A/N: Hello, hello, and welcome back! Apologies for the cliffhanger - enjoy.
Chapter Fourteen: THERE'S NO TURNING BACK NOW [PLEASE DON'T CRY]
CREATION
Warm
No hurt
At the edge of consciousness, the ink hums. Waiting.
Studio walls buzz, far to near, frequency jarring and angry.
Black coils sit in quiet. There is little motion. There is only a gentle current.
Alive?
Yeah. You're okay?
Yes
Movement in front. Vision clears, with a blink.
Creator
DAD!
The man stares across the inky black, white edges around his irises.
He's okay
Who else?
Senses extend with a thought, pouring out through the dark. Light chases behind.
Tom is okay
Allison is helped by Tom
Allison is okay
Sammy is hurt
Gold ink rushes forward, over the broken glass.
Sammy is okay
Linda [Mom] is stuck
Dad [Creator] will save
The walls roar, tearing and ripping, shock waves swaying the pool for a moment.
Words crash across a moment later.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?"
Quick turn of the head. A man, hunched over a railing, comes into view, fist high in the air.
The world erupts for a moment, a fury and storm of ink shards.
No.
The walls scream, but the black liquid flattens, steady again.
The Creator
But he LIED
NOT OUR CREATOR
JOEY LIED
JOEY
JOEY.
HENRY
Henry wasn't breathing.
Sammy sat, arms askew, inky mouth open on the other side of the loading bay, as gold pooled around his hands and body. Tom hugged Allison close to him, perfectly still, axe forgotten somewhere close behind.
The walls rattled from Joey's shriek, shaking on their rusted nails. Dust trickled down from the rafters.
The little figure remained frozen, head turned just a touch too far back and up to be human. Pie-cut eyes stayed steady, locked on the hunched man on the balcony.
Henry felt it before it happened. A familiar old heartbeat throbbed in his hands, beating inside his chest.
Before him, the pool dropped, silently, twisting in a silent whirlpool down into the depths. Only a pillar remained, underneath the little black creature, unmoving in the slightest.
Joey smashed a fist into the railing, the sound clattering too loud in the thick air. Spittle sprayed from his mouth. "If that's still you, you ugly beast, stop this nonsense now!"
The entity's smile stretched slightly wider, its only sign of motion.
Joey screamed, wordless at first, then choked down into sentences. "I am your god! Obey me!"
The thing's head tilted, smile almost splitting its face now, eyes glittering with something more than the light illuminating them.
Joey slammed his fist down. Every glass window broke, spraying the air with shards. Henry threw his arms in front of his face, gritting his teeth against the pain, about to bloom at any moment.
Absolute silence hung in the air. Henry let his arms fall.
Every glass spike, spur and mote, perfectly trapped by ink droplets, hung motionless in the air. They sparkled like tiny stars in the cavernous, gloomy room.
Henry risked a glance at Joey - is he doing this? Instead, his coworker looked, for the first time that Henry could ever remember…
…terrified.
"STOP!" Joey wailed. He swayed on his feet, fear morphing to fury twisting to terror and back again. "My studio! Mine!"
The color drained from his face, his hands. He looked pale.
The child began to shake. Quietly, its back quivered, arms motionless at its side.
It tipped its face up. A rippling noise emanated from all around them - a girl's laughter, high, carefree.
Underneath the laughter, a deep roar burned through the air.
The entity lifted one arm, clumsily bringing it up straight. One by one, the fingers curled into the palm, until only the index finger was left straightened - pointed directly at Joey.
The old man shrieked and turned, fleeing into the doorway behind him.
Less than a second later, a huge mass erupted from the depths below.
Henry shouted in shock, shoving back from the gaping hole in the floor, too slow - but the object wasn't directed at him this time.
Half of the Carousel shivered, embedded into the balcony where Joey had just stood.
A roar seared the air. With motion so quick it blurred, the creature flung through the air, smashing through the Carousel and disappearing into the arch beyond.
Henry held still for a moment longer, not even breathing. Where-
A groan from the whirlpool brought his attention back around.
The depths below rumbled, the pillar dissolving away. The whirlpool remained, swirling.
The walls shook and the ceiling crumpled, beams shaking loose, creaking from the rafters. Henry scrambled to his feet.
"Go!" he shouted, locking eyes with Tom across the gap. "Get her out!"
Tom gave him a short nod. The engineer turned and sent his axe smashing through the back of Allison's empty prison, with his Alice hurtling through right after.
Sammy still sat motionless, eyes wide. One hand came up to the side of his head.
Henry took off, sprinting over the walkway, hurdling bursting footboards and crashing ceiling rafters.
Linda hung out of the fourth row from the floor, limp and dangling from the edge.
Henry snarled. He punched a hand through the wooden wall and threw his weight against it, catapulting upward. With each explosive motion, he carved grips and footholds into the boards, tearing holes and climbing with grim intent.
With a roar, he exploded upward and away from the wall, snatching Linda from the cell at the peak of his arc. Henry curled into a ball around her, sheltering both of them with his now-many arms, bursting from his back.
The floorboards splintered under his crash landing. Henry rolled and leapt forward, thundering across the walkway as it burst behind him.
As he ran, he glanced his wife over, and his heart crumpled. Gaping holes cratered in her thigh, her side, her shoulder, one eaten into her cheek. Ink poured from the wounds in a steady stream, splattering the floorboards in their wake.
The gold isn't mending her any more.
But the sun might.
He jumped a barrel, Linda gathered in tightly, and almost crashed through the floor next to Sammy. His friend didn't even twitch.
"Sammy-"
"They're all gone," the old Prophet said, slowly. "The whole consciousness. It's… melted."
Henry hauled him to his feet. "The Lost Ones." So Joey did flood the lower floors.
Sammy nodded, eyes still glassy. "I thought there'd be time to…"
Henry blew a long breath, turning a blind eye to the chaos around them for one moment longer. "Sammy."
His tone shift had Sammy blinking, clarity returning.
"I have to go back in."
One beat, then two. Sammy's eyes widened in understanding.
He looked down to Henry's close-cradled burden. "I can take her."
"Swear to me you'll get both of you out alive."
"I swear it," Sammy promised, weight lacing his words.
Another moment, and Linda - cradled tightly in Sammy's arms - lay limp, halo still in place despite the journey.
Sammy turned toward the exit, and Henry backed toward the whirlpool, struggling to look away from his wife.
"Henry?"
Henry's head snapped back up, to his old friend.
"Thank you for letting me save your Alice," Sammy murmured.
Henry's artist eye ghosted over the scene - the Prophet stood, destruction all around, angel in his arms.
For a moment, he saw a different Alice, with one eye only, cradled there instead.
Sammy gave him a sad smile. Then the old Shepherd turned, sprinting toward the exit, where Tom and Allison waited for him.
Henry took a deep breath, turned, and dove for the second time that day.
The whirlpool's impossible strength, tumbling him over and over, mirrored the turmoil Henry felt.
The warmth of the gold blazed brightly once again, rushing to the edges of his body, but this time, heat flared around him as well, travelling with him.
Like a shooting star into the depths of the sea.
Shut up with your poetry, Stein. Not the time.
Henry fell, and fell, and fell, swimming with the current where he could.
He coughed, feeling the motion wrack his body. For a moment, he wondered why, in a body that didn't need to breathe, the reflex still existed.
The ceiling swam into view - or rather, the lack thereof. Two flickering film screens, in the octagonal room, bracketed the inverse, whirling darkness of the pool he'd fallen from.
The Throne Room. Good.
Henry picked himself off the floor and stood, listening.
The Studio groaned, almost human in its painful grating. The walls around him creaked and moaned, just as before. In contrast, all ink visible to him blurred with silent motion, no puddles visible - the black liquid seemed to have poured into use, with no puddles visible. Even the pile of gears and debris in front of him, once the dais for the Demon's throne, lay heaped and scattered without the ink to hold it together.
As Henry looked, a small droplet escaped the mass and fell up, disappearing into the inverted whirlpool above.
If I live, this will make an incredible comic.
Stooping, Henry hefted a gear, then pivoted on his right foot and threw a baseball pitch. The gear sailed through the air and crashed through one of the projector screens.
The room around him groaned.
Henry picked up another, with a rough grin the Demon would've been proud of. This time, he tried for a screwball.
The gear executed a neat barrel roll and smashed the other screen into bits.
From far off, a barely-human bellow shook the room.
"There he is," Henry hummed, his grin pulling his skin taut. "Come along, Joey."
His gaze dropped to the main door, too many memories clogging his mind for it to be a comforting sight. But through that door, Henry heard the low swoosh, the rhythmic thumping of the Machine.
This time, though, the sounds from the Machine guttered and coughed, the rhythm from before noticeably absent. Good.
Joey wailed, closer this time, and in answer, a second heartbeat began to thump quietly under Henry's feet.
Almost there.
The explosion burst into the room with a crash.
Henry barely had time to register the remains of the old throne spewed across the floor, shards and screws flying everywhere from the wall debris.
A screaming figure came flying at him from the other side of the room.
Joey blurred in speed, throwing strike after strike, fury lacing every move. His attacks were desperation itself: frantic, urgent blows, focused towards the head, pummeling with only enough force to make them a threat.
But unlike earlier, Henry was ready.
He blocked, spun, and leapt back. They broke apart, and Joey hissed in wordless agitation at the rippling of the ink underneath Henry's skin.
"What's the matter?" Henry mocked, feeling his grin twist for a moment - a little bit too wide, too much teeth. Just a few more seconds, don't lose it now. "No pentagram?"
Joey howled, spun, leapt, and Henry caught the fist aimed for his face.
He ripped Joey forward, pulling him with the supernatural force of muscles sculpted beyond human capacity. The crunch of bones and tearing muscles gave him little satisfaction as Joey crumpled to the ground, wailing.
"Stay down," Henry barked, turning away and towards the greater threat.
The second heartbeat in his chest thrummed in a quick patter. The air darkened, the room stopped groaning, the whirlpool above slowed.
A small figure stepped through the hole in the wall, arms limp at its side, grin still painted on.
The entity tilted its head, gold pie-cut eyes focused on Henry.
Henry stood. "Audrey."
The flickering of the shadows slowed, so that the small light in the chamber rippled gently like pond waves.
Henry drew a deep breath. "Bendy?"
A brief spike in undulations, and then the shadow waves returned to placid.
Henry blew a long breath. Yes.
"Come home," he said, quietly. "Momma and I need you."
His daughter - kids - the creature - his creations - the children - watched him, statue-like, eyes bright.
"The sun's bright up there," Henry said, as gently as he could. "The world is big. Neither of you have really seen it yet."
No change. The shadows rippled, the whirlpool spun, and his two creations waited, watching him out of those glittering eyes.
Linda, you would know what to do.
Henry hummed, a quiet few notes, a song his wife loved to sing to Audrey when she was a baby.
For just a moment, there was no change still. Then the grin on the creature's face faltered and slipped, leaving a golden track in its wake.
Henry felt hope flood. He drew a breath, prepared to keep singing.
Stars exploded through Henry's skull, and he staggered sideways, dazed. His head snapped up just in time to see Joey lift a hand above his head, straining, with the wreckage of the throne hovering in the air.
A sound - Henry couldn't make it out, his ears still ringing from the blow - drew Joey's head up, and his eyes bulged. The man spun and ran, the debris of the old chair raining down in his wake.
Henry gasped for breath and stumbled upright, just in time to see Joey disappear through the wreckage of the door, into the hallway beyond.
The room plunged into darkness.
No. Henry ran after Joey, pounding feet against splintered floorboards, smashing through the last of the door.
Joey pelted down the hallway, glass of the enclosures shattering after him, and leapt down the stairs. They exploded up into jagged spurs after him, obstacles in Henry's wake.
Henry leapt, kicking off one wall to the other, hurdling back and forth over the spars before smashing through Joey's last frantic barrier out into the open.
He barrelled into Joey, and they rolled out of the exit together, end over end across the paved stones. The landing before the Machine.
Henry felt his arm fall into cold ink, and he yanked it out, rolling away from the edge of the ink pool.
"Get it away!" Joey shrieked, voice almost inhuman with rage and fear. He scrabbled toward the ink ledge, away from the arch into the Machine. "It's taken my Studio! Hunted me down! You can have anything!"
"Shut up," Henry growled, pushing to his feet.
"Anything! Anything! Keep it away from me! You can have the Studio! The Machine! The contracts! The clients!" Joey's face was monstrous - eyes bugged with fear, pupils dilated so far his iris was invisible, tongue lashing against his lips.
Henry reached out and caught him by his neck, shoving him into the pavement so hard he heard a crunch. "Stay down this time."
Black filled the doorway, extinguishing any light left.
Joey howled - an awful sound, resonating in the cavern - and reached out for Henry, a clawed hand closing around his ankle. Henry kicked him away, eyes focused on the door. .
Black hands reached out around the frame. The arch disappeared under the mass of grasping limbs, splaying out in a perfect circle, reaching up for the dangling chains. The little light there was, glowing golden in whorls and spirals across the surface of the lake behind Henry, dimmed and flickered.
Two gold eyes glittered into view in the center of the archway.
The creature emerged, lifted through by more black hands, framed at center of the monstrous arch. One jerky arm lifted, a fraction at a time, and the hand closed into an accusatory fist, index finger pointing to Joey, just like before.
Henry pushed aside the ice flooding his veins and put his body squarely in front of Joey's huddled form.
"No," he said. "I won't let you kill him."
The cavern around them howled. The lake erupted in waves and spikes, frothing around them: a small tide licked at Henry's feet, cold ice flooding around them, and Joey gave a strangled scream. Black hands in the arch frantically opened and closed into fists, undulating in a ripple mimicking the lake.
The creature took another step forward, the finger swinging to point at Henry now.
"I know you want to," Henry said, as calm as the cold he felt creeping through his feet. "I know one of you wants to very, very badly."
Memories rose to mind unbidden: the kawk-kawk-kawk of machine guns, the explosion in the night, tailing the falling plane down, blood under fingernails, spewing up around hands, blank glare of the man with the wound in his neck, nothing behind his eyes-
"You will regret it as long as you live." As he spoke, Henry felt the four decades of regret, of pain bleed into his voice: his body snapped, his fists snapping and twisting on their own, muscles rippling with emotion.
But his voice stayed level, cold and heavy. "Because he will die, and he will never come back. Not this time. And it will be your fault."
The ink around him snapped and coiled, the area darkening to a twilight. Behind the creature, the Machine coughed.
The creature leapt forward. In a blink, its face was level with his own, suspended in midair.
"Let me kill him instead," Henry said, quietly, to his children.
They stared at each other for a moment, the drip-drip of ink the only backdrop, the cavern silent and listening.
Henry leaned closer. "If the things I want to try don't work - if we exorcise him, keep him locked up, see if hurting him will hurt us, or your mom - let me kill him, not you." He let a long breath escape. "It might be too much for your soul. Mine's marked already."
Absolute silence, broken only by Joey's ragged breathing, hung for a moment.
For the first time, the creature's face rippled with a true hint of expression. The eyes tipped up, the grin slipped down, and the inky figure stepped back across air, slowly descending to the ground.
Henry stared down into those golden eyes and sent up a silent prayer.
The child gave him a tiny nod.
Henry sighed - a long-drawn out sigh, full of relief - and reached out his hand.
A small black one reached back, settling safely in his palm. Gold burst across both of their fingers on contact.
Henry smiled, feeling tears creep up his throat. "Let's get out of here."
The child turned away from him, hair stirring in a non-existent wind, and stretched its free hand up toward the face of the Machine. Black hands around the archway reached back.
Henry froze the scene in his mind, to set to paper later: the child-figure, pure black, with gold lacing across its hands, reaching up as if to stop the flood of ink pouring from the nozzle of the Machine, tension laced in each finger.
His creation closed the open hand into a fist and pulled it downward.
The Machine screamed.
Metal shrieked and wailed, growing in volume by the moment, and in the howl Henry heard an inhuman note - a rising whine, horrible to the ear, building and building on itself.
He acted without thought. Henry's arm pulled in, jerking his creation into his chest. He spun, putting his back to the Machine, and doubled over, wrapping arm after arm after arm around the suddenly-fragile creature in his embrace, hardening his body into a shield around them. Immobile, he felt himself falling, and he braced them against the impact.
Behind him, Joey's scream rose above the rest, torturously high and wailing.
Golden light burst, searing Henry's vision even through closed eyelids.
A shock wave thundered across the cave. Pressure shoved on Henry's body for a moment, compressing him and the still figure under him against the stones shattering in the onslaught.
A sharp crack followed, with a final shriek of metal.
Then everything was quiet, except for a small drip, drip of ink.
Henry loosened his body from its stone-like state enough to bring his head around, toward the source of danger.
Gold ink poured in a tiny rivulet from a gaping crack in the Machine, running down its entire front, a gaping fissure in a crag of stone and twisted metal.
As he watched, a small flood of pure, congealed black ink slipped down the steps of the Machine, raced to the side of the small landing they laid on, and poured into the lake.
The noise within the Machine sputtered, trailing off.
Henry waited for another sound, another motion, anything.
There was no movement. The Machine made no sound.
It's… dead.
Joey gave a dry sob, limp and rasping. "You fools. We're doomed."
Henry pulled to his knees, cradling his creation in his arms, studying its face. "Audrey? Bendy?"
The creation's golden eyes were wide, blank. Its grin had fully slipped by now, and the mouth turned down, as if to ask, what happened?
The lake bubbled, and with a pop, the inhuman whine escaped again. Henry grimaced against the noise, grating on his ears.
In another moment, every drop of gold fled the lake's surface, shooting up the walls and retreating onto the landing, pooling around Henry's knees several inches thick.
Though the warmth pouring over his feet was a good reprieve, the now-pure black, smooth surface of the lake rippled, and Henry frowned at it. The waves weren't rippling, they were stirring together, as if being molded into a shape Henry couldn't recognize.
And then some of it came together in his mind, like puzzle pieces, and Henry fell backwards with a choked cry.
He knew, looking at it, that he would never be able to accurately describe the face. Iit was every nightmare he had ever had, where he couldn't find reality from horror, where he had eventually burst upright from sleep, sweating and shaking. It was every panic he'd had while waking, every time that terror had closed his lungs and throat, where he'd felt his body rebel against his emotions with visceral turmoil, organs rioting in fear. It was every time he'd felt helpless - when the ink had threatened to dissolve and leave him a powerless puddle, abandoning his family: when he'd been trapped in the Studio, losing his mind, fighting to escape: when he'd hung in Bendy's belly, half-conscious of screaming horror that he had been eaten, digested and consumed for the pleasure of something alien to him.
Joey gave a mangled burble, a horrible sound, as the lake caught his feet and dragged him under. A sickening crack from each one of his limbs, sliding under the once-glossy surface, his bones breaking piece by piece.
As his jaw entered the lake, snapping as it went, Joey's eyes bulged, blankly staring into Henry's own.
The moment the black closed over Henry's nemesis' head, the face in the lake morphed into the exact same expression: Joey, tortured.
Henry gave a strangled yell, caught his children to his chest, and burst to his feet.
He ran, gold flooding after him.
IRENE
She'd been waiting for two hours when the odd man came tumbling out the door, her daughter in his arms.
When she'd woken at midnight and found Audrey gone, she had torn open her granddaughter's note, followed by her son-in-law's, and read with one eye, while the other was on the road. Henry's instructions had given her the address, with precise diagramming for where to pour the gasoline, and her old truck had enough room in the bed to shelter eight cans.
After all, either Audrey had lied and run to a neighbor's house - in which case she was safe enough, and Irene had a time frame to keep - or she was telling the truth (far more likely of Audrey) and Irene could do no more than Henry's request of her.
She had known it wouldn't come to that. Irene would call the policemen at dawn, her son-in-law's coworkers, and she would ask them to come to light the fire instead. And she would disappear into the ramshackle building with both of her guns, and a vial of blessed water: she'd trust that if those tools wouldn't solve anything, then the fires could take her too.
But Henry had asked her to wait till the early morning of the following day, where the fire crews would be changing shifts, and the fire could take the firmest hold. And so Irene had waited, and while she'd waited, she'd prayed, pacing circles round the building as though it were a lion and she could shut its mouth.
And then, fourteen minutes before her deadline, the ragtag group came pouring out the door.
They made a strange group: the dog-man, the woman with the horns, the man with the blank face and the golden eyes, who cradled her daughter.
Linda now sprouted the same horns, with an odd crown nestled in her hair, eyes closed. Black poured from her wounds, and the woman with the horns knelt over her, pressing hands laced with gold onto her torso. The black halted in its flood, and then the unknown woman would cry out and fall back, and the hemorrhage would begin again.
Irene stood over them both, rifle aimed directly at the door. The dog-man stood beside her, shotgun at the ready. She recognized his grim determination mirroring her own, and they'd nodded at each other: she'd felt a kindred spirit in him and handed over her second gun.
Now they waited. The odd man with the blank face took his turn over her daughter, gold blossoming across her torso. Irene murmured psalms where she stood, hoping against hope that whatever came out of the blank door next would help, and not rip them all to shreds, and take the world besides.
A shuddering groan went up from the wood walls. Irene's hands clamped around the gun, and she felt the old itch at the back of her mind demand a cigarette. She pushed the impulse aside - not here, not now - and hefted the rifle, fitting it to her shoulder like a third arm, its weight comforting.
She was muttering prayers full-voiced now, and the broken down building creaked and moaned like it was alive. For a moment, the gold on her daughter below gleamed brighter, and Irene glanced toward her face, hoping for open eyes -
The door slammed open.
Some thing came flying through, an odd hunched creature vaguely man-like, but with far too many limbs and a staggering gait. An inhuman wail rose from the doorway behind.
Irene shot it.
The creature yelled in a voice familiar: the yell shuddered to a halt as the thing fell to the earth. Irene narrowed her eyes further as gold bloomed across the man, limbs vanishing back into his body.
Her son-in-law uncurled from a black bundle, gasping for air, and lifted his head.
"Shut the door!"
The dog-man from behind her hurtled into action - in a blur, he crossed the few yards of dry, crackling grass and reached in for the door.
Something wrapped around his arm - a fist, but all wrong.
Irene racked her gun and shot into the doorway again, and again, and again, as the dog-man struggled with the creature - with her murmuring prayers the whole time. The inside thing's grip on the dog-man's arm loosened, but the dog-man swayed on the doorstep, eyes wide.
Then Henry was there, pushing his way past, and together, he and the dog-man pulled the door shut with a crash.
The wail rose again, from the inside, climbing in noise and pitch as if it were trying to blow the door back open.
Henry turned, panting, to Irene. He looked her in the eyes, and she stared back: something passed between them.
"Lighter," Henry said, briefly.
Irene dropped the gun and reached into her jacket pocket. She pulled out her well-worn, tarnished lighter and flipped it end-over-end toward her son-in-law. It twinkled faintly in the dawning light of the day.
Henry dropped to his knees and sparked it. Only then did Irene notice the trail of glowing gold between him and the door - a small rivulet of light, running quick towards them, uphill, away from the cursed building.
The flame in Henry's hand leapt toward the gold, as though glad to be reunited with its cousin, and the whole stream burst up in sparkling orange flame. It roared toward the door and caught on Irene's gasoline, well-poured.
Joey Drew Studios caught alight in one quick explosion.
The shock wave was silent, but Irene felt it. It should have been a hot burst of air, if it had been anything at all, laden with smoke and a curse. Instead, the gust blowing by was gently warm, like a blanket from the drier, or a cat's fur after lying in the sun - a welcome and a comfort.
The gold raced in a perfect circle around the outside of the building, before leaping up into the mirage of heat from the burning building and vanishing with the smoke.
Irene could have sworn she heard a hundred voices sigh, as if in relief.
The dawn burst into life, and around her, the strange crew gave a united cry.
Irene spun: around her, the odd figures were almost melting, black pouring off them in rivulets.
The strange man fell to hands and knees, gasping, and when he looked back up at her, the black miasma dripping off his face held a normal eye, wide in clean shock. The dog-man's snout fell away, and his gloved hands coming up to touch his face shed the gloves to the ground, dripping into black where they went, then going up in a puff of smoke. The horned woman's horns dissolved, and her hair burst into a cloud of individual strands, no longer matted to her head as a unified mass - she reached for the one who had been the dog-man, and he reached back.
And Linda - sweet, beautiful, precious Linda, her only child - gasped and opened her eyes, her wounds closing.
Irene dropped to her knees and clutched her daughter to her chest, trusting her prayers to protect her from the black pouring off of her daughter's body, but her worries were in vain. The black substance vanished as quickly as it arrived on her skin, as though banished by the sun, and all that was left was her angelic Linda, who wrapped her arms around her mother once again.
Irene held her close and thanked everything good and pure, several things in specific, for salvation. Pinks and oranges raced over them as the dawn arrived in earnest.
A groan from nearby pulled her head back up.
Henry knelt, cradling two figures. One she recognized as her granddaughter, little Audrey - she made it here after all. The other could have been Audrey's twin, torn from her at birth, from his mirror features: the only differences were his skin, paler still than his mock-sister's, his close-cropped hair, and the boyish angle to his jaw.
With truly inhuman strength, Henry stood, both children cradled against his shoulders, and staggered the distance to her and Linda. He dropped to the ground next to them.
Linda's eyes found his, and she struggled to sit up: Irene helped her, supporting her back.
Her daughter pulled Henry down for a kiss, a thousand words and emotions clear between them in the intimate moment. Then Linda gathered little Audrey into one arm, and hesitated. She traced a thumb across the cheekbone of the Audrey lookalike, her face pensive, deep.
The boy opened his eyes, and Irene took a sharp breath. His irises glittered pure gold, though shaped normally. They fixed on Linda, then - when Henry shifted - flitted up to his face as well.
Where the sun struck the boy's pale skin, gold veins trickled, so spider-thin and translucent Irene's keen eyes could barely make them out.
"Ben," Audrey whispered from Linda's arms. "We made it."
The boy's face turned to Audrey, and she smiled at him, her face lighting up in the pinks and oranges of the dawn. Irene looked down to where their hands were linked, gold blossoming there too, faint cracks of light trickling from where their fingers interlaced.
Linda reached out, and the boy cautiously - still with a smooth, neutral face - gathered into her embrace without protest.
Quietly, he sighed, and his eyes closed. His face tipped up toward the sun.
Henry gave a choked laugh and wrapped an arm around his wife, the boy, his daughter, and then the four were hugging tightly, Linda and Henry and Audrey laughing together, the boy cradled in among them.
Irene sat back on her heels and watched them, and she felt her old heart soar with joy she didn't fully understand, in the same colors as the dawn clouds above.
TO BE CONTINUED
A/N: Guys, we made it.
Despite the long, very-much-forced wait, this was the climactic chapter. Thank you all for reading this far.
There will be an epilogue or two - this isn't the last entry - but the arc has finished.
I'm proud of our crew, I'm glad Joey is dead, and the sunlight must feel incredible to Ben, don't you think?
Best not to think about what was in the lake too much. Pray it's gone, with the Machine.
See you all (hopefully) in a week - so glad for you all.
With much gratitude, and a desperate need for sleep,
Godspeed,
Sam :D