59- Savior

"But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison." – Genesis 39:21

Why was it so easy to suddenly find herself walking alongside this old man?

It must have been her wandering spirit, one soul joined by another akin in restless ways within trapping barriers. It was more of a pace, however, than a walk; a dragged look to the drawings upon these aged walls. And certainly they were drawn- not printed posters like those of other halls. And as she saw his pale fingers graze against the papers, tips oh so gently pulled across each and every one that fell beside his risen palm, Francine noticed there was something more…specific than that, even, in how to describe what she saw. The way they were sketched, the way they were signed…

"This is kids' art," she realized under her breath.

Joey paused in place, middle and ring finger caught underneath a flap of one of these makeshift pieces of wallpaper. His shoulders rose and fell in a silent sigh.

"That's right," he answered quietly. A second- and then…

His light touch turned into a grip, a slight crease where his thumb pressed across this Bendy's cheek, before tugging this particular piece from its reserved spot. A stare fell upon it as he took the drawing, holding it up between himself and the girl ahead.

"I never threw away a piece of art if I could help it," Joey admitted in a voice dipped in reminiscence, "Not a single thing anyone gifted to me."

It was such a slow movement- almost like a misty ghost drifting along with a night's breeze- but soon Mr. Drew was by Francine's side, shoulders brushing each other as he offered the childish drawing for her to behold as well. It was hesitantly accepted, unsure if the passage of time since it's making would mean a careless touch could tear it apart.

But no, just as it had for the cartoonist, it remained intact for her unskilled hands. This one was…painted. In the candles' dim glow all around, she could see past the shadow her head and shoulders casted upon the paper to observe its personal details; fingerprints undoubtedly were what framed this vaguely familiar face- some smudged purposefully as a decorative border, some surely the inevitable and accidental trailings of a youngster's messy hands as they picked up their creation with haphazard pride.

A hushed laugh from behind her shoulder, not one of joy but of the longing of what he could see in his mind but no longer have in front of him again.

"Christopher," he mused with dismay, tapping against the large signature sloppily but lovingly scrawled in the corner, "I remember him…A good boy…So proud that he asked his parents to take him all the way to my very own studio, just so I could see this too."

The pie-eyed toon innocently stared back at its inventor until Joey took it back out of Francine's grasp and replaced the sheet back among the many, many others.

Now, Francine was still very delicate herself- as much as the faded soul next to her was. They both were rediscovering vulnerability side by side- both allowing memories of not what Mr. Drew had taken away but of what made them who they were before all this. There was a lot of overlap in such a concept, so it was…bittersweet. Extremely so.

That was the word that described Joey best, though, especially now that he knew who she was before.

The young college student's eyes towed from picture to picture, like a string pulled them all along together and she was trying to find where it led.

Of course, it took her back to not Bendy's face but that of his maker.

His eyelids were half closed, a smile playing with the corner of his lip but not allowing it to truly curl up. Sadness had washed over him while her attention was away and left the man mute as the voices of the those who bestowed these papers into his custody chimed again in his head like they were last heard yesterday.

As timeless as his realm was, they might as well have been.

"Even…even the first sketch we made," he murmured, breathless amid a frozen century, "Even before I knew how special Bendy was going to be…I kept it."

With their god the ink demon, it served as both an emotional sentiment as well as a confession of sin.

But the strength of neither stopped her curiosity.

"Where's that one?"

Joey's eyes behind their ink-splattered glasses then fluttered back to being fully open, shifting his neck to look at her and putting his hand to his heart in quiet but certain astonishment.

She saw his honey irises glance over her, up and down before his expression fell once again and he turned back away.

"It's gone."

This…was a tonal shift, hearty enough to make Francine second guess her gut feeling to press further, so for now…she would let this go. Her eyes finally pried off the back of his head- the hat still remaining on the desk a ways away to reveal his hair's slicked nature and slight lengthiness down his neck- and she joined him in his forward stare.

She could endure the drawings' piercing stares of judgement just a moment longer, just for him to be free of a bit less pain in memory.

There was, however, something else just at the right level of discomfort for her to address.

"Why's this place different since I've been here?" A pause- clarification was needed. "To see you, I mean."

This seemed to disrupt his current freezing in place, because his head shifted briefly towards her in scrutiny before turning forward once again. She could see his gaze wavering.

"Oh darling…this curse is a puzzle," a lamentation sighed from his lips, "I still can't tell if I've been passed from one place to another or if the room itself changed!" He let a smile tease with his mouth just a second, finding humor in horror until the latter thing became all too familiar once again.

"It… imprisons me, regardless." A remarkable softening as Francine saw his nose turn up with a curled brow, slowly taking in all around him. "No matter how much it shifts into new shapes, it'll still be my cage."

And then his wandering began again, perhaps uncomfortable with the motionlessness of this environment embodying misdeeds, wishing to keep moving so his mind may as well.

But as he turned and she stepped alongside-

"So... What makes it do that?"

Francine's naïve inquiry stopped him in his tracks, but it almost seemed like throwing the breaks of a train; his body may have been immobilized, but it took a second for thoughts to cease rattling in his skull with the sudden change. Finally, he looked at her once again.

Something…shifted over Joey's face. At first, a slight squint- worry seeming to pinch the underneath of his eyes- before he continued back on his way, head slowly returning ahead and away from his guest.

"...Heaven knows," came her answer in a low whisper.

"Did you know it does that other places too?"

Yet another interruption, yet again unexpected, yet again made him pause.

"…What do you mean?" Joey bounced the question back at her, his voice seeming to be deeply soaked with an upset he managed to quiet.

Francine saw him look her over yet again. He seemed…haunted. It haunted her in return, apprehension urging her to put her hands underneath her chest and have them hold each other in anxiety.

Oh god. He looked so…stressed. A man that already dealt with so much just…- in allowing himself to see her now. And now he seemed like he was barely holding himself together, only for her sake, as she revealed aspects of a world he created but did not fully know.

…But he deserved to know.

"Like…like when I started to look for you," she stammered hesitantly, forcing herself to meet his eyes no matter how much her gut begged to shy away, "It got...different. It got...scary."

That last word seemed to resonate, dissipating into the air around him, changing the atmosphere itself.

"...Is that so?"

A tone both curious and cautious, and so she suddenly felt empowered.

"Yeah...!"

And then, a quiet huff of a laugh from the man by her side. "Well isn't that something."

The brown from the corner of his eye finally moved off her with a blink. Something swept over his demeanor this moment; Francine assumed it must have been a realization to him- that not only did the studio change to continue to entrap him, but that it willfully warped to terrorize others as well.

The shock of it all must have been what rendered the humans silent with ponderance for a minute or so.

But as was her steady way, it couldn't hush Francine forever.

"Joey?"

And this time when he stopped walking, he turned to her almost expectantly, half-lidded eyes and a gentle voice and gaze.

But undoubtedly, an aura of great seriousness, of immense awareness.

"Yes, my dear?"

The woman felt a frown press into her cheeks, unknowing how to say what was upon her tongue nor entirely what she needed to say in the first place.

Certainly though, there was something there they couldn't ignore. And he needed it.

She needed it.

"Why did it let me find you?" she finally found to speak.

A few blinks from him and a furrowed brow… Troubled. He was troubled by this.

"I'm going to sound like a broken record, darling, but...heaven knows."

More silence, but this kind was different. This kind was deliberation. And after a moment, her eyes quietly lit up.

She found what maybe he could not.

"I...I actually-...don't think it let me."

His look sharpened as she spoke, a slight twitch as if he was adjusting himself to fine-tune his facing her to absolute exactness.

"B-...Bendy showed me how to find you...in spite of it."

A flash- there, across his face. A slight tinge of something- something she couldn't identify. But that wasn't something to mull over, not like what she was beginning to uncover.

It was an…amazingly perplexing concept, if what she was thinking was really true.

"He...he saved my life," she confessed in the quietest voice in the world. Her fingers interlaced with each other so restlessly with this, and it made her feel something to stare down at them as they did so; eventually, though, she managed to pull herself back to this purgatory's architect for a reaction.

There was one; those honey eyes widened, and his expression darkened.

But dawning horror couldn't stop a racing mind.

"I was-" Francine's sentence was cut off by none but herself; maybe to be blunt about her introduction to the demon and his saviorhood would be too much for this frail gentleman, and so the word "dying" was quickly omitted from her tale. "-I was pretty hurt when I first came here and...he just-..."

Remembering.

Sammy. The rope. The touches. The tastes. The pain.

Bendy.

"He...healed me. Somehow," emerged an awed mumble, soft with recollection of not only the impossible rescue of her mortality but of this new, uncertain nature of the demon who did so. Her voice began to tumble in her throat, forcing herself to continue despite a sickening stomach. "And- and then-"

Joey's presence was of complete and utter silence, a witness to her unfolding conspiracies.

"He gave me...my phone back." She pulled the device out of her pocket, one of the few spots of color this world had ever seen. "This."

It must have come as a surprise to him, its sudden show momentarily catching his eyes and eyes alone before Joey managed to drag that same gaze back to her. As he did, Francine's hand and the phone in it flopped helplessly down to her side, her mouth gaping with breathlessness.

"I just-...he's..."

And right on the cusp of something just on the edge of her mind- barely out of reach of understanding but still entirely untouchable- it took her. Her eyeballs shook in their sockets; her cheeks pushed backward in a grimace; a shiver began to crawl over her chest and arms. And-

A hand on her shoulder, wishing to still whatever was creeping up from the back of her consciousness.

"Calm down, my girl." A soothing tone, like a father finding his child scared of midnight lightning making noise and shadows turn into monsters. "Calm down."

Finally hearing her own breath and how frantic it had become without her noticing, Francine tensed as she felt this pressure next to her neck. But then as it remained motionless, so began she. The muscle strain faded and allowed her to sense the tranquility of his touch, how firm and yet how delicate it seemed to take care for the person underneath his fingertips.

Her attention trailed from herself to his hand, and then it traced up his arm until it met his pensive face, glittering eyes in the hazy light.

Joey needn't command with his voice what his expression already did, and so the woman took one deep breath and then another, waiting for him to respond.

What came was maybe something she had wanted to avoid all along.

"Now I don't want you to fret over things we can't understand. It won't do you any good- not at all."

A pause, but only one to lend him time to form words for the things that had plagued him.

"The ink demon is...inexplicable." The last few syllables were sighed, steeped with decades of experience. "Believe me, I have tried for longer than you could know to understand him- hoping, praying that if I did-…I can force him to release us."

No, that look upon him did not change. These statements served as more than words of comfort for a woman finding no fruits for her labor; he really meant this.

And for someone that up until now wanted to know everything- even if it meant chasing powers unfathomable- it terrified her.

More so than the demon himself in this second of her life- hearing that maybe she could never grasp what it meant to be alive here, with both his permission and his taunting.

But of course, she began to know something else- that this very thing was what the spirit before her had spent his whole perdition trying to accept.

And so this being wise in his punishment's ways now didn't look at his most recent victim but through her, disturbed with things unspeakable unless he was given the same number of years to say them as were taken.

Joey was deceptive in how he described the demon. To knowingly not understand is also a form of understanding.

And so he comprehended, but could not change a thing.

Not like this.

"I...ask you not to fret over these things, Frankie. I know it's certainly difficult not to ponder, but...please, trust me. It grows...wearisome."

Somehow without taking another step, he was closer to her. A gloss fell over the whites of his eyes- a soundless, desperate kind of begging that he tried to make her see.

"And I don't want that for you."

"But-..." she stuttered, wide-eyed herself.

"Frankie, the demon…has been kind to you-... it sounds like," he interrupted. Yet another one of those flickers over her, one that Francine recognized as one of complete disbelief in how she existed before him; it was oh so familiar. "...Impossibly so. And so has my-...his studio, in your presence."

And then Joey's eyes crinkled with a slight shake of the head, never once straying from his locked gaze upon her.

Upon all that she meant, represented to him.

It was so very important.

"...That's the most hope...I've felt in a long time. That things are shifting and all we can do is wait for this change to come. The fact that you've not only broken into my seal but are...allowed to see me now with ease speaks volumes alone."

Francine was sure he could feel the tremble in her jaw as one of his hands moved to touch the underneath of it, not in a hushing clasp but a…dare she say…loving reminder that she was here before him.

Like a parent loves a child.

But of course.

Joey would always be a father first and foremost, in his last life and then the next.

Especially as he was forced to watch her wither away with each horror of the studio, much like the flowers had upon his desk. So difficult to think about-…twisted like a knife into his heart so much…

But, he believed, that unlike them she was still green with chance and youth. She still had time, he could still have hope-

"Until we leave this place...you can come to me. I shouldn't have expected you to keep your discoveries all to yourself, knowing there's a man out there that is to blame for everything, but..."

Now she could feel his tremble through the touch of his hand.

"...Please...come to me if these thoughts trouble you again," Joey pleaded breathlessly, "You shouldn't be alone with them. They'll only eat you up." Spoken in nearly a whisper, undoubtedly born through his own extensive history of hurting his own feelings over and over and over by looking for what could not be found, a self-inflicted torture.

And then he confirmed as much:

"I would know."

And even in all his tenderness, Francine could not move. She couldn't hold him back, nor in any way return his touch.

"Joey…" No, she couldn't even return his words.

To be raw with all he had felt since he cursed fate itself was enough to stun anyone besides he whom had grown accustomed to live alongside it- thanks only to a forced custody of stolen time.

This proposal- no, this promise spoke with striking precision to everything Francine ever wanted from others here. It was as if he had known her far longer than she had known him, even if this also asked her to try to give up what so far drove her to keep going, to keep from letting the gloom of the ink take her too.

And so she was unprepared to know how to welcome it.

"I don't deserve any kindness-" Joey began in her place as she left the air empty, "-None at all- but-...I am here if you need me, since the studio so allows-"

One last and most meaningful second of time spent on hesitation.

"-...If...you...even want to be in my presence," he finished, uncertainty breaking his sentences to pieces.

And so the choice was hers to make. To decline his comradery- and it would have been justified- or embrace it amid a universe that could never understand them both.

But she had decided a long time ago, didn't she? Even if she and him had thought so differently about what to do with shattered destiny.

"…Of course."

But then acceptance necessitated sincerity.

"Thank you," Francine could barely murmur, pitch high and soft with benevolence unexpected as she felt her chin move ever so slightly into his palm with each spoken word.

And she was close enough this time to see exactly how every bit of his face changed with a growing smile, her own words used to reflect a different but equally profound purpose:

"Of course."