51- Mask

"For we walk by faith, not by sight." – 2 Corinthians 5:7

Mindless wandering often ironically means someone is in deeper thought than you could ever guess. So it was now. Sometime after Bendy left them be, one of the two disciples had finally felt that they couldn't just be- at least as they were- so they then decided to be somewhere else. The other followed suit, lulled by the draw of companionship and reflection. Which was the first to get up? Neither could recall, and so it didn't matter.

Both were immersed in emotions and reminiscence nonetheless. It was all they could do after being confronted with something just on the cusp of their understanding- just within sight but not within a grasp that wouldn't leave them tumbling off the edge entirely.

Sammy's chin lifted, memories and feelings of one kind drifting into those of another as familiarity overwhelmed his senses just enough to snap him back to the present.

The last time he had reached the end of the hallway of his- he still couldn't believe it, his- old office was so shortly after the woman had first arrived. Back when he had abandoned her to sort out his reeling mind-

Having stopped unconsciously, Francine had done so as well and was now looking up at him in gentle, unquestioning but still curious wait.

-…All this they experienced together since had led him to promise he wouldn't do so again not just once but twice, only for him to break it as many times.

All he could do with her unearned trust was to sigh and turn his head back forward, taking in the view of the piling ink that entrapped the glass room that bore his name, where he had first kept her "safe" from the rest of this eternal abyss.

He still didn't notice the glass was more broken than when he saw it before.

Although Francine didn't grasp his ways this moment- or well, ever- she still accepted it, and so the woman leaned against her side of the hallway with folded arms and one foot crossed behind the other as he observed his fragmented past. Shoulders rose and fell with a sigh of her own as she recognized this place too, but a small glimmer at his side reminded her of a conversation that had almost drifted away.

Sammy almost didn't perceive it as she slightly unfolded one arm, using it to point at the nearly forgotten pair of glasses.

"Really don't know what those are, huh?" she asked not mockingly but with genuineness- consideration for the man who could distinguish little from the outside world. And as he merely nodded, she began to wonder why she was so perplexed that he didn't. Must have been because whenever he was from must have had glasses, but doubtlessly they had shirts, too, and he said before that he hadn't seen those in God knows how long. The repetition of endless eternity without certain objects must have done a good number erasing knowledge they existed, she surmised.

Again, trying to push back that this was the spell in which she now lived.

…Although Sammy's mental walls built brick by brick by the swamping of ink didn't help either. When would he tell her that a few of the blocks had fallen out, allowing him to barely peer into a sliver of something beyond his comprehension?

Maybe never. As much as his lord's inexplicable behavior had shaken him- his entire perspective of his existence and purpose- he still clung to one thing that her last encounter with the angel made him believe.

That maybe they weren't supposed to know, lest the path to salvation was clouded.

It certainly didn't feel right to know what little he did.

It was so, so strange and uncomfortable for beliefs and disbeliefs to mix together in his chest, both contradicting and coinciding until it drove Sammy to do and think things that felt like they creeped onto his shoulders and slid down his arms with the ink that swallowed his body. The man would have been grateful to know that this was one of the most human experiences someone could ever have, but none could console what he would not reveal.

And so the disciples were content to speak of objects rather than meanings.

"Those help you see if your natural sight's not so good," Francine put plainly as Sammy retrieved the broken accessory once again from his pocket. It was both a polite and a confused silence she gave as the man too now leaned against the wall, shoulders and back touching the boards behind him and legs stretched forward towards her. Between his fingers the glasses were held in front of him, the little cracks in the delicate lenses putting thin lines over his tilting mask.

"I see," was his accidental pun, hummed smoothly. And for some reason this made Francine feel…better. She had dreaded meeting up with him again- not because she hated him for what he had said but because of the unspoken nature of their separation; she never liked leaving an argument angry like they both had back then. To hear that chime in his voice as she introduced him to something both old and new from the outside was a comfort to her weary soul.

But as all comforts of this world seemed to be, it was dashed just as quickly.

"It's like my mask, then."

…

…

…

"What," she said flatly.

"My mask," the inky prophet replied, his scratched, wooden stare more poignant than ever, "It helps me see." He put it so casually, so simply; it was neither a confession nor a revelation, but simply a fact. Tone alone wasn't what threw her off though.

Francine felt her cheeks push her eyes into more of a squint as her brow furrowed in total perplexity. There was literally nothing about what he just said that made sense. The worn and torn visage of Bendy looked her back as she finally reexperienced one of the first details about him that had troubled her- and evidently it was also one of the first she had managed to ignore for the sake of her sanity. What was hidden in plain sight was so abruptly overwhelming that what she asked next wasn't even the right question to; it went straight over the idea that flat, broken piece of a cutout "helped" him see and flew right at the impossibility that it allowed him to see at all.

"I…don't think there's any holes in the eyes." She laughed saying it with a head shaking a silent "no" from side to side, she was so incredulous. Somehow entirely confident in a universe that proved time and time again that nonsense was entirely what these inky truths were made of.

Ignoring that these truths were now her own whether she realized it or not.

"That's correct," Sammy answered unwittingly bluntly.

"So…" The woman shrugged into her lean, shoulders falling closer to her ears as she stretched her neck towards him in utter disbelief, as if looking closer did something to remedy it. But no; she was right and he was right to confirm it- no hole was in his mask besides the one that sometimes barely revealed his mouth.

One corner of her mouth tugged further to the side until her mouth was open and clearly gaping. It was only going to get wider and longer with the stretch of amazement.

"…How do you see with it on?!" Francine finally managed to conclude, a pause necessary to process what she even just said.

It was not going to help in the least.

As if that somehow was as simple as it could be put- as much of an explanation as he could give- all he did was tilt his masked head once again and say:

"I can't see without it."

The pair of glasses fell back to his side along with a relaxing arm, and now she was face to face with something that served as more than only a second smile. It was both an ever-present reminder of his god's grace and his fervor as well as something more- something that carried him through each and every day-

Wait. No. What the fuck? There's no way. There's no fucking way-

But all Francine could do was swing her head side to side one more time with wide eyes and a voice so taken with shock that it barely escaped her lips.

"…I can't tell if you're being poetic or not," the mere mortal admitted with hardly a squeak.

He was not.