61- Gone but Not Forgotten
"Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved. But you, O God, will cast them down into the pit of destruction; men of blood and treachery shall not live out half their days. But I will trust in you." – Psalm 55:22-23
And away they went, deeper and deeper into the darkest lair of angels, untouched by heaven's light above the studio. Sammy had so very much locked inside his chest, and it all felt like it simply wanted to break out- to tear a hole right through his liquid ribcage to shoot out at the person in front of him.
It was a rageful desire, but surprisingly not to direct violence towards the angel herself.
…Although she certainly had much in mind for him, slithering all the way down into her domain as if there wouldn't be consequences. As if there would be nothing to say about him past, present, and future that made her sick. And even though it was still unfathomable why, precisely, Alice despised Sammy besides in how his position as prophet put them in opposition- a literal demon versus angel scenario where he was with the latter-…Sammy knew something else.
Sammy knew not what he was hated for, but that there was certainly something still lingering from all the way back- when their bodies flowed with blood instead of ink- that she seemed to cling to but he in lost memory could not.
And as Alice was the only person he had identified to keep this sacred yet utterly cursed knowledge of what their lives were like before all this, she too was the only one to ask to bestow it upon him.
And so he had correctly anticipated her wrath as payment in return.
"Do you REALLY think you can come into MY place, into MY domain and look me in the face like you're so innocent?!"
Far, far out of the earshot of a woman she had grown to pain for, Alice deemed it more than just appropriate to not hold back.
No. It was necessary.
Sammy was simply deserving of whatever came his way.
Her fist pounded against the wall of the elevator as it continued to carry them down and away from the soul they cared about in such different yet reminiscent ways. The sound echoed up and up and up, but Francine would never hear it.
Maybe she was already gone, but Sammy wasn't aware of her new comradery; he only felt the noise of Alice Angel's rage vibrate into his gut and refused as best as he could muster its sick feeling.
The shadows of the bars crossed over their faces- Alice's scarred with near perfection and Sammy's mask tarnished with devotion.
Both held the markings of longing for what they may never have, and so encapsulated complete and utter terror that made Alice scream and Sammy silent.
"Worshiping the ink demon!" The most cutting of scowls carved into her face, pinching her one true eye underneath with disgust. She might as well have been spitting at him. But then somehow…a look of total abhorrence became something even more offended.
"It was one thing for you to make up a whole damn religion just to make yourself feel better, putting trust in the last thing you should," she hissed quietly, shadow crawling over both the natural and unnatural curves and indents of her body, "It was pointless to think anyone else to fall for it, and so I. Let. It. Go."
Even closer. He could see the torn side of her face twitch as muscles still in slices did their best to abide by the pull of her emotion, her fury.
"But then you took her with you."
An opportune time for the elevator to creak to a halt. Instead of maybe following an instinct of unforgiving viciousness, she turned on her heel with a shake of the head and what could only be described as the most seething of groans and stomped out of the now open door.
A hand raised above her shoulder with one finger curling and uncurling, less of a beckon he follow and more of a threat that he shouldn't even imagine what'd happen if he didn't.
And against every instinct of his own, so he abided.
Silence. For a long, long time only the sound of their feet as they moved forward, and as they did, Sammy remembered that there was more reason than simply Alice that he never journeyed down to Heavenly Toys. It was somehow hollower, more haunted than every other corner of the studio.
And God, he once sent Francine here to find his own identity in his place.
But in poetic justice, now it was his turn to find the scraps still left behind, presumably in the seraph's ink-gloved hands.
The deeper she lured him to somewhere more fitting to contain her wrath, the more he accepted what he had braced for- that he was helpless. He gave a noiseless prayer of thanks that at least his horrid body was good for hiding the involuntary expressions of fear.
Not that she was looking back at him anyway.
But suddenly, Sammy felt panic grip onto him instead of measly dismay as they drifted down and down to hell knows where. The silence- her silence- he couldn't stand it anymore; something about what she had said perplexed him in a way unexpected, and finally…he couldn't leave it be.
"You…care about my friend?"
And she stopped in place so fast that he couldn't prevent an inevitable fumbling into her backside. A yelp- not from her throat but his. Legs immediately stumbled backwards- far further than he needed to in order to provide her space, and arms flinched and outstretched side to side.
But Alice didn't attack in retaliation, as was expected. She only stood frozen, only showing the back of her hair and the organic ornaments attached to her skull. It was almost as if she didn't feel his touch.
No, what he said had clasped at her heart instead until it numbed everything else.
"…Of course I do."
A breath of quiet, only the machines that built these walls up and over them spoke in their place. The gloss of her fingers adjusted as clenching moved the dim lights across their shape.
"Someone has to."
And with that, the angel continued to trudge ahead through the sharp, metallic tunnel towards her haven, never once looking back to he that questioned if she had a heart not in her hand but her chest.
"And don't dare call her your friend."
A giant tangle of feelings and thoughts Sammy was left to trek through lest he be left in her dust. First was the confirmation of what he already knew- that Alice hated him for his trust in the demon. But what else was there?! Who else was there to trust, who else was omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent? Those were the traits of a god, and for the prophet, it was undeniable that he should be treated as such.
But now…he was beginning to grasp why someone should fear those things not in worship but in dread.
And that collided with the seraph's second listing of his sin- that Sammy pulled a spotless lamb into the endless, staining sorrow of his oil-like palms and leaking mouth, reaching and speaking beliefs to ears looking for something to listen to besides the siren call of endless anguish.
And as much as he pushed such a terror away, he couldn't stop the trepidation of if this was his blessing to Francine or the spreading of a curse. But-
He didn't know it, but the room they entered next would coincide with his words so, so terribly, only coming as a counter in his surprise at the immortal's shreds of humanity.
"I thought…you hated him. That man from before."
Now this was enough to compel Alice finally turn to face him, lined with the radiance of a room half empty with mechanical beds for cartoon corpses, littered absolutely everywhere that a rickety platform above a black lake would allow.
The look about her told Sammy before her voice did that he had made a mistake.
"HENRY came for trouble," the angel retorted, that grimace curving into a sneer of justification. Of what, Sammy could only guess. "HE succeeded in WHATEVER goal he had to take each and every BORIS FROM ME!"
Her shout crescendoed into a shriek as the betrayed woman tried to explain not just to Sammy but herself how the hatred for one person of flesh tried but could not be passed onto another- for that was surely what the prophet accused her of; he was in disbelief that the sins of one mortal man was not painted upon another mortal woman with the brush of Alice's timeless disdain.
The turn of her gaze towards that closest, most hauntingly unoccupied of these vertical beds of metal sheets was so quick that some of the heavenly monster's untied hair got caught on the horn emerging through it. A single eye flickered in its socket, and the one that was empty somehow seemed to be shaped with hurt too. A rage for the ink demon's loyal disciple was so, betrayingly easy to transform into lamentation.
It wasn't only Sammy she couldn't forgive, after all. There was so very much about this world that took away just to watch her try to take it back, like teasing a cat with a toy mouse it'll never catch.
Again and again since Henry left not just with his own body but with every remnant- every piece of evidence that a living Boris had ever existed among them…Alice had to face this chamber alone. It's tall, mocking girth for the emptiness it now contained, now housing only the cadavers of the Butcher Gang.
It was like…each wolf had simply melted away.
But when someone melted away here, they normally came back some way or another; that was the curse of the ink- that no matter how many times one died, it could never put the soul at rest. And in all the decades since Joey's long lost son returned to find what was left of his father, no soul drowned in the puddles emerged in the form of a canine ever, ever again.
And since, Alice had hoped, tried, and prayed for a way to complete her body without the ones that seemed to do so best- only for it to fall apart until all that was left to look at was perfection in sight but out of reach for as long as she could know.
Unlike Sammy, she never believed that there was anything left for her on the outside, and so to be an angel was the best she could manage if she couldn't be Susie ever again.
But thanks to HIM…it grew to be more and more possible that not even that was feasible in a world made to give dreams their physical form.
Sammy saw Alice's fingers grip the upright surgical table that once served as a symbol of her pride, of her accomplishment in becoming someone once more- something that set her apart from the rest. Everyone else- even and especially the pathetic man before her now- had ever put destiny in their own hands. They only waited. They only whined.
Unlike her, they didn't do.
But now with no corpse under the table's straps, its emptiness drifted until it filled the lungs she had but seemed not to need, and the expression upon her dropped along with the stare of her eyes. It was all so overwhelming- all so terrible to think about- and yet…-
"She…never came to hurt me," Alice muttered with unfathomable softness, gaze unfocused as much as her destiny was without the tools to complete it. "…Francine-" She spoke her name in direct, spiteful contrast to that of the one who intruded long ago. "-…Never came to hurt anyone. She came to find someone."
And the scorned angel seemed to find herself again, picking herself back up to pierce Sammy with a black eye and a black hole, crossed arms and frowning lips.
"How cruel of fate that she find you."
And as much as he wanted to argue to the face glaring through him, judging everything that made Sammy who he was, what kept him alive…no.
He couldn't.
It would have been better if Francine never found any of them at all.
But Alice mistook this quiet as a refusal to acknowledge his own misdeeds, and so the seraph moved on to topics maybe not less personal but still less vulnerable to her shaken soul.
"You came down with me without putting up a fight- not even a whimper," she observed, dark pupil looking over him- the only part of her moving as they stood at the entry of her laboratory. "So you didn't arrive just to take her from me, after all." A squint- a suspicious one. "Why then?"
Something tingled along with Sammy's racing pulse, agitating every inch until he could swear his body wasn't quivering but rather rippling like waves across water. This was it. This was why he was here. And suddenly- this was everything.
And having no idea how to even begin, all Sammy could figure to do was reach into his pocket and share what he had found. And suddenly, everything about Alice's demeanor changed. Every opening of her face widened in amazement; a gasp stilled the air; shoulders flinched and tightened, a hand coming over her lips in dawning amazement.
Even broken, even disfigured and bent what would normally be beyond recognition…Alice still knew almost a century since she saw them last that those were the glasses of good ol' Sammy Lawrence, music director of the fantastical and phantasmal Joey Drew Studios.
And that twisted her stomach until words came out like vomit.