A/N: I knew that this was bound to happen at one point or another. It just took some time to get around to writing something that I wanted to. There is one character I really like in the game and therefore, he is the main character in this. (I had to butcher the summary because word limit).
Tags from Ao3: Alternate Universe - Canon, something not quite right, Try to hold on to sanity, sammy is...sammy, Unhealthy Obsession, relapse to insanity, sanity and insanity fight for control, Time Loop, memories returning, fight for your life, Canon-Typical Violence, sammy goes into prophet mode unexpectedly at times, ink demon bendy is curious, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tired Henry Stein, tired and done with Sammy spouting random praises to the ink demon, and sometimes to Henry himself, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Mix of ic and ooc
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Voices.
There was a voice that spoke, tone awed yet frightened, while something snarled in close proximity.
Then, there came the crying. Begging for mercy that would not come.
Jagged, piercing pain, accompanied by more screaming. A denial of what was laid before one's eyes, or what those eyes had become in this place mired in ink.
But that hadn't been the end.
There had been escape, before the end had truly come.
For the time being, anyway.
They came back, yet always forgot that they returned, up until that point.
The accusation would come for a brief time, sharp and piercing, full of hurt and betrayal. Bitterness and resignation, soon followed by acceptance, from a soul who had then gone back to being trapped within the clinging ink that held with unnerving strength.
An immeasurable amount of time passed as the soul struggled to be free of the oddly thick, clinging well of ink. To break away from becoming just another lost soul unable to leave the well of whispers and screams of the ink that had claimed those not strong enough to leave.
Brief silence came with the sight of a bright light that, once reached, brought familiar surroundings into focus.
Back again.
Back in front of a statue in the image of his lord.
He was...
Ah, again, he would have to recall who he was. That was the trickiest step of returning from...wherever it was that he had been. A floor above him? Below?
It didn't matter, for now.
Taking a few steps, and testing out legs to make sure they would hold, he lifted his head, and came to an abrupt halt.
A sign, on the wall, with a name.
Sanmy Lawrence, music director.
A brief, sluggish wash of awareness and relief took hold of him, before gratefulness was given. Yes...he was grateful. His savior had given him his name, Sammy. Surely this was a sign that he was pleasing the ink demon with his actions.
...whatever those actions happened to be. Something to do with sacrifices?
It appeared as though his memory was a little jumbled, and Sammy would need to take a step back and wait for inspiration to strike. But in any case, he was back in what had become his home.
The music department.
It had once been a place for music, lyrics, and voices to be heard, before it had been turned into...into...
Sammy resumed walking, taking notice of a few searchers that were following him from a respectful distance. Sammy pushed through a door, and stared at the instruments for a time.
There was also an axe, in the corner of the larger room.
Ah. That weapon.
Yes, Sammy remembered now.
This was a place for creativity to thrive as best it could, for music and voices to fill these rooms. But it had also recently become a hunting ground for those lost sheep who had wandered in to this place, to become a sacrifice for his lord.
Sammy had to keep his to-be savior happy, so that He would set them free.
An echo of a scream flitted through Sammy's head, and he shuddered. By now, several more searchers had surfaced from ink puddles. They quietly watched the music director inwardly struggle to make his way through the tangled, sticky web that was his mind.
The scream vanished, and Sammy sagged against a nearby wall. He somehow...knew what that meant. His lord had come across an interloper that was attempting to lead those in this studio astray. The screaming and terrible inky darkness that had surely come for the poor lost soul was a harsh reminder of what could happen should one stray from the path set before them.
Sammy wouldn't stray, but he was sure his savior wouldn't mind him collecting his thoughts so that he could better serve His will. Those old songs...yes, he still remembered them, and Sammy would sing them, play them, as many times as was needed and required of him.
But first, Sammy needed quiet.
He needed his sanctuary. Sammy remembered that place and it would do nicely for him to be with his thoughts there.
Some time later, after the necessary steps had been taken, with instruments and projector, Sammy was in a better mood as he hummed along softly to the plucking of the strings of a banjo. He went with a staccato, as it seemed fitting for his current state of mind. Sharp and disconnected, the notes were detached from one another, making it difficult to recognize the song. Sammy played through several tunes in such a way, before he began to relax and strum the banjo as he settled on the one song he always came back to.
The sound of the music echoed around in the small room, and out the open entry way. Surely the music would please his lord, whom the music director knew wandered the halls of this destroyed place, covered in ink and mired in despair.
And yet, beneath the mask Sammy now wore, the one he had found on his desk in the image of his savior, Sammy realized that he was frowning deeply.
This wouldn't do.
It didn't feel right, somehow.
Why would the happiness fade to be replaced with something...darker and brooding?
The strumming of the strings ended as Sammy, distracted, leaned over to place the banjo against the desk.
There was something very wrong.
He was feeling...uninspired, and a couple of minutes into pondering why, Sammy was struck by the likely cause.
It was the ink.
The ink was dripping into his sanctuary, close to his sheets of music. Sheets that he still attempted to fill with notes for songs to appease the ink demon.
His savior.
But even though Sammy wanted to continue to play those old songs, he found his attention drifting for a second time, unable to shake the sound of the ink.
It was always dripping nowadays.
Never-ending.
Unceasing.
For the first time in a very long while, at least as far as Sammy could reach back into his awareness, he was distracted from his unwavering, loyal devotion.
Drip.
Splat.
Drip .
Splat.
That repetitive, horrid sound...Sammy recalled in an spark of recognition that the noise of the ink splattering down from the ceiling and to the floor drove him mad.
Or it used to.
The music director recalled that he hated the ink that encroached on his department. It was almost worse than when the stairwell would flood, because at least then, when the switch for the pump was thrown in his office, Sammy could tune out the wretched sound with music.
But now? With the state the building was in now, being overtaken with ink?
There was nothing Sammy could do about it now, because there was so much ink. But for for whatever reason, he couldn't ignore the noise now that he had heard the ink. The clarity of memory began to fade, however, like a fire slowly being snuffed out.
It was jarring.
"Sing a merry song, whistle a familiar tune along these empty halls." Sammy sang softly to himself as he shuffled through the sheets of music, careful to not smudge too much ink from his fingers onto the notes that had been written on the paper. "Be very quiet, for He draws closer, ever closer. And soon, he will set us free."
The flash of clarity came roaring back, Sammy's hands twitching as he let go of the sheets of music, allowing them to flutter onto the table, forgotten for the moment.
How long had he been trapped in this place? How much longer would he suffer in this inky abyss of a body that didn't allow him true rest?
The thought sputtered and died again as the music director shook his head and began to mutter under his breath, as if trying to convince himself that what he was doing was right. That he was following the correct path by giving his savor sacrifices to please Him, with the hope that each time, Sammy would be saved from his inky body.
"Soon He will come. He will save us all." Sammy uttered aloud, as he stood up from the chair and slipped out of his sanctuary. He stood in the doorway for a moment, before passing by a few lingering searchers, to seat himself in front of a piano.
The sound of the ink had slowly begun to work its way into his mind again, and so, in an attempt to silence it, Sammy rested his fingers on the keys, his head tilting to the side as he glanced at nearby empty chairs.
Empty.
No one had played those instruments in a long while.
Drip.
Spat.
Or had they been played?
Drip.
Splat.
Sammy couldn't help but have a memory surface then, one where he had witnessed someone familiar playing a tune to get into his sanctuary.
But there was no one there.
No one.
Only him and the other lost souls who roamed these abandoned halls, looking for salvation and untimately finding none.
But wait...
There was the ink demon. He would set them free, surely.
...What had Sammy been thinking of before? The music directors absently caressed the keys of the piano, his mind taking so many twists and turns that he wasn't sure what to believe.
Something was...wrong.
Wrong.
Like an out of tune instrument that stubbornly refused to remain tuned.
The ink continued to drip, uncaring of Sammy's muddled mind attempting to make sense of his memories. Or at least, those memories that he was able to grasp that didn't immediately slide out of his inky hands.
The ink was maddening.
Wrong.
Drip.
Splat.
It got into everything, twisting it and reforming it how the ink saw fit.
Sammy couldn't help but feel that his music was helping him cling to what little sanity he had left, but the music director knew that he was teetering on the edge.
He was also tired.
So very tired.
Exhausted of continuously fighting against all of the screaming that trickled in through the ink that surrounded his body. The madness and the sanity fought for control, the ink making it very hard to have coherent thought.
"Sheep sheep sheep, it's time for sleep." Sammy began to play the piano, his fingers dancing across the keys before him as he hummed along, occasionally singing aloud. The music director's playing went on steadily for a time, before it suddenly began to slow, with each note, until Sammy stopped altogether.
"Even without deadlines, I still am unable to concentrate and get anything done." Sammy murmured, a strength rising within him as he stood up and away from the piano. "The ink is everywhere, whispering to me. Is it Him? Will my savior come to rescue me? Or do I still need to prove myself to Him?"
No answers came, and the ink didn't stop flowing.
Drip.
Splat.
The longer Sammy stood there listening to the ink, the more he began to have some...doubts.
Something was...wrong, wasn't it? That was where his thoughts kept going back to. The wrongness he was feeling...but what was it?
Sammy slowly went back into his sanctuary and sank onto the chair. He didn't think that he was imagining the sense of something not quite right. A voice, a horribly familiar voice, suddenly surfaced unbidden in the back of the music director's mind in a faint echo.
'It really is such a shame, but it seems like you didn't come out quite right, and we just can't have that here. Just think of what the investors would say!'
Darkness followed those words, pain and agony close behind.
Screaming.
All of that screaming within the inky well. And then an...awareness.
Loneliness.
The mask.
Trying to please the ink demon in the hopes that the creature would save him.
Save them all.
Something was very wrong indeed, staring with his own inky body.
The clarity came roaring back, and Sammy sucked in a harsh breath, involuntarily taking in some ink that made him cough. This was wrong. It was all wrong, even if he was struggling to put the pieces together of why it was so wrong to be here in this state.
And then it hit him.
Sammy's hands trembled, as he brought them up to face-height to stare at three fingers and a thumb.
What...
What had happened to him?
What was...
How was this possible...?
"Joey Drew...what have you done?" Sammy whispered into the silence of his sanctuary, his words punctured by the slow dripping of the ink. "How long have I...been here?"
What the hell was going on?
Sammy's hands curled into fists at his side, an anger rising within him, more furious than before.
More importantly, what the hell had he been thinking? Had he...had Sammy actually sacrificed people that also worked in this studio, who were as trapped as he was, to the ink demon?
Sammy slid off of the stool, staggering over a few steps to go curl up in a corner of the room. The music director's hands reached up to rest against his head as his body began to quiver. Was he crying? Could he even cry in this odd inky body?
The sound of his near-silent break down drew the attention of some of the searchers that had lingered in the doorway to the sanctuary. Two of the braver ones moved closer, dragging their inky bodies across the floor to settle around Sammy, as if to comfort him. Another searcher, wearing a hat, came out of a puddle in front of Sammy, and reached out to pat the music director cautiously on the shoulder.
A few lost ones, noting that Sammy was all but immobile and currently non-violent, picked up some of the instruments that lie just outside the sanctuary. With glowing eyes that glanced between one another, the lost ones hesitantly began to play a discordant sound, some clearly never having handled an instrument before, but trying nonetheless.
The attempts to draw Sammy out of his misery through music and careful touch meant to comfort went mostly unnoticed. The music director was too visibly distraught to see what was going on around him as he curled into himself some more.
Sammy squeezed his eyes shut, or whatever the dents in his head allowed him for eyes, behind the mask he wore. Fingers lightly dug into his inky head further. He has to be mistaken...the memories had to be wrong, misremembered. But Sammy couldn't explain away the steps he had taken for the ink demon wandering this falling apart studio, and those he had lured and dragged away to offer up to the demon in a hopeless effort to escape this place.
The searcher with a hat settled alongside Sammy's curled up form, clearly at a loss of what to do, from what could be made with of its almost...concerned expression.
Sammy let out a slow, shuddering sigh, even as the searchers huddled even closer and the lost ones continued their attempts to play the instruments.
What had he done?
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This fic is mainly just testing things out but I have a plot in mind and hope that it fits together all right as the chapters go by. Just going off the idea where the characters can become aware of the loops. It's likely this has been done many times before but I wanted to write something like it while I to try to shake off the writer's block I have. As such, chapter lengths will vary.
At times, parts of this fic will be from Henry's pov, but this will only be when Sammy goes into full crazy prophet mode and needs to be saved from himself.