Alice and my Boris? The Butcher gang?"

"Clones are… different. I don't know how. Butcher gang are clones without souls. Your Boris and that mad angel have souls, but not their bodies. Their real bodies… a clone without a soul was never alive. Not by your standards. Searchers are already too far gone to count as human anymore. Everything they were is inside the Ink."

Henry relaxed a bit, but had a new question. "How do you know this, Sammy?"

The ink man lay a hand over where his heart would be, finding no horror in the silence under his palm. "I was there when the ink machine was built. I was there when pipes burst overhead and showered me with black. I was there when walls were torn down for more pipes." He lowered his hand. "The ink drove me mad. One drop in my mouth and I was lost. An accident, but an ever-lasting one. An addiction that ran deeper than nicotine, caffeine, or cocaine can delve. The twisted angel isn't lying when she calls the Ink a sea of screaming voices. But those screams mean… life." His fingers tapped their slow pattern as his mind slowed. Sammy's eyeless gaze fell onto Henry once more.

The cartoonist drew in a slow breath. "...thank you."

"For what, little sheep?"

He smirked. "Clarifying. It helps. You help."

Oh. The ink man puffed up a little at that.

They said nothing as they left Henry's old office, both of them feeling a little better about what they were facing. There was nothing to discuss, not after seeing the old drawing desk. The only sounds were Henry's footsteps and Sammy's sloshing stride. The Ink man lead, several strides ahead, wrench at the ready.

Henry pondered getting Sammy an ax of his own. He was a madman when wielding it, but finding a second ax in this place was harder than getting a functional tommy gun. So, mind alert but prone to wander, Henry did what any cartoonist would when there wasn't much else to do; figure studying.

Sammy never strayed far forward, never over six paces from Henry. The banjo strapped across his back had seen better days, but looked in working order. Sammy, however… he had human form under the ink and overalls, but not how Henry remembered him. Then again, the Sammy Lawrence he knew hadn't wandered the studio shirtless or ink-stained.

The ink, that inky, dark abyss Sammy had decried it as so many times had its own, twisted beauty to it. Solid, but slick, like oil on blacktop or the feathers of a grackle. The amber lights of the studio shed indigo highlights on Sammy wherever he stepped. His shadows were blacker than the night above the Bronx. Built like a man who had been at the railroads his whole life, not behind the podium or at a piano.

The ink man stuck out an arm and Henry halted before they'd collide. They'd come upon… the lunch room? It wasn't this far down… was it? For the life of him, the cartoonist couldn't remember what floors the damn place kept showing up on. But, Sammy.

Sammy reached backwards and grasped Henry's arm. "He's near." No sooner had he spoken it than the walls pulsed with rings of black up ahead. A hiss shuddered through the open air above.

The grinning beast leaped from a deep puddle and thundered unevenly at them. No where to go and nothing to do but fight.

Henry could only dodge by the time the Ink Demon had him cornered and get the occasional swing with his ax. It had little effect but to make the thing shake its head or stumble back, but it kept coming. Mismatched hands grasped and a grin that was etched into the cartoonists mind was mere feet or mere inches from him. No blow of the ax stalled the beast for long.

Sammy wasn't good with a wrench, but by heaven he was trying! The ink man swiped the sharp tines of the wrench across the spines of the Ink Demon, earning a grinding screech and a mule kick to the gut for his efforts. The ink man let out a hoarse grunt as it flung backward him.

Henry lost track of Sammy somewhere between the demon kicking the poor guy and the demon throwing Henry into a wall.

Now that? That hurt like hell. It took serious effort after so many loops for Henry to register anything on the pain scale. He'd probably rate being hurled at a pipe-laden wall somewhere between having a cracked molar and being put through a meat grinder.

So. Maybe a seven on a scale of one to ten.

Between the encroaching darkness of his ruined creation and the stabbing ache shooting across his back, Henry's tinnitus kicked up. Great! A shrill ringing in his left ear and the faint but distinct sound of a banjo would accompany this death.

...wait. Banjo? Henry lifted his head and looked blearily around for some sign of the musician. Where the hell was Sammy?

He caught sight of the ink man from around the Ink Demon's club foot. Down a ways at the end of a long, crooked hall stood Sammy Lawrence, and he was playing his banjo with terror-fueled fury.

Bendy noticed and turned, letting out a grinding noise upon spotting the musician. He forgot Henry on the floor and raced after Sammy, who was playing the most furious rendition of The Cuckoo that anyone had ever heard.

The Ink Demon got halfway down the hall before Sammy turned and broke into a sprint, still playing and never missing a note.

Henry didn't think to get up until he couldn't hear the music, and even then he didn't budge. He'd clasped the ax so tightly in his right hand that his fingers ached. Moving at that moment wasn't a wise idea, but the pain of being flung into a wall at the speed of 'get bent' would stun even the hardest of men.

"Well!" Sammy called out from a loft above Henry's head. He was in one piece and pleased as punch about it. The broken Bendy mask peered down at Henry from its perch. "I can safely say that ended better than I expected."

Henry chuckled lightly, shaking his head. "Let me guess, one of those sigils?"

"Nonsense." Sammy preened, arms crossed over his chest. "I ran track in high school." He paused and his arms fell open. "I… remember high school. Of all the things to come back!" He finished with a laugh, a hand to his head. "Oh. Of all things!" He let his arm drop, tilting his head at the man on the floor. "Are you alright?"

... really? The cartoonist sighed and shrugged limply from the floor. "The Ink Demon backhanded me into a pipe wall-"

Sammy seemed to enjoy leaping railings, since that's just what he did. He sprinted to the man and hit his knees beside him. "Any breaks?"

"My pride."

The prophet huffed an unsure chuckle, but the worry didn't fade. "Can you stand?"

"Yeah, just- need a minute."

Sammy nodded, mask fixed firmly on Henry. When the minute passed, he hummed in thought. "I can lift you, you know."

Hazel eyes went wide. "No, I can-"

Sammy shifted to the balls of his feet-the boots were wonderfully grippy! -and slid an arm beneath Henry's knees with one around his back. He tilted the man until he was certain his feet were firmly on the floorboards, but left an arm around his shoulders… just in case, and only in case. His touch left blackened smudges across the mosstone flannel shirt and tan pants. "There we go."

Henry frowned, but found his balance. His back still hurt, but now they could get moving.

"Maybe you should rest," Sammy murmured, arm still slung across Henry's back.

The cartoonist glanced at Sammy over his glasses. "There's nowhere safe from the Ink Demon, save for Boris's hideout and the little miracle stations." He couldn't count the times he'd slept in a miracle booth with all his fingers and toes. Not comfortable, but worth the shut eye.

The prophet adjusted his grip. "I will find one, my little sheep."

Henry chuckled at the nickname. So much for just being Henry. "I'll be fine."

"He slapped you into a wall." What was it with slapping people into walls?

"He kicked you in the gut."

"Yes, there's no need for a replay." The ink man waved the man he held up with his free hand. "But a booth…"

"Are you okay? You went flying." Henry wasn't… opposed to being helped. His back was still in some serious pain, but he was sure he could walk on his own.

Sammy half dragged the man out of the room to a hallway. "I've had worse." At least the blow hadn't shattered him back into a puddle. Who knew what he'd lose clawing his way back out of the ink? Sammy hung a left and found only more hallway. "Are there more booths on the lower floors?"

"Sometimes. Depends on the loop." Henry remembered past loops with Sammy helping him, but the ink man only barely did. He'd pop in and out to check his progress, distract a Butcher Gang member, but he wasn't this… hands on. But those loops had Sammy serving Bendy by helping Henry, not helping Henry to save himself. It was hard to call the poor creature selfish, considering how this had gone. "You've met the Projectionist before I came along, right?"

Sammy didn't pause in his crusade to find his companion somewhere safe to sleep. "Not on good terms. What was his name?"

"Norman Polk."

... Sammy knew the name, but it meant nothing right then. "I'm sure I'll remember when it's least convenient." Another turn, and there sat a booth in the corner at the farthest end of the hall. "Ah! What luck."

Henry patted the ink man's shoulder, not caring about the black tacky marks on his palm. "Good. There a clock around here?"

"...why?" Sammy took the ax from Henry's easily broken grip and slid the handle into a loop on his overalls, blade facing backwards.

Henry shrugged a shoulder and instantly regretted it. He winced but managed a smirk. "I can't sleep for long. We have to keep moving."

The Bendy mask made no change, but Henry could sense the disapproval of the wearer.

Henry slid out from under Sammy's inky arm and staggered to the booth. It wasn't easy to sleep sitting up, but he'd done it before. Pressing himself into the left corner, he waved the ink man over.

"Mm?"

The man gestured to the empty half of the bench in the booth. "Come on. You need a break, too."

Saying nothing, the prophet pushed the door to the booth closed with the toe of his boot.

Henry gave the rectangle gap in the door a flat glare. "Really?"

"I can't protect you from within the booth, my little sheep." The Prophet stared into the booth, the Bendy mask pressed to the wood tightly. "Sleep. I will wake you soon enough." With that, the ink man moved out of sight.

The cartoonist breathed out a sigh and closed his eyes. It seemed good to sit down, even on a hard surface.

Outside of the booth, the prophet stayed ever alert. The shepherd to this lone sheep wouldn't stray, but he needed to do something besides stand guard. He could sense that the Ink Demon was so very far away. Down near the vaults, so deep down below, where ink churned freely and lost souls screamed and wept for freedom as the grinning monster lurched through the deepening black.

In his head, the whispers grew into a pain like brain freeze that had no build up.

Henry's steady breathing from within called the musician back from the brink. Henry was still there. Henry wasn't dead. Sammy had a job to do…

But seeing was believing. The ink man turned to peer into the box. The faint amber lights of the studio cast the sleeping man in a warm glow. How did he sleep when the light fell across his eyes?

The ink man gasped silently as something long dead unfurled inside of him. Not a feeling, but the echo of one. It felt familiar, but he didn't quite know it. It felt warm, whatever it was. Sammy had known and liked Henry back when the studio first started, but now… the echoes of his past feelings couldn't be named and he couldn't stand there watching the cartoonist sleep the pain away. Something told him that watching someone sleep was… uncouth.

But he did have his banjo.

Ever watchful, but with a sense of familiarity thought long dead, Sammy Lawrence leaned against the side of the booth and softly plucked out the banjo portion of The Lighter Side of Hell.

/

Sammy was going to play Dueling Banjos, but that song didn't come out until 1954 and Sammy has no way of knowing it. This may be a fictional universe but timelines matter to me!