84- Son

"I thank my God in all my remembrance of you…" - Philippians 1:3

"I don't want you to die…!"

The room was dark, corners washed in shadows. The blinds were open, letting in the cold, biting air blown through the window from stars in a black sky. With the way he was crying- on his knees, leaning over the side of her bed, both hands gripping just one of hers- you would have thought that Mrs. Drew was really dying right then and there.

But no, she was just old, and she was just telling her son that some things become more and more inevitable with age.

That people come and go, all in their due time.

But isn't that everything fate shouldn't be? Wasn't magic meant to preserve things that are good?

Shouldn't the good stay?

"Why can't you just…live forever?! I know you can't, mama, but-…why can't you?!"

Nonsense from someone so desperate, only at the first- not even sign. The first wisp of a possibility Joey would eventually lose someone he loved, whom he built his life around and upon.

This wasn't a time where they expected her to die, but the idea reduced him to tears…

…Just as a good son should do at such an affront to the way things should be.

And an omen it turned out to be, as death came for her suddenly, unexpectedly a short time after that night, and it affirmed that Joey had every right to be so afraid.

Joey Drew's mother was in every sense of the word mythical. A myth herself that told such stories- made anyone believe that anything is possible if you listen to her long enough. She raised Joey to believe in magic, and she raised Joey to believe he was magic, too, just by existing, and he believed the same of her.

Somehow in such admiration and closeness there came distance. She was a fairy tale, even when she saw and spoke to her lovely boy every last day. If he was born in a different day and age, he would have heard his mother be called a changeling, and with the way she passed things onto him, he would have been that too. People fear the unknown while fae embrace it, so surely the confidence- this…magic about them both made them infallible in some way humans are not; this was the spell that bound almost all who knew the Drews, even upon each other.

Maybe this is how Joey was so unprepared. Because he was human, too, and so he did fear change. Just not how people expected, not after seeing the sparkle in his eyes and warmth in his heart. A fire, he was, and fires are good.

And fires burn, burn, burn if something doesn't control them.

He did rebuild, but he did not consider her death as true loss. He should have, but he didn't; he didn't realize there was another way to cope, with his indoctrination to always "be his true self" with smiles and wonder and no inkling of actual, meaningful sadness. That would have disappointed her, surely, to fail in such an egregious way. So he did obediently as she asked and rekindled the magic in the family's blood, went forth to bring that brightness in him to the world…not expecting to blind his own child.

And without even knowing it- and certainly with no intent- with the way she filled his head with hopes, dreams, and legacies, Joey's mother had become her son's demon.

The archives were, as Sammy recalled from when he came here with his sight, certainly something to behold. Dreamlike, as everything was that brought them closer and closer to the truth of this place- more surreal. The bookcases towered along walls with no ending height- turning with a slight twist like somewhere up there was a giant that twirled them like string in its fingers. And there were so many things upon the shelves that one could sit and stare at a single spot for hours as they tried to unfold the story told without touching the binding of a single book. Objects- an orange yoyo with its loop unheld by idle hands for years. A purple locket someone used to keep in their pocket and clutch when things went wrong to remember some things are right. Green dice and red playing cards, shining like gems stowed away from a black and white world.

The rest of the studio was devoid of these things because everything personal that meant something to someone, and the depth and detail in the vastness filled to the brim proved just how much was taken away.

Memories of people that weren't allowed out.

Poor ol' Sammy Lawrence didn't know this, though, back when he retrieved his glasses from here in his single-minded trance. But here were the disciples now, running down with soft pants of breath and a tremble in their grunts of effort, down its aisles in hope that the store's warden wouldn't find them as they stole its secrets away. Indeed, the darkness was so, so much thicker than before wherever it was seen; Sammy didn't need eyes to feel it tangibly in the air. Francine didn't even need to hear past the thunder of her heartbeat to know the drips of Bendy might be just seconds away.

Wanting to feel nothing else, the man gripped her hand tight as the labyrinth inch by inch either allowed them a way out or further in.

Groaning, holding her palms against the door after pulling them to the other side, the woman noticed her heart trying to get out of its chest from more than just the run. Cold- metal under her fingers. A final, loud exhale before she squeezed her eyes shut, and a gentler sigh as she wearily opened them once more as she lifted herself back up to find-…

The silence that followed made Sammy's stomach flip.

"Francine…?"

…

…

"Sammy?" Her voice closer to him now, but not facing him. He could tell, and with the way her words struck they might as well have been written right in his head. "When you saw his name…how did it look?"

A pause, as he wasn't sure if he wanted what came after his own reply. He tilted his head and raised it up again, but it only could delay so long.

"It was just…a name on a book, I think." Couldn't even make himself ask the obvious "why?"

Another pause before suspicions were confirmed.

"…This definitely isn't what you saw."

Past her gaping expression was something…new. Like the rest of the archives, there were things everywhere, but it felt so…different. Just simply, purely, fundamentally different. Posters on the wall- Boris and Bendy together, hand in hand in nearly every one. She moved to hold Sammy's once more upon their sight, too, lest her friend grow afraid of the quiet or she lose her mind at it all. Smiling, friendly faces scratched and marred with time, but still preserved just like them. They were plastered on either side of a room- or hall, given the nature of how quickly shadow came from the distance ahead- and once her gaze trailed with it, there-

"AH-!"

The woman flinched as something sparked, her shoulders raising and free hand clawing the air with an abrupt and unstable step back; what wasn't posters was mangled- wood boards bending and twisting to show the monster of the machine just behind them, like peeling off skin to see flesh and veins- pipes and wires. They looked hurt, even, and it made her feel the same way.

Especially so when Francine saw what was gluing them hardly in place was the lifeblood of all their pain- the ink.

So stunned she was that it took a moment for her to recognize Sammy had again taken a protective stance, putting himself more in front of her and yelping himself at her own noise.

"I'm- I'm fine," she soothed quietly, unable to hide the tremor in her voice as she pulled in her lips and let them go in a sigh. "Just some…electrical stuff." She swallowed hard, feeling stress in how hard her cheeks pinched under her squinting, aching eyes at the occasional sudden brightness ahead. "We gotta be careful walking through." A squeeze on his hand came for emphasis, which at first was stiff and unresponsive, but then it eased right back with hers with a hesitant but renewed vigor.

"No way but forward," he bitterly knew without being told.

That wasn't the only reason for trepidation, though. Inkling by inkling, Francine would find a word for it eventually, like the pipes started to leak down her back and make her shiver. It would be "vulnerable." Not just for her- this truly was something not intended to be seen.

Then…why let it be found?

Her question was interrupted as something else revealed itself, too, a look of unease becoming straight amazement. Past the posters that tried to patch and cover wounds of a building that should have been long dead was something that seemed to be dead itself-

Dolls on dusty shelves, models and sketches- just about anything you could imagine this character take the shape of-

"…What do you see?" the prophet anxiously asked, the black "flesh" underneath his eye sockets pinching up a bit behind glasses, dents almost seeming to twitch like troubled eyes.

And soft and shaking upon her tongue, both knew it meant something but neither what when she replied:

"Boris."

After all, the place was alive with magic. Anything was possible, evidently.

The head of a dancing demon was tilted to lay its head on another plush that seemed far too kind to be something as sinister as a wolf, both looking on blankly in frozen adoration. Friends forever, and ever, and ever.

"Could he be here too-?"

Another ponderance cut short as in an oh so familiar way to when Francine visited Joey in his hiding, the dark was pulled back and again bestowed something for her to find.

Someone was here, alright. But maybe not anymore.

The woman in blue didn't know the color of her shirt nearly matched the one of the man in the picture frame she cautiously moved to grasp in her hands, but the look in his eye was bright enough between them. A small piece of glass twinkled both visually and audibly as it fell from deep cracks with her lifting, and as she trailed her round fingers carefully across what was left in front of the photo to wipe the dust off, she saw the fresh trails of someone else of human size that had done the same.

Not a spot of ink upon those smiling faces.

"…A man," she narrated to her anxiety-ridden friend, "With-…with another. I think they're-…friends? Dating? One's holding a baby and just-…they look really happy, I think."

Sammy frowned, unsure if he recalled anything of particular significance about an infant.

Meanwhile, the pipes' horrid echo seemed more hollowing by the second, as it did mean something to someone present but unseen as always. Francine didn't notice it getting worse as suddenly, Sammy did recall something after all.

"Black hair," he murmured, face directed at the frame, "Dark eyes. Asian with a-…a soft smile and a button up shirt?"

To a "t" exactly who was looking back at them. It was staggering. Maybe it shouldn't have been. He had come back eventually, after all, and hardly changed a bit besides a few gray hairs and some wear upon his face; this man was only about as old- when he came as Sammy's first sacrifice to his lord- as Joey was when he sacrificed them all.

"Sammy!" she choked, the shock that thick in her throat, "How the hell'd you-"

A grin of a different sort waiting for her as she turned to question her comrade, somehow both distressed and smug from a man behind broken glasses that matched the frame that almost crumbled in her fingers. Eyes weren't there to flicker, but the empty sockets in his wet skull somehow conveyed the same thing.

A single, quiet laugh, and then the curve in his lips faded.

"That's him."

His head turned forward and down as the implication settled in, Sammy mourning something he didn't know was lost. Just like Francine, he had no idea how important he was- what a mistake it had been to try to send the sheep to sleep.

And as he had before, he lifted up his hands in front of him with a different sort of disgust- what they did instead of what they were made of. They flexed minutely- humanly- with his revelation.

"Henry."

Francine had allowed him to let go of her, but all the delicate worry she had remained. Another electrical shock from behind silhouetted her hair with a sputter and revealed her pupils moving over him up and down, and she knew she couldn't ever say anything to quite make up for what was happening to him in this moment.

To occupy herself, her eyes then fell upon three more things. A very old woman in a wheelchair, quilt across her lap, a vase- no…that's an urn- and a page of paper with nothing on it but a black splatter.

It took a bit for her gaze to be caught by movement- Sammy's fingers now instinctively, cautiously reaching for something she hadn't noticed yet, and seeing it made her throat clench tighter and insides ache as if to prepare for the worst.

"Henry…!" she repeated, as that was the name on the tape smudged underneath his thumb.

Lamb and shepherd lifted their chins up, another spark in the distance lining their profiles, as they readied themselves to find company of another lost from the flock long, long ago.

The heavy click! of when Sammy pressed the play button somehow felt worse than her flinch than before.

…

…

…Static…

…

…

…Static…

….

…

The expression froze upon her in a horror growing and growing with each passing second of white noise, making her face hurting worse than anything else her body had been subjected to in the time she had spent trapped and tortured here. She ended up gasping when she opened her mouth to swear in utter dismay only for it be interrupted by a voice.

And such great juxtaposition did it have to the happy man in the photo.

It began with coughing- gagging, even- as a man much older than when he had left the studio began to tell about his time here. Sometimes the audio was clear, sometimes it seemed decayed, like the ink around it was acidic and still working to hide the parts that stung most. The gaps ranged from a second to several and left their hearts feel empty with the reverb of the pipes and the machine that sung a strain with no words.

But it said enough.

"Boris-… Yeah, buddy, I-…glad you're safe now too-… But-… The demon is-… have much time! Boris, Joey- Joey did this to you!-... Joey!-… I have to leave. Boris, listen!-… I found the door-…make a run for-… I don't know what'll happen, but I damn can't stay here. Are…you with me, buddy?"

Her lip trembled at the clarity of these last words, having never heard his voice and maybe never hearing it again.

…A chuckle, soft and relieved. Its voice had waited a very long time to let go.

"Then let's get out of here, Boris. You and I-"

He didn't sound done by the way his tone sounded at the end of the tape, but there it was. The static returned as the recorder tried to play what wasn't there, and so eventually a murky thumb pressed it to stop.

Only then did they notice that whatever else was sounding off had gotten louder…and louder…and louder.

Like a frog being boiled to death so very slowly, only now did they hear the drips were in the pipes around them and saw that the shadows around them had a familiar, splattering shape instead of an ordinary fade.

Footsteps-

Something lit up in Francine's mind.

Footsteps-

She turned to Sammy, ready to burst at the seams.

Running-

"Sammy!" She tugged hard at his arm to get him to face her, bringing his gritting teeth to her level. "Did Henry ever die?! DID YOU MEET HIM IN THE PUDDLES?!"

And from his gaping mouth came nothing.

The sound, instead, was screaming as something slammed into the metal door some ways behind them, the echo of it rattling the posters on the wall until they turned more and more yellow and curled at the edges like sickness made them grow old, and it turned the Borises to face the intruders to a sacred shrine.

And shortly after the scream- something so deep inside she wouldn't have thought of it if fear didn't jump it to the tip of her tongue. She clenched her fists and shouted to the heavens, praying to be heard-

"JOEY!"

Turns out something that the fellow by that name told her when they last met wasn't a lie, after all. Even though the demon didn't hesitate to hit the door over, and over, and over again till its middle started to cave and bend- even though the floor rattled and pipes began to burst their ink and spray at each other, staining the smiling toons and slinking to the floor in hopes to drown those inside…

Something was different.

She knew it.

She believed.

"JOEY- JOEY STOP! I JUST WANNA TALK! LET ME TALK TO Y-"

A hand covered her mouth, muffling another word as knuckles clenched around her jaw. Sammy didn't understand what she was doing, but it would get her killed, and he had spent every waking second preventing that as of late.

Turns out it wasn't unplanned, shrieked with nothing else to do. With a groan, she threw his hand off, gripping the wrist tight as she could till her fingers felt numb. His hand was held between them, up in the air as everything felt like it was falling apart and she was going to encourage it.

"Sammy- Sammy trust me- just TRUST-"

And then once again, she did the same as she had always done. Every decision she had made was answered not with a call…

…But with a fall.

The floorboards broke underneath her feet and she began tripping on things tumbling down right along with her. Despite asking for it, she shrieked again and reflexively tried to cling to her friend by her side. He did the same, his own shout filling the room as his entire self was thrown to try to save her. Not again- so many times he failed her, NOT AGAIN-!

Through the cracks again in the homemade universe and through Sammy's fingers alike, she fell, and he couldn't see anything but the puddles down where Mr. Drew took her.

Joey hadn't lied, because even though the studio listened to him, he listened to her always. And sometimes, a reaction to a reaction is more than enough to change things for good. All in his hands, but not as if others have nothing to do with what he did.

Everything, in fact, had to do with others, and this she finally understood.

And once again, with a pathetic clang! against the ground in the distance and the world ripping itself apart, Sammy was left alone with his god.