24- The Knight
"Deliver those who are being taken away to death, and those who are staggering to slaughter, oh hold them back." - Proverbs 24:11
Someone found a door heavy with locks wide open with no one in sight. He heard a mutter in the distance, the machinery down the hall muting a scream.
As Sammy started to run as fast as he could, he finally touched upon the total panic and vexation of a word the woman had uttered many a time:
Shit.
"I…"
There was so, so much Francine couldn't fathom that had arrived regardless. The smile ahead had widened, a portal that housed two souls. Who is this? …Why is this? How can they possibly stand before her? How do they even exist?
Surely, this one was different than the prophet- much more solid, the woman observed. The only sign of molding was the pliable stretches of flesh that clawed into the left side of their face. Alice Angel's meticulous sculpting had paid off, in that sense, and hid most of an eternity of scarring, mutilating surgery. Besides that?
Alice saw the mortal's head lift up and down and its eyes shudder with awe. They responded with tender pity.
"My cherub," the cartoon began with the softest wisp of a breath, "look at you!"
Like a child, Francine's shoulders automatically twitched into her own view, and she started to investigate with a twist of her arms and hands. What was she supposed to be looking for?
"You're a complete mess!"
And the prophet's sheep discovered this to be true. The black, rotting carcass of a searcher was splattered all over her body, sharp spots against her smooth hide, soiling her second shirt so soon after releasing it to the elements. She felt she was a mess before that, she had to admit. Hair roots sticky with ink, and frizzy with abandoned care. Skin itchy, flaky, and pimpled. Face sore with the effort of shouts, making her eyes sting with every blink.
"Come here."
As she bathed in the angel's light, the woman puckered a frown and unconsciously gripped her wrist. Something didn't feel right. Why wouldn't Sammy mention…- and indeed, they must have been- …another human being?
The draw of those last three words was what drew her in.
She thoughtlessly got close. Very close. A round nose almost touched the small cracks in the pane of glass between them, each small line revealing how the window stood against time- a delicate barrier that somehow weathered the black storm of immortality with only a few holes to show for it. Francine had to crane her neck to look up at this person.
She found she had unwittingly lifted her hand towards the being much taller than she, exuding otherworldly glory and possibility under a spotlight within this cage of a recording booth. The seraph's face softened with a sigh and two hands rested parallel between their owners, only separated by the window between them. Their palms only felt the ridges of old glass, and yet it was as if they were holding each other so soon after they just met.
"We…" the being began with great longing in their chest, "…deserve so, so much better."
And although "better" meant drastically different things to them both, Francine found herself in agreement. However, something caught in her throat- not a tickling inquiry but a coarse, scratchy one, one that hurt to contain like sandpaper down her windpipe.
"…Alice?" It was a statement of both the affirming of discovery and the begging of questions.
"Yes?"
"I… I just…"
Francine was finally fully taken by the first mystery that enraptured her, the first thought since she heard the siren's call. A squint fell to the floor and lips separated, taking too long of a moment to find its voice for the angel's liking. Indeed, something was not right, and Alice started to perceive this, too.
She would soon utterly despise what this silence held at bay.
"He…he never…" The woman didn't notice a sharp twist in the angel's face, every detail of lulling hope becoming that of dawning revulsion. "Sammy never…told me about anyone else."
…
…
…
"What?"
"S-Sammy. He didn't-"
"WHAT?!"
Right where their hands had met suddenly came crashing down the full strength of Alice's fist. The utter brutality of it sent Francine reeling back and she consequently tripped over her feet, falling onto her backside with a guttural whimper of simultaneous pain and alarm. As she beheld the fury of the irreproachable, both their sides scowling instead of just one in utmost ferocity, shards of the window had scattered at her feet with light cries upon the floor.
Something had overcome Alice. Every feature of royal abundance- of unwavering pristineness- was now a feature of profane, burning anger. Unknown to them in this instant of shattered amazement, Francine and Alice shared the same thought:
What in god's name were they supposed to say to THAT?!
And how much it terrified them both.
…A shuffle against the floorboards a ways behind the mortal had interrupted their confrontation.
The woman suddenly saw Alice's chin lift; it now ignored the human now sprawled behind remnants of the glass barrier. Somehow, this deep, penetrating, unwavering hatred in the angel's eye grew, and it was released in the most haunting and haunted of voices.
"…You."
Once again, despite being so dark himself, every light in existence knew how to crawl over Sammy's oily form and make shapes out of shadow. The flickering of tv screens put an ethereal glow over the mask of his master, and thank his lord that it was there in his stead as he faced the seraph.
The worst had happened. The absolute worst had happened.
It was before his very eyes.
"FRANCINE!"
He without hesitation threw his upper body forward to lunge for the sheep, waiting for the arms of a savior, a protector against the wrath of those fallen from heaven.
"Sammy," a different voice replied. It was trying out the word, as it had been long lost to time and scorn. She had refused to use it. She refused to grant him that dignity; it was only fitting, seeing he refused it for even himself.
He wasn't the man he used to be, and was never the man she thought he was, after all.
And suddenly he too was frozen like the lamb that waited for him just a few feet ahead. As he stood in the entrance of the theater, arm outstretched, the mere whisper of his name in that voice was enough to stop him.
Mouth agape, the woman could only sit in shock as the siren took him too.
Alice's cutting frown suddenly slid into a grimace- a pained grin.
"You found another toy, didn't you?"
What?
"Another plaything that you'll praise and rise only to bring crashing down." Her right cheek twisted in memory. "And you'll LAUGH, and you'll LAUGH, and you'll-…"
She gently banged against the glass one more time, a few more of its chips twinkling to the ground, and her head dipped. Light chuckles turned into breaths of sobs.
"I can't believe I thought I found someone…someone from above…" She gasped heavily. "Someone to help me reach perfection." She inhaled with a sniffle before continuing. "But…" Alice forehead lifted slightly, and a sliver of her eye and her hole could be seen, pointed directly at the woman like a dagger. "You're not any better than the errand boy was, are you?"
Once again, this hatred turned towards Francine. Underneath a swamp of dark hair, a papery eye pierced its veil and pinned the woman where she lay like a butterfly displayed on a cork wall. It was a look of someone feeling the most profound of betrayals. She flinched when the angel began to pull back her upper body, the open wound of her face revealing a glimmer of bare teeth.
"'Sammy!' 'Sammy!' 'SAMMY!'" she suddenly screamed again, the word fanning flames inside her heart till it emerged like a dragon, coming for the sinners perched at her feet. Just as suddenly, she calmed, and fire became stinging ice. "…I haven't heard that name in a very…very…long time." She looked back up at the ink man once more, right eye pinched in disgust. "I thought you gave that name to our 'savior.' You know, like everything else about you?" A small huff roughened her throat, and her next statement was so low with contempt that it was hardly audible.
"Not that you had much to give in the first place."
That word- "savior"- arrived so heavy upon her tongue that in that second, one could almost feel the ink demon in the walls- as if he listened, as if he knew, as if he replied. If he did, however, no retribution would come just yet.
As the angel alone was briefly enraptured with apprehension of their god, Francine finally threw her head back to look at Sammy. She remembered that time she had found that horrible collage of pictures that drew up a monster in the safehouse- how she screamed and he came, how he immediately pulled her to his side- his innate caution.
He only could stand behind her now, only capable of complete and utter silence.
Something was deeply, deeply wrong. More than how greatly wrong this seemed before.
"…S-Sammy?"
He would not reply. He stood still as he had each time something new was revealed to him. The decades he lost coming back one grain of sand at a time had held enough weight to sink him into his intermittent darkness.
And at this, knowing the prophet's nature- spotting his unusual lack of never-ceasing bouts of religiosity that was spewed even in his boundless, pitiable fear of her- a terrible, regretful idea came into the angel's heart; she had grown sick with his lack of response, of his denial to even argue the existence of his sins to her, and so her next taunt would change her forever.
"Don't you remember? Don't you recall your friend? The angel?!"
It was said with a poisonous smirk that faded into an open frown, lips tugged further and further by dread with each passing second of nothingness. He only stood. He only stood.
After all he did to Susie, how was stillness now all within him to do!?
…No, he was dripping to the floor as well, wasn't he?
Each splat that ran down from his palms echoed an admission of unbearable, overwhelming fear. Once again, the surface of his abs slid over the waistband of pants, a container that barely kept his legs together in the first place. Precipitously, the angel glimpsed that it wasn't only fear of her that had corroded his form.
To her horror, there was finally an understanding after all these years of hell together what the woman upon the floor had discovered within a matter of hours.
"Why- why don't…you…" Her voice quivered, having never felt before such an incredible toss of her heart to ground, and it felt like these two had come to stomp it into the cracks of wood, joining the small capillaries of ink that brought the studio its infernal life. Suddenly, everything about Sammy's callousness made sense.
And it was only hiding all this time because she refused to call him by his name.
"You don't… You don't remember, do you?"
A look of surprise then tore into the deepest, most afflicted scowl.
"…Damn you."
And that was it. All that she could muster. All that she could say to the evil frozen at her feet, encompassed by her broken glass.
Abruptly, she turned her back to the disciples with a fling of the arm. They barely heard her speak, the air around her thick with revelation.
"Leave."
The two unholy beings in her presence felt hefty alarm toss onto their chests. They were gagged with fear, and neither moved even an inch. Of course, this quiet could never last.
And so the angel spitefully crooked back around to face them, and two voices merged to create an unbearable volume, one last roar of a lioness desperate to lick her wounds in peace.
"LEAAAAAAAVE!"
Francine instantly found the strength in her limbs to scramble up and flee like an animal of prey, her feet blessed with the power of instinct. She didn't run far, however, as in front of the exit stood a guard.
Even as the angel bid their release- an act of mercy to the people who deserved none- Sammy was unmoving, solid in place like a statue. Francine stared up at the sentinel, his mask greyed out of reality as she knew it by the light of the cartoons that framed the shrieking angel, who had casted them back to their personal hell so they may be absent from hers.
His face rested behind this layer of prayer and protection, unseen- an armor steeled against the pains of his past.
The clatter of the projections behind her back began to beat her heart and fill her with panic. She heard the angel gasp in preparation of another command; they could not wait a second longer for his smothering memory to give him back.
She took Sammy by the arm and hoped against hope that was enough.
Thank God it was.
He willingly, mindlessly ran behind her. A silhouette bellowed at them with all their being as they fled into the light. A lifetime of ache seeped into every corner of the studio, and it was shaken with their pain.
Alice didn't give chase, but they didn't bother to check. The sheep dragged the shepherd over the stairs, through the lounge, and into the maze of machinery. Her legs only gave way once the walls suffocated them just a touch less. It was a room with a vent where long ago a dog and an animator parted and felt the anxiety of separation; now it held the anxiety of union.
The disciples stood together, panting for entirely different reasons.
She stared at him in disbelief, numb from the many questions and possibilities that their encounter with Alice Angel wove into the strings that tied the mortal and the walking corpse together. At first, this was just enough time for her to soak the horror in, but…
She eventually saw that even after fleeing the scrutinizing glower of the angel, he still hadn't the ability to do anything at all. He wasn't moving. He wasn't speaking. Merely enveloped in his own trauma.
Where was the yelling? The scolding? The questioning? Heck, as uncharacteristic as it would be, even the consoling? In the very least- dear God- try to EXCUSE any lies!
Where…
Where was he?
Desperation flashed over her eyes. "S…Sammy? What the heck just happened?!" Bitterness crept into her tone. "Who the FUCK WAS THAT?!"
Nothing.
"SAMMY?!"
She grabbed his overall straps and jerked him towards her. He simply flopped, some of his body flecking droplets onto her skin and her shoes. His chin tilted down with the shake and angled at her, but it was not a seeing gaze. Her palms turned white with pressure as she gripped the fastenings that hardly contained this puddle of a man.
Anything! Please, just ANYTHING!
He remained as she was, and quivering hands finally realized to let go so they may comfort her in his stead.
She doubled over before him, collapsing where his weight should have been to catch her in this moment, gripping her knees and mixing coughs of exhausted lungs with sobs of her heart.
There was nothing that he could reply to that with, and it terrified her.
A reflection of the siren appeared in every shard of glass upon the ground, each crystal capturing the image of her gooey flesh.
She had finally stopped bellowing, but only because there was no strength left in her chest to do so.
Gasping silently, a hand gloved with ink brushed her now muddled bangs away from her head- a yellowed horn brushing the side of her thumb as she looked down at herself. Her exquisite, yet oh SO agonizing self.
For the first time in a long time, she felt sincere sadness. Before, it was just the anxiety of hiding from the searchers and avoiding as long as possible whatever rested within the clutches of the ink demon's talons, seeming to beckon for her. It was merely a frustration tinged with sour hope to see attempt after attempt to reform her body fail. Now? With the visit of the weakest, most pathetic man in both this life and the last, she was truly despondent for the first time in years.
Or maybe it was that woman's fault, rather.
Questions filled her, wondering if she was manipulated by Sammy- no, of course she was. But how? Was she still to be sacrificed, and the angel had allowed an executioner to lead the woman out of her gates like a calf to the alter? Or was she…-
Alice felt her throat move in a gulp.
…Knowing? Accepting?!
The idea alone her with indescribable outrage.
Alice admitted that the "prophet" himself was…harmless. Mostly. Still however, Sammy was nothing but an embodiment of everything she hated. Alice's split face was also split in dismay both for and towards the woman, what her alliance with Bendy's "believer" may entail.
As if this was a summoning, she felt the ink demon come. Her gaze finally tore from the shards at her feet as wavy stripes of grey grew deeper and deeper, shadows dribbling into physical form.
"…Mostly," she thought one last time before returning to her life of hiding.
As he stood over her, finally breaking through the vacuous tide of ink and black memories, he once again found his hand begin to approach her. The sight before him, his hand unconsciously centering its frame yet again, was…
Horrific.
Her palms shook with the tremors of ire, and her legs hardly kept her off the floor, wobbling like jelly. Her arms were so taunt that they too trembled, and that shake journeyed all the way up her spine until it rattled the hair upon her head like a tambourine.
Just after leaving the dark pits of his brine- his vile incompetence to remember- he stepped into hers. He felt nauseous.
After all, the way she was before him now was how she made him feel so shorty after they first met.
Suddenly in the fuzzy edge of his gaze, his fingers shifted. He…hadn't moved them from this reach yet- and they still hoped to move further and had waved to him in impatience. What would he do? They needed to know.
Her soft, choked cries then began to drift into his heart and left him breathless. There was much that stunned, disturbed, and aggrieved his very being into the complete and utter darkness of truth, and it left him gasping for air upon her shores.
The tangible problems of this world overtook the ones plaguing his soul. Thoughtlessly yet oh so full of thought, he began to bend at his own knees before her.
His hand clasped his knee. Muscles twitched in effort. He couldn't stop his stimming- his ring finger from tapping in anxiety over and over and shaking the cloth of his torn pants. Like she, this movement traveled up his body, and it brought him back to life.
Indeed, the sight of her brought him back to life.
He kneeled before her, left lower leg pressing its entire length horizontally to the floor. His right was bent upright and virtuous, yet humble as its barely existent foot rested before hers, the arm that shook with life leaned over this lap.
His neck bent to look up at her now that she had curled her body into itself; the dim light of the room was still enough to highlight his curve; it revealed gentle, yellow light and flecks of pale powder that tried to approach- an aura of dust broken by the breath in his shoulders.
As he lowered himself to her, he was even then someone of great height; his head was far, far past where anyone else in Francine's old life would be if they had taken these positions. And yet, it had never been done before to compare. It was a show of wordlessly immense sympathy and sorrow- a lack of assurance in how else to assure she was not alone, even in his failure.
She was not alone in this torturing, suffocating uncertainty Alice Angel unwittingly hurled them into.
The light of the bulb above struck his jaw as it looked ahead to her own, which rested upside down in front of her abdomen. The jagged window of his mask once again revealed a parting of lips, open with gentle determination.
Croaky heaves eventually settled into a subtle pulse of inhalations, and eyes fluttered open to the face they had attempted to escape. It was blank, the mask- simply a grin of eternal optimism- yet she finally saw it carried so much. Scratch upon scratch tore over the paint and lightened the thin wood with tales of desperation. The worn eyes of Bendy were smudged with a hope that lasted longer than she had been alive. And beneath it all waited a man who only wanted what every other human being had.
The mask was smiling through the ever-present misery of these inky walls and was trying to offer the courage that kept Sammy alive- enough of a human soul that refused to accept anything less than release- to her.
And in all his tortured majesty- a living testament to faith- he had chosen to rest before the feet of someone with so much more than he, not to beg for what he lacked but to give what little he had left.
…She couldn't let him. Not like this. It didn't feel right.
Eyes tightened with burning tears, she took one hand from her thighs to place it upon his lowered shoulder; she felt its slick curve between her fingers, and his chill seeped into her veins until every inch of her body was cut with the same unforgiving coldness of the pipes. It may not have carried her own blood, but it coursed his all around them every step of the way. They were- and had always been- surrounded by his gory immortality.
It gushed the blood of Bendy, the leviathan who filled every being in this studio with himself, life and death incarnate.
Francine shook her head, prickling thoughts suddenly like dandruff clinging to her scalp and refusing to leave alone.
She felt her expression die, outrage drifting into the calm features of clemency. Just for this moment, they'd think about something else. God knows that they wouldn't be able to handle it no matter when it was addressed; might as well take care of the immediate.
And the immediate? It was the knowledge that if he had chosen in each moment of his own purgatory to stay by her side, the least she could do was remain by his. If Francine was overwhelmed with the possibilities the being far behind them had presented, she assumed Sammy's must be tenfold. The questions of the angel's existence would fall into place where they may. She had to trust Sammy. She had to. Even if her worst fear was true and he had lied to her purposefully about Alice, about himself, about the past.
She had to.
Anything else would result in her spiritual end.
Her touch knighted Sammy, again choosing to push aside doubts neither of them could answer for just for a moment. Just…for one moment.
Let them rest, just for one moment.