Hymns of Struggle

by Pipes Flow Forever and Ever

What's there to live for after you die? You struggle to exist- to make it all the way to your Lord- and all that greets you is Hell wrapped through your own flesh. Purgatory must be real after all. I pray and I pray and finally, something comes. If only I knew what to do with it. -An empathetic attempt to comprehend and console Sammy Lawrence (OC and Sammy relationship/interaction)

78. The Illusion of Living

78- The Illusion of Living

"And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight." – Luke 24:31

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The world utterly tore apart for, against, and because of Joey Drew. The studio had been a hellscape- an ever twisting, turning labyrinth ensnaring everyone in their own personal slice of perdition and suffering- but never had it been like this, even beyond the turmoil of Henry's presence soaking into the walls and making them more hostile and deadly than ever seen before.

It had never been Henry himself though that caused that instance of terror. No. It was a reaction to a reaction. Now Joey was reacting once more, the universe carved by his soul becoming something fearsome as serenity failed him and left only woe.

The openness of Francine knowing what he really was left him vulnerable to all, and it only became more and more ghastly as seeing the worst happen made an already scared man completely and utterly mortified to still be standing.

The shore of wood and ink disappeared- but not because either material no longer ceased to be; instead, it remained to create new, treacherous shapes. The invisible threads of magic weaving between the floorboards lifting Joey and Francine above the lapping black had begun to split apart as the force of unsureness made the black ocean slip away.

And away.

And away.

With the loudest, most furious cries of crumbling reality surrounding them, the two spots of color in the studio witnessed the ink around them rumble, rise- threatening to swallow them entirely- and then crash down.

Down deeper than it had been before.

Until the broken edges of the wooden island were bare, jagged edges spiked to kill dripping an onyx liquid.

Down.

Down.

Down.

As Francine watched that drop fall over the edge, realizing that the ocean had not gone away at all, but had simply become an abyss cascading vertically down- no. Not only down. Around! Rising, falling, swirling, stirring.

She recognized it. This was arising upon the dawn of another form of existing- the kind of existing that briefly enveloped but did not take her when she chased the ink demon and he left her falling through the floorboards. The same living, wet darkness that swelled and bled like a wound with its own mind- she realized- had never left her.

The puddles had always been there, waiting to take her too.

The glittering pit that cut and groaned all around them was distressed, though- something defined by the word bubbling and twisting like ropes melting into each other, far more mobile, far louder than when they encased her last.

Unsettled.

How incredible it is that this wasn't the most unsettling detail of all.

It was not only a moat, not only a cavern descending into the depths of watery underworlds. No, as vertically it streamed and swelled forever, horizontally across the plane of reality, a horizon with no end began to have one. The impossible became possible, and nightmares became true.

As the tides pulled in and caved into the core of the earth, with it pulled patchwork realm of a lonely king. The groans of a world imploding all around compelled Francine to clasp over her ears, its shake buckle her knuckles to not fall over- as if it could stop a damn thing.

The young, cursed intruder had been shaken- traumatized- over and over and over again. If you had stopped to ask her just before she shattered Mr. Drew's reality, the woman would have informed you that nothing could scare her, not anymore, with an incredulous look slid across her face. But of course!

She had seen death and came right back, leaving both soul and body stuck in the limbo, forced to be unnatural among those whose existence was unnatural too. Slithering black, both their corporal form and the essence of their eternal being- she was surrounded by it. And she had to learn to exist among it, right at the thin line to be close enough to connect- to survive and feel like a human by finding the remnants of life scattered around her- without reaching into the ink and letting it pull her in with a greedy hand, wanting what she had but never able to have it…and thus destroying it forever in the process. A balance upon the unsteady tightrope of empathy maintained as searchers pulled at her ankles, angels pierced with their longing stares, and projectionists nearly ran her off the cliff into the very darkness that waited all around her now. If not for the prophet with his promises of hope for her and humanity inside himself, surely she'd be among those of the swollen, murmuring abyss.

To be horrified was not only normal but the easiest thing to be, and so she had come to accept these nightmares waiting for her with open arms left empty.

Of course it wasn't, but not the studio, nor its residents, nor the man and beast ascribed as its god had any idea that the worst imaginable had even more lying in wait to snatch them too.

And indeed, it took them all.

Like it was Pangea's reformation, the studio was drawn as metallic shreds to the centering magnet of Joey Drew, the walls of the oceanic ballroom closing in. The first time Francine came here in his seclusion, she blinked and felt more suffocated. This shift, however, was blatant. Entire walls splintered board by board, bending and splintering in two like they were nothing more than toothpicks between the fingers of a deity much bigger than anything they'd ever known. As the walls were reeled in with fish wire of stress and unknown wishes, the pipes groaned to hold on until they burst- like it was pulling apart the building bone by bone, vein by vein, bleeding rivers into the pit of the same blood, grabbing a hold of JDS's spirit by the wrist and tugging it so tight it flesh became crushed with nowhere to go but implosion in a wrathful grasp.

As Francine nearly stumbled to the floor with the rumble of a universe concentrating into one place, Joey felt it too, not only no matter how much he denied it but seemingly because of it. He gasped, yelped, and shrieked, and so fear building upon fear kept his own horrid, deformed creations coming and coming. With each break he could try to steady himself, but the terror personified quickly dug up the shallow graves of hurt feelings. Not even the most practiced, the most experienced of those out of control can hide it any longer from the fate of unsteady grounds and self-aware dismay.

The demon didn't even flinch as the man who didn't want to be found was found by all, the walls being broken eventually disintegrating like ashes blown from a palm into the wind.

The puddles have become a gap, the only thing keeping the people he trapped here from crossing into the island of solitude where only Francine and Joey were permitted to be caged.

Of course, the first to find them just screamed.

The projectionist's cry rang out as the wall he punched at again and again finally burst before him, but not with his own force. It left him as the first to gaze upon the very heart of a lifetime of grieving.

The first time in a very, very long time that Joey Drew saw someone as they, too, saw him.

And with that break came more, the strike at his carefully managed separateness not only reopening him to be seen but beginning an irreversible crack that carved all around him until everything shattered splinter by splinter in wood, metal and ink; each beat of his pulse was the orchestra's director of a blaring symphony of madness, destruction, and the formation of something that he yet again did not want to see as the noises of new structures birthing from old rang so loud that Francine could feel it ripple through her skin.

Among the sounds of deep, massive death…a different one. A cry- a noise not unholy like the rest of them but still so unnerving because of how totally other it was. It stole Joey's breath as he put a hand to his face, and Francine pivoted to face something that she would never wish upon anyone else, especially after experiencing it herself.

Sammy grabbed Alice by the wrist before she could trip into the puddles, the angel never before feeling as vulnerable as she was now, upper body dangling above the thing she hated most as nothing but unsteady heels and the slimy grip of a prophet keeping her from becoming one with the fishbowl of lost souls.

Thank the lord that the preacher staggered her back and away from the cut edge of their serrated piece of the world; surely he would have let her go if the dumbness, numbness of the sight not down but straight ahead had caught his eye and left him at the mercy of all the gravity in the world falling upon his shoulders.

It forced him to his knees as he saw the center of the universe.

It smoothed his hands till limp, ones so ready to hold grab and never let go now unable to do anything at all as Francine met his eyes- the woman not dead nor ink nor ascended to heaven.

It dropped his jaw until it showed teeth as he who bestowed that which gave him sight stood tall behind her, the god of his psalms smiling still as his shadow fell upon the earth and absorbed it, lightly clenched claws seeming to pull all of existence into a single room.

And finally, it shook every millimeter of his body from the surface of inky soma until it swam its way to an inky heart, filling him with something unspeakable that forced the black he was sculpted from to seep out and out, over the brim of his pants, down the length of his arms to trembling fingertips, from his skull and to the floor drop by drop by drop…

…As he saw hair of red, a bowtie of blue, and eyes of yellow stare back.

And then this…this human said his name, the human man gaping, a hand to his heart and one reaching out and then recoiling just as soon, fear and love at once from Joey for the man that knew who he was all along.

"S-" this unfeasible old man stuttered, whole expression shaken, "Sammy…"

If it was relief Joey looked for as he searched painted eyes, that is not what divinities would bestow within the prophet's reply.

A mask barely tied over his head now rested askew, threatening to fall off thanks to the turmoil of being thrown around like a toy soldier in a lifted dollhouse, but he didn't move to adjust it. Nothing could bring his body to move, nothing could bring his lips to speak as the prophet finally saw the truth he had forced himself to live for without ever seeing it for himself, and it being nothing at all that he expected it to be.

A hand rose and pointed, weakly, slowly- ink falling down upon his legs.

Joey waited- waited for something, anything-

"…No."

The musician stayed still in place as he could barely talk back to an impossible, wicked idea.

"He must- he must- my lord must…have-…"

Joey exhaled as Sammy was soon found to speak only to himself, not yet sure to be relieved or mortified.

"…My lord must have his reasons…!" he begged, trying to puzzle together pieces that wouldn't fit without becoming something completely of heathens. "My lord must have done this…for…for…!"

The man ahead quickly found something to grab onto in that little lifeline, the end of a ball of yarn quickly unraveling. "Now Sammy, Sammy you are right," he swiftly assured with a kind, soft voice, "There's a reason for all of this- a reason why you are here, a reason why-"

But any chance of him finishing that plea was dashed away, and the sight of the preacher melting away not just in body and mind but to the bottom of his heart made a woman so afraid to be alone again, to be without him again, forced unable to hold her friend as he within sight but out of reach when needed someone most.

She recognized the deception evaporating before him just as it did for she, blowing away the blinds of clouds underneath until all there was left to do is plummet down from the sky. He who stood strong to show her to be the same- he who kept her from falling apart was now falling apart himself.

Joey gave a small but such panicked screech as a paternal hand beginning to be outstretched for Sammy found use for another child, grabbing his prisoner's arm just in time to keep her from mindlessly trying to run near the beach of an island with not a shore but a pit- a pit that reacted with such fierceness to the frights in Joey's head that the cartoonist was afraid it'd rupture under her feet.

Indeed, his mouth frowned in a way he had never known, hearing creaks even where they stood as his muscles strained more and more with each "Let go of me!" and "Sammy! Sammy!" that opposed him until flailing arms and anchored legs gave way to complete desolation, deep and hearty sobs eventually the only sound left as she became too exhausted to fight anymore; Francine had lost her family and in a way, she was losing Sammy too, and that was too much. The woman did nothing but shut her eyes as her very best friend felt the first wave of dread, a warning of everything he had fought so hard to keep at bay coming with more power than ever before to drive his soul into despair. Would she ever be able to even touch him again? She didn't know, and so all she had was gone.

As Francine cried her friend's name once more across the distance- she barely not falling to her knees, too, if only for her prophet's sake- Joey was left with wide eyes and quivering hands as he saw the healing beliefs that took Sammy so long to build and preserve screech in its release, heard by all who heard Sammy try to assure and comfort with his prayer:

"INK DEMON!" Sammy shouted to his master, "INK DEMON, TELL US- TELL YOUR PROPHET! TELL YOUR BELIEVERS- FRANCINE! WHAT IS BEING DONE HERE?! WHAT ARE YOU ASKING OF US?!"

Demands either unheard or ignored, the demon not even turning to look at him.

…But Joey was already looking his way-

"NO!"

His mask nearly slipped off with vigorous shakes of his head, splattering drops of his flesh onto his paper-toned pants and the crooked floor. Some even went so far as to descend to the puddles below, shiny dots becoming a part of the adrift masses again.

Indeed, a man of ink and one of light and metal weren't the only ones that came to show him what he had done. There were searchers, rising from their thin, wet pools as not only was the solid world became too unstill to remain in but the liquid realm seemed to quake too, moaning and grunting their confused, pained calls as they no longer had refuge in either state of being. They dragged themselves by hands and elbows to the edge- like crowds in an encircling arena looking over a battlefield for a missing girl and a gentleman confined with a ravenous beast- as the butcher gang and their clones tottered and splashed in the searchers' paths, twittering in their broken, animalistic voices questions of what this may mean…

…Maybe of if this before them was what it meant to be set free.

Staring. Staring. Staring. Staring. All eyes on Joey, all eyes seeing him for who he was- everything he never wanted. It quickened the studio owner's breath and made his fingers curl as anxiety crept up them and into his bones, twitching blinks from him that tried but could not match every gaze that rested upon him. As soon as he saw one searcher- one butcher- his heart would grow faint and fling itself to the next, and it happened over and over until he realized inch by inch that these were how many lives he took forever.

These were how many faces that were no their own with him to blame.

But it mattered most to someone who he saw last, the one who built her own face.

Alice, the one who remembered, finally recomposed, numb to the sight of Sammy Lawrence's religion dying at her feet. She was one who even if she refused her name, still knew it. The one that could still feel in her fingertips everything he lost, and everything she would never have again.

The rips of flesh hardly holding the left side of her face together strained upon more to keep a jaw from falling to the floor. Broken lips trembled. Clenched fists shook.

"Joey," she whispered, and even across the vast nothingness, the man to whom that word belonged felt it slink down his spine like a raindrop down a windowpane.

But of course.

No one but Henry and Francine had said his name in an entire lifetime. The sting of that loneliness morphing into something even worse was just inevitable.

And as Joey slowly turned his gape to her, horrified at what was before him, the things she lost came back, wave after wave, pulse after pulse- visions of smiles, of songs, of promises.

Of turned backs, harsh looks, and arcane words muttered in secret.

Unlike Francine, she didn't even need to see any undeniable mirroring between he and the demon to confirm that after all these years, the one who dragged them to hell fell down right along with them.

And the sight of him being…being…the same-!

Francine, hands on her thighs, finally pried her focus a few mere degrees from one friend to the other, just in time to see her fall apart too.

"…Susie…!" A soft exclamation from the dandy in white stained with death gasped near Francine's side, almost as if even after all this time knowing who Alice became and what she was, the young voice actress never left her at all. "Susie, darling, it's been so long-!"

"JOEY!"

…Well that just wouldn't do.

She knew- she knew she saw him a long, long time ago- blamed it as madness from first emerging from the puddles. Her face twisted with how naïve she'd always been.

"So! It's been you all along!" she called, "I suppose I already knew that you started this but…continuing it? Hiding?! God! GOD!" she screamed, throwing her hands to her hair, halo bouncing as she turned about every which way in disbelief. The other beings in the mismatched chamber peered past the holes in patchwork walls and across the living, breathing gap to watch her distress in curiosity. The angel had always been angry, but never…out of control.

Oil-stained glasses felt their shine shift over them, short, awkward grunts of words beginning but not finishing playing with the back of Joey's throat as a girl he had watched over for so long, so endearingly with so many expectations didn't greet him like an old friend.

But of course she wouldn't. Not when she remembered it was him that made it necessary to change expectations in the first place.

"Susie, my dear darling angel-!" he gasped, mouth open with a small shake of the head in disbelief. But whatever he had to say to her condemnation, it was snapped back shut with lips closed tight with the sensation of sickness. No, nothing he could tell her could console, not anymore.

She had grown up so much since he last used words to coax her into childish complacency.

"NO!" a woman who made herself anew screeched, hands to her head and knees buckling together, "DON'T CALL ME THAT! I'M NOT SUSIE, AND I MADE MYSELF AN ANGEL, NOT YOU- NOT YOU- NOT! YOU!" And the last denial was so enormous that it made everyone in the studio question if it was she who said it or something in the air, all around and begging for them to believe what it said. "I'M ALICE ANGEL!"

Such a force came as the woman stolen of her colors literally looked at the very thing that took away her humanity, the same man that she once struggled so hard to please. No wonder her voice split back and forth, like a ping pong ball tossed around; it was certainly how her emotions were played with.

Meanwhile, as Sammy didn't even react, too busy as he tried to surround himself with a gospel of dismay to avoid the little he had left crumble away-

"No, that doesn't make sense- a person- a human- Joey? Joey- Who-? How could he-? He can't!"

-He didn't hear the cavern changing…

…Responding.

…Hollowing.

…Understanding.

Different sounds than before from the swirling souls upset in their profane waterfalls.

Brow curling and sticky hair clinging to the sides of her face as it moved back and forth to investigate the ungodly, Francine gave a small moan of grave concern at this changing tone of a thousandfold meeting their maker. Alice, however, didn't pay attention to what made the other woman distraught but rather finally realized with her troubled voice there wasn't one human being before the angel but two. Thus, her voice became quieter, but the sirens that somehow blared with her eye instead still shot across the room for all to hear and be greatly, greatly alarmed. Please God, no. But what else was left to wonder?

"…What are you going to do with her?"

And with that, everyone- every searcher, every cartoon, even the projectionist and even the maestro clutching and clawing at his own skull for answers he couldn't yet find- focused on the man who twitched every which way at all the eyes upon him. They were waiting for an answer.

Francine was too, tears trailing her cheeks as she stood not even a meter away.

Each corner of the studio was pulled to one spot to witness the master of their sins, and yet he merely stood, demon lingering in his shadow. As if it was they that cornered him and not he all along, his shoulders rose and fell as a person hidden for eighty years by his own distress and cowardice was hidden no more.

After all this time, the girl still pure flesh was at his altar, and all waited with baited breath to know if this was a sacrifice for her as a goddess reigning above death or if she was simply lamb to the slaughter, yet more blood to be shed in front of the rest to remind them this was his world, and his hand that controls every thread that sews in and out, in and out until everyone is connected to the slightest flick of his fingertips…

…If she was his treasure now to a dragon hoarding gold or an anomaly to be put to her place by a righteous judge.

And none of this being what Joey wanted, all he could do was let a gloss wash over the honey in his eyes and let dust of the unspoken come from his mouth in place of a voice. He knew he had done wrong, but never been confronted with being so wrong that others who saw would inquire with baited breath whether or not he felt this woman he began to love like a daughter deserved to die simply for being alive.

But he had brought Sammy to his knees.

He had brought Alice to scream.

The projectionist to swing fists.

The puddles to quake.

And he had brought tears to that very girl's eyes.

So why wouldn't he be the villain, the one who allowed the reflection of his deepest desires become a god, a lord to roam among the murk and ensure no one was out of place, no one questioned the right of the ink demon over the souls that Joey regretted to have stolen away but kept all the same?

The dark king, the warped ruler, the antagonist of a story no one had lived to ever tell- all he could do was look to the demon, the creature still unmoving, and then to Francine, freezing in place so shortly after straightening herself up. His lips were parted, sure he could say something to acquit himself of these sins, but as such an excuse refused to exist in the first place, amber irises flicked back and forth while searching hers.

A rock fell in her stomach as she recognized this gape as one begging her to defend this man against those accusing him of wanting the woman dead just like them; he was asking the only person not yet engulfed by his selfish curse that even after doing it over and over, somehow it wouldn't happen again.

And what could she say to that?

As the passing of time made it known he was truly alone among crowds and crowds of people he cared for, his jaw gradually clenched and a swallow ran down his neck. And then with none to exonerate him, at the father's pathetic silence, Alice shouted once more. Decade upon decade, right at him as all the control she had wrestled for slipped out of her hands.

"COME NOW!" A wretched sort of grin stretched across her face as her arms stretched wide and left her open to any justification, any insanity that'd explain the immeasurable, irremediable horrors he'd let ravage their corpses and spirits until they were completely unrecognizable. "THERE MUST BE SOMETHING! What did you plan!? What have you planned for all of us?!"

Her arms side to side with these words then gestured all around at the crowd brought to Joey, every last person under his thumb. At their inclusion, they began to stir, murmurs of people nearly animals still grasping somewhere in their minds that this had to do with them and what they had been driven to be for far too long. Norman- limbs outstretch too side to side but not in gesture but to fight- had his light flicker as the blurred last feet of its reaches barely touched Francine's skin across the little left of his floor, then the abyss, and then past Joey's nose.

The most terrifying thing in the world had brought Alice to feel nothing about it- nothing at all. All that was left for her was to question it- just as Sammy was now questioning it, just as Francine, just as anyone still with enough sense did.

Why Joey?

Why?

Francine witnessed his eyes skew shut and hands throw over his ears, as if he could shut it all out. But of course a curse designed to make him see and hear all wouldn't allow him to miss the heartbreak right in front of him.

"I didn't! I'm not-…" A breath forced its way between teeth, a sickly, nearly sobbing sound as it took more composure than most anyone could have to try to verbalize feelings unspeakable. "You must understand, my girl- I'm not- I'm not doing anything to try to hurt you! You can't comprehend all it's taken for me to keep you safe-!"

"SURELY!" the woman emboldened called again interrupted, "But surely there is a…a REASON!" Like a prosecutor in a courtroom, she paced back and forth as one eye so far away managed to send a chill down Joey's back, Susie Campbell murdered in cold blood and him with blood found on his hands. The defense of the demon meant nothing to her now.

Nothing meant anything anymore.

"You didn't hurt us?!" she scoffed, "You have the GALL to EXIST and tell us that YOU DIDN'T HURT ANYONE?! That you KEPT US SAFE?!" Her expression became so malevolent, so distorted with revulsion that her sneer was almost unrecognizable. "YOU KILLED US ALL!"

A gasp, flying like cold wind to his tonsils and one hand rising with the quickness of lightning to cover his lips from releasing either vomit or words even worse.

"Joey…" Francine choked, marveling too.

Because the man before her, short and dainty, frilled at the sleeves and fringed with hair near his cheeks…

Rosy in the face and soft in the eyes…

One hand scarred for love and another that had drawn dreams…

This was the killer of not just Susie but the all in the room except Francine, and they were all waiting to see if he would kill her too. That revelation was enough to either let the woman fall feeble or to do as she had always done. Yes, even as something beyond what was considered beyond the most a human being was intended to struggle through, Francine was reduced only to what she had always been:

Brave enough to look in the face what had took everything from everyone, even if maybe she was next. She had to know. She had to know why- why do this? What would drive someone who seemed at one point to be so genuine, so kind, to do this…?!

"Joey…?"

And maybe it was more to himself. Maybe it was to his victims. Maybe it was even to Francine, but as she adjusted herself to look at him in the face- making herself in his line of sight, she saw blank eyes wide with reflections of all his transgressions and trembling lips heavy with awful veracities whisper:

"Am I your murderer?"

And so simply, Joey forced a girl still able to breathe to ponder if he was.

With clear pearls in the corners of her eyelids, it came upon Francine in the horrible quiet of shock that followed and made her step back that an answer to that was not to be found, instead feeling in her chest that was being pried inside out as he asked this, as if to him it wasn't his choice if this was the truth but hers.

Or maybe as if Joey had stabbed her in the heart and placed her hand upon his, that gripped the handle of a knife and let the beautiful reds she brought with her from above bleed onto their hands.

She didn't have time to decide if this was even for her at all, indeed, as everyone answered Joey in brutal, suffering unison. A sharp intake of air filled his lungs with eyes somehow stretching wider, magic of things good and evil glittering like it did in the ink. His own atrocities came from the deformed tongues of his victims and forced him to take in each and every lie and all the misery that came with it down his throat.

"WHAT IS IT?!" Alice shrieked, horns gleaming as she pulled her arms back and threw her voice as far into his head that she could. All it did was make him clench his hands a bit more, his empty gaze just a bit wider as he saw his entire world and how much it hated him. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO US?! WHY?!"

It was then, with the torn woman's anguish echoing through a room to match splintered, hurt feelings that Norman, the man formerly the angel's mentor, either in response to her distress or with the formation of his own, made his light wide and bright as shoulders threw back and that speaker in his chest crackled so loud, roared with such might, that like a lion he brought the call of every other creature one by one, reverberating until every soul finally, finally spoke their sorrow at the man who caused it to seed and consume them all.

Dominoes cascading, Francine's head twisted as she heard noise sweep across the room like a wave encircling them. Every searcher began to moan past the muting cover of ever-falling jaws. Pipers groaned, Strikers hissed, and Fishers gurgled, flinging their swinging heads and handless arms and chattering teeth inside skulls with complete and utter upset.

And then the puddles.

Like fire rising from hell, the murmurs of dripping souls enveloping their island began to get louder…and louder…and louder.

Sammy maybe failed to pull them out of their one-track hivemind when he was among them, sent there by the demon to prevent Henry's sacrifice, but Joey brought them back.

And they were cursing his name.

JOEY

JOEY

JOEY

And beneath it all- Alice and searchers and Norman and toons-

Soon, something else was the hardest for him to hear.

"No…"

Joey gasped once more, pivoting where he stood, knowing this denial from Sammy was fundamentally different.

"No!"

As the ink man raised his chin from the floor till it was level with the one in a top hat, Joey felt it. It was already shaping his lips, already trembling clenched hands. Sammy was slipping.

"No- no no no NO NO NO-!"

And then Joey accidentally sealed the fate of Sammy's belief. Hearing the young man pain, to hear him surely, surely in pain-

Mr. Drew in his great practice of containing terrible things still couldn't keep the core of his soul from reacting to such visceral anguish and grief for a lad he had wanted to blind from the horrors of this life.

To see your most loyal, most faithful disciple doubt would make any god weak in the vision of their flock, and as seer stared at him Joey couldn't hold back the same secret he failed to keep from Francine.

His skin crawled as he saw the personification of his soul shift in his peripheral against his will, oil smearing the corner of his sight like looming sin.

That was when illusion disappeared forever.

Sammy saw the ink demon clench his fists and straighten his back the same time as Joey did, something so simple that it fragmented eighty years until prayer, hope, and hymn swirled around Sammy like an aura, a man being broken so far that he went to his most basic state of faith and murmured all that had carried him day after day, moment after moment to make torture worth its while.

The demon's changing stance may have been done in reaction to calm Joey down, but it was a flinch of foolishness, a gamble that stirred something so deep inside Mr. Lawrence that once more, he would never be the same.

A lifetime of devotion increasing in volume until it went from a mumble, to a whisper, to words, to a shout so loud as to hope to drown out everything else telling him.

"Sammy," his former employer quaked to see him, "Sammy, please-!" Such a weak appeal, high in pitch and rough with trepidation for things irreversible. "Please, son, I can explain-!" That desperate reach of Drew's dared to come out again, even if it couldn't touch; a hope against hope that if Sammy was remembering him- if Sammy was realizing, too who the demon really was- that he would also find the old man with a warm smile that only wanted the best for him.

To hear the sobs of a man that trusted his god- unwittingly trusted him. That prayed, "my lord, my god, my master, ink demon, INK DEMON, INK DEMON-!" That hymn that sung to keep him safe. Keep him stable. Keep him alive. It was prayed again now in the most terrible way, a man already broken breaking inside out all over again.

And that meditation was eaten up by the shouting of this world's god's true name.

Not thanking him for trying so hard for their sake.

Not commending him for doing all he could.

Not blessing him for doing everything a good father should.

It was damnation from the damned, calls from the netherworld insisting that he deserved even worse for what he did.

That was what released the floods of a man that had jammed fingers into a leaking dam, lest the rivers of fate lead where they never should.

But then, by his side- soft murmurs of distress- then it was her.

The woman that gave him her hope.

Gave him her light.

Her smile-

Happiness-!

Faith-!

Seeing she who had raised him to great heights of belief that maybe things could get better, maybe they could be set free- why, for her to look upon Mr. Drew now and leave him wondering if he had stolen every last innocence away that he came to see as their salvation?

His saving grace now returned his hurt- his weighted shoulders, heavy breath, and palms clasped over his heart-…only with her own as she waited for some reasoning he couldn't even comprehend himself.

And how awful it was to realize that her pain was so great thanks to him.

And as Francine uttered his name once more to end the silence of their locked eyes, guessing that maybe- just maybe- there was something he could say to all this, that was the last straw, and she saw the demon react before he did, a horrid screech from his closed teeth in agony. A tormentor desperate to convey his own torture snapped, and his outrage rose to the ceiling and submerged his universe no longer with tender love but his most appalling possessiveness.

It was all that was left to him, left to his devices to contain what was becoming more out of his grasp by the second.

"YOU ARE ALL CHILDREN! I KNOW BETTER THAN YOU ALL!YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND!YOU CAN'T COMPREHEND EVERYTHING THAT I'VE DONE FOR YOU! I AM AT FAULT, BUT I AM FAULTLESS! THIS MAY HAVE BEEN BECAUSE OF ME, BUT I HAVE DONE EVERYTHING- EVERYTHING I CAN TO HELP YOU! THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE THAT COULD HAVE BEEN DONE- DON'T YOU SEE? DON'T YOU SEE?!"

One last scream against the world that screamed at him, as they refused to listen, as they refused to comply. His brow furrowed and his frown cut across a face once known for smiles, and a voice once best at laughter now thundered with the demands of someone unwavering in a war against himself.

"ENOUGH!"

And the expressionless god finally moved once more, raising his hands far up in command of his Joey's words come true- the man's voice a pen that drew heaven's wrath and let it soak through the studio itself. His aura flooded the walls, cracking them open even more, and with a swipe of Joey's arms, everything was pushed back as black consumed him and the world was violently discarded not towards its monarch this time but away, deep and far into the chaos of his suffering mind where he could never be found and reminded of guilt again.

Francine was the last to see him, a glimpse of golden eyes that gleamed with rage soon becoming filled with sharp, sharp regret as he reached out his arm one final time to the woman far too long after his heart was closed off for good, a hand swiping just short of the nothingness that separated them.

As she flew back and saw his figure become covered by the splattering shade of the ink demon, the wanderer he held so dear couldn't say if it was he that was gone or she.