A/N: Hello, hello! This chapter is our last breath of fresh air before quite a bit of action. Enjoy!

Chapter Twelve: HIS DREAM. MY EFFORT.

LINDA

Audrey lay, chest rising and falling slowly, curled on her side around the small living cartoon. Bendy had his head tucked into her stomach, strange pointed tail draped over Audrey's legs.

Both glowed, as did the walls. And Henry. And, Linda thought, me.

She wrapped her arms a little tighter around Henry and leaned her head against his shoulder. "You think they'll be okay?"

Henry looked down at her with a smile. "Can't you feel it, too?"

Linda sighed and closed her eyes. "Yes, I know." I do know.

It was gone. The low hum, the whispers at the edges of the mind, the flickers at the corners of her eyes. The studio felt… quiet. Peaceful.

The same sort of peace that filled the little room, with the glow of the golden light threading over the walls. And the people within it.

"I'm always right," Henry muttered.

Linda elbowed him in the ribs. Hard.

Henry yelped, and Linda laughed, feeling the pain and terror coiled into knots in her shoulders relax, easing. Henry laughed, too, and pulled her into a tight hug. Linda gasped for air and thumped at his chest- firm, real, there.

When the laughter drained and they stood together, tired, Henry took Linda's shoulders and looked her up and down. Linda knew what he saw: golden spirals tracing over her skin, glowing at the hem and seams and folds in her clothes, climbing up her throat. Tiny horns nestled in her hair. A halo floating above her head, brilliant in the dim light.

Linda waited until he looked back into her eyes and, with a small smile asked, "Improvement?"

Henry spluttered. "No! Well- yes? I mean… Linda, you have always looked beautiful, and you always will to me. Improvement, shmoovement," he muttered.

Linda laughed. "Thank you, I believe."

"How was I supposed to answer that, anyway?" Henry grumbled, and grinned down at her. "I do like the halo immensely. It suits you quite a bit."

Linda tipped her head with a grin, reluctant to admit out loud how much she actually liked the little ornament. "It's a nice touch." She brushed some hair out of her face, reaching up to touch the points above her head. "Will I always glow?"

Henry grinned. "Nah, it fades. But it can come back too."

"And while we're on the topic of color-" Linda shot him a playful glare and settled her hands on her hips- "what were you thinking, wearing a white shirt?"

Henry laughed, holding up his hands in surrender. "In my defense, I was left sleep deprived and unsupervised."

"We were heading to the same place, you schmook," Linda teased. "At least I had the sense to wear black, not that you can tell any more - it's unfair that you got to keep your clothes!"

Henry snorted. "Must be my founder's privilege, or something." He paused and sniffed. "Oh, good, someone's gotten the soup warmed up. What do you say to a proper introduction? Sammy is impatient to meet-" Henry lowered his voice, adopting an awful British accent- "'the woman who managed to put up with your foolishness for lo, these many years'." He offered his arm. "Shall we?"

Linda smiled back at her daughter's small form in the bed, taking Henry's arm. "Yes, indeed, we shall. But you'd never pass for British. Please don't try."

Bread from the last few sandwiches (with one left for Audrey), combined with soup warmed from the stove, caused the mood around the table to burn bright between the inked adults.

"She's quick," Sammy acknowledged, pausing for a moment to take an enormous bite of bread. His eyes closed, accompanying his hum of delight, and Linda smiled at the acknowledgement of her baking skills. "With an astonishingly bright mind. I have no idea how she's your daughter, Henry."

Henry spluttered for a moment, then joined everyone else in laughter. "It's all Linda, I swear."

"It is not," Linda protested, swatting his arm. "You're intelligent. Look at how you explained the chemistry of bread!"

Henry winced. "I dumped too much baking soda in with the vinegar and nearly put a hole through our ceiling, but otherwise, yeah, that was fun."

Sammy laughed. "Somehow, Stein, that doesn't surprise me at all."

"I do have a question about Audrey," Allison said. She looked toward the faintly glowing doorway, the bed with the sleeping barely visible, with a slight frown. "That gold writing was here before, but it was just messages. Now the Studio is acting strange, the Demon's responding to her, she's healing us… has she been here before? What's happening?"

Henry squeezed Linda's hand. "I don't know. But there could be a reason it's tied to Audrey."

"We wanted kids, before Henry came to the studio the first time," Linda said, and winced. She rubbed Henry's hand with her thumb. "But we couldn't get pregnant. At all."

"And then, when I got back, we waited for a while, because I just couldn't hold myself together at all," Henry explained. He glanced sideways at Linda with a grin. "And then we thought, there's no way we can now."

"I'm eight years younger than Henry," Linda said with a smile, "but that still meant I was in my early forties. And, well, Henry…"

Allison laughed. "I don't think you have to explain much more."

"Right," Henry mumbled. "Anyway."

"We just didn't think about it as a possibility," Linda said. "And then… surprise."

Henry frowned. "The only thing was, we didn't know what she'd be like. We had no idea if she'd be fully human, or something else. And we were both thrilled when she came out, but there were a few things. Her eyes were black - iris and pupil both. They lightened to Linda's brown eventually, but it was definitely black at first. Startled the doctors quite a bit. And her hair was black, too - it still is, but that could be normal anyway. So we didn't really know."

"But she grew up fine," Linda said, quietly. "And normal. She had those dreams, which was definitely odd, and she likes to draw more than anything else. Not too surprising, with the father she has. But now…" She frowned. "I'd always wondered."

"So she's part ink, without going through the Machine?" Sammy tipped his head. "Fascinating. She hasn't even been mutated."

"Sammy," Henry snapped, and scrubbed at his face, the dark ink finger tracks disappearing into the skin. "For the love of Pete."

"Out of all of us, Audrey would come back the best," Allison said with a small smile. "I don't think the Machine would know what to do with her."

A silence drifted over the group, and Linda tilted the bowl she held back and forth, enjoying the warmth on her hands.

"But none of it makes sense," Tom growled, breaking the silence.

Linda turned to him, surprised.

The engineer shrugged. "Ink doesn't turn evil. Ink doesn't eat people and spit out different bodies. Ink doesn't drive people insane." His ears twitched and flattened back against his head. "It shouldn't, anyway. Not 'cause of any Machine."

"I thought you'd know how," Sammy drawled. "Didn't you help Joey put the cursed thing together?"

Tom bared his teeth. "Didn't think it was magic. Anything the Machine used to spit out looked like a statue. And I was trying to keep the Studio together, keep it from flooding. Nearly drowned once or twice. Think someone locked me in. Everything got blurry after that." He shook his head at Sammy, who stayed silent. "You're not the only one who got duped by the old boss."

Allison reached out and took Tom's hand. She looked around the circle, lingering a moment on Sammy, her lips tight and narrow. "I know this all had to do with Joey. It had to. No one else could've gotten any of this started. But it just seems… bigger."

"Bigger than Joey?" Linda ventured.

Allison hummed a low note, eyes distant. "Maybe."

"This isn't even the original Studio," Sammy murmured. He looked around at everyone's startled expressions. "It was three floors, was it not?" On his fingers, he ticked them off. "The first floor, offices and animation studios. The second floor, recordings and projection studios. The third floor, more offices, the vaults and the files." Sammy held up his hand. "Three, and three only. But we've added, let's see: Heavenly Toys, this bizarre apartment-type safehouse, the Bendyland attractions, the Madhouse, and let's not forget the Ink River or, God forbid, the Machine?"

"That's true," Allison said, blinking. "I didn't even think about that."

"But that's not all," Sammy continued, his mouth curling up in a wry grin. "It was the ink flood that did it. I might have been insane, or nearly so at that point," he snapped when Henry opened his mouth. "But, so help me, I knew how many floors there were because I wandered them both day and night for half a year."

"I'm not arguing," Henry said calmly, and Linda laid her hand on his. "I'm as baffled as you. I just want to know how."

Sammy threw up his hands. "We've asked an apparent hundred questions at this point, and you think I have answers?"

"Sammy," Linda said firmly, feeling Henry's hand tighten on her own. "Enough."

Sammy huffed, but kept quiet.

Henry looked at him for a long moment. "If we know how any of this works, then we have a much better chance of getting out of here. And I think you have a better idea than most of us."

Linda shot an inquisitive look at Henry's side profile, but he watched Sammy, waiting.

Sammy gave a long-suffering sigh. "Fine. I suppose I would."

"Because…?" Allison asked, eyes narrow.

Sammy gestured widely. "You two were in and out of battling for your lives too much. As the resident Prophet, who - I'll remind you - can walk through walls, I have been around the Studio enough to have picked up on a few of its… idiosyncrasies."

Tom gave a snort.

Sammy plowed on, ignoring the Boris across the table. "If one is to - die, I suppose - their consciousness melts into the collective pile of voices in the ink, cycling in and out of the Machine." His face twisted for a moment, then smoothed out again. "If the individual remains… intact, we'll say, despite the voices, then eventually they are rebirthed."

"We know that much," Tom said shortly.

"I don't," Linda said. "I didn't know any of this."

Sammy nodded to her. "Judging from the Alices and Borises, the Machine respects man and woman: judging from whom is chosen for Alices and Borises, it seems to be those who are holding on to some very strong sense of self."

"You're different," Allison pointed out. "And so is Henry."

Sammy shrugged. "It's an interesting paradox, isn't it?"

"Maybe you were both here at the beginning," Linda suggested, mind whirling with possibilities.

"I could see that," Henry said, eyes distant. His fingers absentmindedly sketched a shape, over and over again, on the table.

"You were having a hard time when we found you," Allison said to Sammy, slowly.

Sammy shrugged again, this time jerkily. "I am, for all intents and purposes, a Lost One with a few special features. And the Lost Ones have been disappearing over time."

Henry jerked his head up. "Why?"

Sammy's smile twisted. "Who knows? Perhaps they can't hold on. Perhaps something else is taking them. Either way, there are more mindless Searchers born every cycle, and fewer Lost Ones revive."

They stared at him, speechless.

Sammy looked around at them. Quietly, he admitted, "And something important to me is… gone."

The group sat in silence for a few moments.

Tom huffed a breath. "I don't know how that helps us get out."

Allison frowned, thoughtfully. "It helps us know that the ink isn't what's in control, I think. It's just manipulated - by the Machine, or the Demon, or maybe the Lost Ones in it."

"Not that," Sammy muttered.

Allison sighed. "Then just the Machine or the Demon. But it's never stopped us getting out - that's always been Searchers, or enemies, or sometimes the Studio moves."

Henry paused in his tracing. "The first time I tried to leave, the floor collapsed under me. Too much of a coincidence, right?"

Allison nodded. "Maybe it's the Demon orchestrating things. He's strong, maybe strong enough for that."

"I'm not so sure," Henry said slowly. "When I went under, the Machine felt alive. I thought it was Bendy manipulating it. But now that I've been inside the Demon - that wasn't Bendy, that was the Demon - it wasn't him at all. And Bendy helped me get out the first time…" He frowned, clearly working through his thoughts.

"Something in the ink itself, maybe?" Linda asked him.

"I don't think so," Henry said, distractedly. His hand twisted into a fist, and he blinked down at it.

"In the Machine," Tom said, and Henry nodded with a frown.

"So what is it?" Sammy said, impatiently. "If I don't know-"

Henry's shoulders went taut.

"Not the Machine itself," he growled. "No. But looking through it-"

A scream tore the air in the safe room apart.

Linda gasped, knocking her chair halfway across the room at her speed. She catapulted through the door into the small bedroom just behind Henry.

Audrey sat bolt upright in bed, normal hand white-knuckled in the blanket, ink hand dangling limp off the side of the bed. Her body shook, and Linda heard the shudder in her voice as the air in her lungs vanished, leaving her unable to scream.

Her eyes were wide, huge in her small face, and glowing brilliant gold. The same bright ink writhed on the walls. Words scratched themselves out and rewrote on the wall.

Henry scooped their shaking daughter up from the bed and cradled her in his arms, rocking from side to side.

Audrey shuddered. Her golden eyes flickered and dimmed, and she shut them, still quivering from head to toe. Henry lowered to the bed and sat on the edge, looking up at Linda with baffled eyes: what now?

Linda rubbed Audrey's back and dropped to her knees, brushing hair from Audrey's face. "Sunshine. Audrey. Momma's here, and Dad. It was just a nightmare-"

"He's here," Audrey gasped.

She looked up at Linda, and Linda suddenly felt cold trickle down her spine: peeking up above Audrey's collarbone, hidden just barely behind her shirt, a tendril of black ink curled through her skin, up toward her neck. It's eating her alive.

"Audrey," Linda said, slowly, aware of the others, silent in the doorway, and the harsh pounding of her own heart. Henry's tight expression reflected her own fears. "Who is here?"

"He's in the Machine, the heart of it," Audrey choked. "We have to go, now, go, no, not Bendy…" She sobbed once, and began to shake again.

"Audrey," Linda said, and couldn't hide the urgency in her voice this time. "Who is in the Machine?"

Audrey turned glittering, terrified eyes on Linda. "He hates me, he hates Daddy, he wants us all dead. He wants Bendy-"

"Audrey." Linda took her daughter's chin, cupping it with her thumbs, and looked hard into her eyes. "Who."

"It's Joey," Audrey whispered. "Joey's back."

TO BE CONTINUED

A/N: Welcome to the endgame.

It's good to hear from Linda, even better to have the family reunited. I have to wonder: is the golden ink Linda has been mended with going to be enough to protect her...? We'll have to see. And you get a bonus point if you figure out what Sammy lost! (Just one point, though - not the hardest riddle in the world to solve.)

I have made it quite far with this story - further than I thought I would go, to be completely honest, which makes me happy - and with the end of this chapter, we've finally pushed into new material. This upcoming work will finally be what I've written recently, instead of editing my past craftsmanship. Chapter 13 (ooo, unlucky) is brand new, though I've given it a lot of editorial polish in the last few weeks.

Stay tuned. I'll do my best to have an update posted in a week's time, though I have a Hell Week (as we've affectionately nicknamed horrendously scheduled weeks) coming up here. I'll be working two back-to-back shifts, followed by another series with less than 6 hrs of turnaround for me to sleep... ah, well. We'll see if I have the energy by next Sunday to have an update posted.

See you soon (pray for me), and Godspeed,

Sam ;)