50- Contradictions
"For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do." - Hebrews 6:10
"Did you…" Sammy had to swallow back the words he wanted to say instead. "…find what you were looking for?"
Francine's bag sat on the floor of the music hall's entryway, a quiet, knowing eavesdropper upon the awkward silence and conversation between two people with more to hide than they had ever asked for. And certainly, what each now possessed was more than they had ever wanted to know.
But they themselves had begged for this; the disciples wanted answers to their prayers and sought for them in impatience, and separate but parallel journeys had instead provided more doubts to ponder as they awaited salvation.
Sammy didn't want to know what Francine found- if she found anything at all. The time he spent alone was making his mind dizzy with revelation, his stomach churn with the frustration of puzzle pieces that wouldn't snap together and make themselves clear to hopeful, hungry eyes.
He let the back of his head tilt until it touched the wall they both sat beside, spines resting at the bottom of a sign bearing his own profession and name in a hall scarred black with the lurking of searchers. The way dread gripped his heart and seemed to try to twist it out of him made him guess that yet another additional piece would lead to yet more agony. But he had to ask. If she was to care for him in mortality once all of this was done, he was to return the favor in the immortality that preceded it now. And to care?
Sometimes to care means to do things that you would rather not do.
And as much as questioning the ink demon scared him, he didn't want her to feel alone in doing so.
…As if he wasn't questioning, himself.
And the ball was passed to a woman who was just as unwilling to share as Sammy was to discover. Yet she too welcomed this great discomfort; they both did so out of politeness, compassion, and fear. But while Francine opened the door to the home of her heart, she would- could not- not let Sammy in.
"…I…"
How was she to say this? How would she put everything she had experienced, everything she now understood and yet couldn't grasp at all? And in the back of her mind, a tortured man's plea had reached forward to remind her of a promise:
"I need you to keep this…me…from everyone."
She didn't like secrets. Never did. They made their heart heavy and made it hard to look people in the eye. Francine only ever kept them if someone else told her to, and if it was for a good reason.
Reluctantly, she convinced herself that this was a pretty damn good reason.
Joey seemed to recognize his evils and didn't fight back the curse of eternal loneliness- and perhaps, never tried. It almost seemed…noble to her. It didn't sit right somehow, but again- she was a soul that could only find peace in connectivity. And so the fact that the father of their hell locked himself maybe even deeper away into it than everyone else just to prevent any more damage than what was already done?
That was something beyond her fathoming, and so she reconciled the idea of such a horrid fate by assuming it to be a kindness. A kindness that was her duty to maintain- the least she could do to help hurt beings lost to time hate it just a little less.
And so, she swallowed her pride.
"No," she muttered quietly. And as she said it, she justified her lie by remembering this wasn't entirely untrue. Certainly it was an omission, yes, but she…-
Francine stared down at her hands as they rested upon a fold of her stomach, Sammy's own pair only inches away holding his knees.
-…She didn't find what she had really sought for, what made her leave the safety of his attendance; she got something else instead- something that fell weightily upon her heart as she was finally by her friend's side.
But sometimes to be kind, you must be uncomfortable.
And so they both sat alongside in an uneasy, hollow, and yet benevolent silence; it was reminiscent of two kids sitting in the school hallway after being sent there for being too rowdy fighting each other, and now they had to think of the consequences of their actions upon their friendship. This is why Sammy forced himself to embrace words he didn't want to hear and why Francine kept Joey's dark truths to herself.
Because both of them thought that doing what would be best for their own soul would be unforgivably selfish; they couldn't abandon the one they cared about most when they knew all too well that they didn't seem to have another in this place that'd ever be by their side.
"…Ah." An equally hushed reply, response slowed with the drag of needing to analyze what he said and heard rather than let the conversation flow naturally. Sammy didn't believe her, of course- not because he had an inkling of an idea the absolute madness the woman had gone through; it was because to discover was…her way. As his tilted gaze soaked in Francine's return, he saw that she was much more stained than when she had left- splatters of the studio's blood fallen upon her at angles and directions more like mud thrown in a rainstorm than simply slipping into a puddle. And so whatever she had weathered, he could tell it was more than she let on; he could see it in her eyes.
And yet it somehow didn't occur to him that this meant that she was keeping a secret. How bizarre.
But of course, she couldn't have had any idea he was doing the same…that is, until-
"What's that?"
Her head gently tossed itself to her left shoulder as she noticed a slight, smooth glisten from the candlelight hitting something in his right pocket. In reply, Sammy was silent, and his body language seemed to convey he had been caught by surprise, and so she pointed down at this odd texture by his waist to elaborate.
He felt his chest seize up. He couldn't tell her what this meant- he wouldn't, he promised himself- and yet it made him anxious for her to know it existed at all.
…Even as he didn't know what it was himself; the object that granted him wisdom was overflowing with meaning and yet blank of purpose.
A pair of glasses was pulled from the confines of his pocket, Sammy gingerly lifting it into the air between she and him, allowing them both to gaze upon its wire folds and broken lenses.
"I don't know," he lied and yet admitted much as Francine had done herself. Undeniably, Sammy knew- Sammy knew that once it had sat upon someone's face before the studio's downfall and death, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what on earth this was for.
"Oh, Sammy…-!"
His heart began to rise in that brief second, she seemed more herself again, a slight bubble of laughter in her voice as she prepared to teach him of something common knowledge from where both she and him used to reside.
It was short lived for such a strange and glorious reason.
Her chin lifted, and her pupils fluttered all around the room once a familiar grey began to swim onto the walls, coasting its way into the reunited friends' conversation. While Francine herself was surprised, her shock was much calmer than that of Sammy, a gasp flying from his oily lips and shoulders beginning to rise and fall with the unease of recognition.
From the very staircase that Sammy had seen in his memories swell and overflow with the ink that drowned the rest of his life forevermore, their god had emerged, standing in the entryway of his prophet's haven.
He stood taller than ever with both of his disciples already upon the ground in communion.
The two could only stare at their dark lord as he graced them with his presence, unsure what his coming meant and what he intended to do here.
"My-my-…my lord…!" Sammy addressed him meekly, unsure of what else he could do, and the object he had found was mindlessly set upon his lap as his hand fell in awe.
Like every corner of the room was a shore, the demon allowed his swirling spirit to trace the walls and fall just short of his believers' feet.
It took the longest second in the world to realize he was simply there in wait.
No, he didn't move from that spot, and doubtlessly that eyeless, piercing regard was for the two seated upon the floor. And suddenly- Francine felt something shift in her mind. As that unmoving smile curved over the demon's dripping face, he seemed…gentle somehow. Certainly, his aura about him now was much less violent than when he- when he-…
Unseen by Sammy, her eyes shot wide as something finally clicked into place. She remembered the way he was always somehow within sight when she had pursued him through a quickly decaying studio; the way she could always see where he was or where he went off to, what direction to go and how to avoid the traps that lied in wait. And she swore- she could swear now- that she had seen the beast look back at her and hesitate the smallest moment before jumping out of sight through the last door.
In her chase of the demon, it never occurred to her that he wasn't running away.
He had been leading her.
And just as this veracity broke into her consciousness, her heart began to pound at the same time her expression began to soften. She still didn't understand the ink demon, and maybe she never would- but this? This meant something. It had to. And so…she hesitantly allowed herself to feel unexpected reassurance in the company of the being that terrified her the most.
Because she now saw that sometimes to help, it means to deceive.
Maybe the ink demon could sense this apprehension- this new perspective that had begun to seed and root within her psyche. Maybe it's what he had come for, because just as mild acceptance started to shape her face into a different sort of gaze, the tall creature of liquid shadows shifted his stare and merely walked away, rounding the next corner until both his physical body and the splatters of his soul upon each surface drifted out of sight.
No, Bendy had not come for anything- did not expect anything of his followers during this encounter; it wasn't in wait he had arrived…
…But in watch.
And as Francine felt her heart begin to be pulled in one direction for the demon, Sammy was almost sick feeling his lean the opposite way, knowing what he did now leaving his faith in more peril than ever.