36- The Last Stair
"Lord, how long will You look on? Rescue my soul from their ravages, my only life from the lions." - Psalm 35:17
It's a deeply unnatural feeling to let your faith slip, even a little, just for one moment.
The drop in your chest as you approach the floor at the end of the staircase; you stretch your leg just a little too far and miss the last stair. The way your foot swings into nothingness seems like you've willingly walked off a cliff. Maybe you trip and feel the floorboards crash into your temple. Maybe your sole simply falls flat and you're uncomfortable at worst. In between, though, is the most unsettling place to be.
Drifting in the air, freefalling for just blink. The need to balance yourself is sickening, and there's the longest split second of not knowing if you'll be fine or if you'll finally tumble down. Even if it's a devastating resolution that awaits, you just want it to be over with. "Just don't leave me not knowing where my own fate lies," you plead to someone outside of yourself. It's an all-consuming, sudden comprehension of mortality that can leave you unable to deal with the actual problem itself.
That's the best way to describe where the disciples were after Alice turned them upside down. It's true that they had willingly come to her, though, and beg she tell them what she knew. But ultimately, it left more questions that answers. In fact, it didn't answer any questions at all.
Maybe it should be made more precise exactly what had thrown the two into dismay. It had been so hard for Francine to accept their circumstances that she wanted to solve their mystery…even if Sammy held no desire for it at all. Indeed, as much as he wanted to find the person he used to be, it shook him to his core to try to chase it, especially when it seemed to run into the arms of an angel with a great, inexplicable rage for him; it was like deciding whether or not to go into the firy blaze that's taken what is yours. Indeed, he didn't know what he had done, and so she must have been evil incarnate- the only way to explain their lives when he remembered none of what she did. Even if it was dead wrong. And so then, torn between two kinds of desperation, he let his first friend enter hell in his stead.
Even without a mirror, he could see himself a coward as a passing light flashed across her face in this blackened hall of machinery; she was his reflection, and he saw the consequences.
It was slight but there were marks- darker, duller flesh upon her face speckled on her cheeks alongside her usual brown flecks. She looked so tired. So shaken So...- and he saw something he couldn't grasp- something in her eyes just in that brief electric shine that terrified him. And with that, he was realizing that everything he had tried to prevent may have occurred. He may have dismissed the woman to walk into the fire, and if that was true, he wasn't sure how Bendy could ever forgive him.
But then there was something worse.
He was beginning to dread that maybe his lord kept him at bay for one particular purpose- so that the prophet would learn what would happen if he tried to unearth the past instead of hope for their future. What a horrible thing to dream it could be. And to dream was what had become so easy to do with his friend by his side, like her presence was a siren for whimsy long lost to the depths of his inky soul.
To not want to lose that made him feel so inconceivably guilty. She felt guilty, too, but for other reasons.
After all, she just wanted to understand-
No.
Now she recognized why it had been so effortless for her to begin to trust Sammy and now for her to begin to trust the angel's fear of openness and the projectionist's longing for what was once his, even as her bizarre connection to all three struggled to coexist in her mind. She came to realize that there's a reason why she had cared for them all without second thought, even as the demon loomed over her like death's shadow. Even as she now knew that there was something to be afraid of that Sammy had tried and failed to hide from her.
Maybe it had been a fool's errand for Francine to think she could have a family again.
As they fled, someone wished they could tell them to stop, to allow themselves to feel that sickening drop as they missed only the last stair of their journey, to give themselves time to steady. They had done it before, after their first meeting with the angel. Can't they do it again?
Don't ignore it.
Don't let go.
Please don't let go.