Chapter Text
Henry pushed open the door and immediately froze at the sight of the room’s occupants. Near two dozen inky, human-shaped creatures stared back at him.
Above him, Bendy hissed low and long as he leaned further over Henry. The ink-people flinched, and a few of them who had looked like they’d been ready to move closer to them went still.
“What—who—” Henry couldn’t quite find the right words— “they’re not…”
Quietly, Bendy told him, “We call ’em the Lost Ones. Not human enough to be human, not inky enough to be toons or Searchers. They’re mostly harmless, but new things or people can make ’em a little hostile. They should be calm now, though.”
Henry nodded absently as he stepped forward, Bendy not stopping him. Ignoring the tears welling up in his eyes, he cautiously approached the cluster of Lost Ones directly in front of him. The more he looked at them, the heavier his heart seemed to grow.
Yes, they were more human in appearance than the Searchers, but like Bendy said, they still weren’t human enough. Near skeletal with fiery orange eyes, they lacked almost every other defining feature.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered, staring around at them.
The ones standing before him blinked slowly. They rocked gently back and forth, restless but silent.
Glancing over his shoulder at Bendy, who hadn’t moved from the doorway, Henry asked, “What was Joey even trying to do?”
“He needed souls to fuel the Ink Machine, beyond the ones that he turned into toons. These,” Bendy gestured at the Lost Ones, many of whom flinched away from the movement, “are the… leftovers, so to speak.”
Henry ducked his head and muttered a curse at his old friend, a few tears finally slipping down his cheeks. Turning back to the ink-people, he desperately asked, “Can you understand me?”
The two in front of him didn’t react, but one a little to the left made a muffled noise. After sparing a glance at Bendy, it—he or she, Henry simply couldn’t tell—shuffled towards Henry. The muffled noise was repeated before an inky forehead gently thunked against Henry’s shoulder.
Bendy released a short bark of laughter. A few Lost Ones skittered back, cowering.
“Seems like that one at least remembers ya,” he said. “Called you Creator.”
“What? But I didn’t—how could they know?”
“Makes sense, if ya ask me,” Bendy said. He finally fully entered the room, and it only took a little coaxing from Henry for the Lost Ones to relax despite his presence. “The studio and the Ink Machine know you’re the rightful Creator, so why shouldn’t they?” He placed a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Down here, we’re all connected in one way or another.”
Henry nodded slowly. It did make sense when Bendy put it that way. “Can I help them somehow?” he asked, hesitantly raising a hand to rub the back of the Lost One cuddling up to him.
“What about Boris?”
“I know,” Henry said miserably. “But, Bendy, just look at them.” He tilted his head back to make eye contact with the massive toon behind him. “I can’t leave them like this. Not for good.”
Bendy’s eyes—fully cleared of ink ever since the misunderstanding between toon and Creator had been resolved—shifted to look back and forth between Henry’s. “All right,” he finally said. “We’ll figure something out, Henry. I promise.”
Hearing the unspoken—that they really did need to keep going if they wanted to rescue Boris before it was too late—Henry gently detached from the Lost One. A few of them seemed to somehow look even sadder as he followed after Bendy to the other side of the room, where an open vent waited.
“Don’t worry,” Henry told them, “we’ll come back, and we’ll do something to fix this.”
It was easy, then, to see which of the group could understand him, as they perked up. Some even nodded.
Bendy grinned down at him, something fierce and strong that made Henry feel like they actually had a solid chance at beating this hell and coming out the other side intact. “We have a lot of work to do,” Bendy said, “so let’s get started.”
• • • • •
Of all the times to split up and be without his self-proclaimed bodyguard, it just had to be the time when Henry would discover that Norman had developed the ability to climb stairs since he’d last seen the Projectionist.
Tripping up the last few steps, Henry all but hurled himself at the Little Miracle Station tucked into the corner. He’d been wary when he’d seen it on his way down, but re-encountering his old, corrupted friend was far from what he’d been expecting to find.
Safely inside, he slumped against the back of the box and pressed a hand over his frantically beating heart. Between the power briefly shutting off after throwing the switch and Norman’s sudden reappearance directly behind him on his way back, Henry felt like he wouldn’t be able to take much more of this.
Light flashed across his face, which was odd. When he left Norman’s immediate sight, he should have gone back to trudging his usual path. Instead, when Henry looked through the little rectangular window, his heart seemed to stop completely at the sight of Norman creeping closer.
Seeing the hulking form of the Projectionist hunched over, head tilted in—what, curiosity?—as he started to reach for the Little Miracle Station, stole the breath from Henry’s lungs. His panic froze him in place, speechless, as he desperately, desperately wished Bendy was with him.
There was a brief pain that zapped through his head, and for a split second, his vision whited out in a splash of gold.
After that, he only had a moment to register the ink seeping across the walls before a furious screech preceded Bendy’s sudden appearance. He threw himself at Norman, smacking him away from the Station containing Henry. Returning blow for blow, the two largest ink creatures Henry had so far encountered all but wrestled their way around the small room.
Bendy finally got the upper hand, backing Norman up against a wall and managing to get a solid hold on his neck, lifting the Projectionist a foot into the air.
Norman, when he’d been human, had only been a little taller than Henry. Norman as the Projectionist nearly matched Bendy’s height at eight feet. But now, seeing him pinned to the wall, dangling helplessly from the taller toon’s grip, he somehow seemed small.
“Henry?” Bendy asked, his voice still growly from his moment of rage. “You all right?”
Stumbling out of the Little Miracle Station, Henry took a deep breath. As long as Bendy was here, he didn’t have to be afraid of Norman.
“A little shaken,” he admitted, “but I’ll be just fine once I calm down.”
Norman’s projector light abruptly turned his way, blinding Henry. His head tilted again, and his frantic clawing at Bendy’s arm slowed in his distraction.
“He didn’t act like this before,” Henry said, inching closer. “Do you think he recognizes me?”
With an unfamiliar grating noise, Norman reached in Henry’s direction, straining against Bendy’s hold on him.
Growly fiercely, Bendy pulled him forward only to slam him back against the wall. “No,” he snarled. “Don’t—” the next word was garbled, his status as a toon forbidding him from truly cursing— “touch him!”
As Norman resumed his futile struggling, Henry hunched into himself. He so badly wanted to help the poor creatures trapped here, but it seemed like he was doomed to only find more suffering with every new room he entered.
‘Alice’ was all mangled up, Boris was in her clutches, the Butcher gang had been mutilated, Sammy had lost his mind long before losing his life, Bendy was painfully off-model, even just thinking about the Lost Ones made Henry’s eyes tear up, and now faced once again with the form of his old friend—was there no end to the horrible things that had happened here?
It would be so much easier to just give up, to accept that there was nothing Henry could do to fix anything here.
He looked up to find Bendy staring down at him with obvious concern shining in his eyes.
His eyes, his two perfect, pie-cut eyes.
It was such a small thing, but Henry had fixed those.
With a deep breath, Henry said, “Put him down, please.”
“Are you sure?” Bendy asked, though he was already beginning to lower Norman to the floor.
“Yeah. He’s my friend, bud. I have to try.” He smiled up at his creation. “Besides, I have you here if anything goes wrong.”
Even as he finally released Norman and stepped back, Bendy muttered, “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Hope filled Henry’s heart when Norman didn’t immediately move to attack him, instead choosing to inch closer with that same curious tilt to his head. Only a few feet away, Bendy stood tensely, ready to intervene if necessary. Henry could practically feel his disapproval.
But hey, if Henry could get close to Bendy while still thinking they were enemies without backup, then he could most definitely give Norman a fair chance too.
With the height difference between them, Henry had to tilt his head back a bit to look up into the dimmed light of the projector. Please, he thought, please don’t be too far gone.
Slowly, Norman raised his arms and gently engulfed Henry.
Looking at Bendy over Norman’s shoulder, Henry beamed, his eyes suspiciously wet. “I think he recognizes me.”
• • • • •
Deep, ominous laughter echoed out of hidden speakers as the Haunted House finished opening up.
Henry stared up at the face built into the entrance. On his left, Bendy stood with his hand on Henry’s shoulder. On his right, Norman pressed close enough that their arms touched.
“Are we sure we have to go in there?” Henry asked, fully aware that he was stalling for time. Choosing to go inside the dark, fully operational Haunted House seemed like something a character in a horror movie would do just minutes before they’d be killed.
“After everything we went through to turn it on, yeah, we’re goin’ that way,” Bendy said.
Frowning, Henry turned slightly to see a dark, faraway look on Bendy’s face. “Did you have trouble in your room?”
Bendy gave a little startle as though coming back to himself, and gave Henry a reassuring smile. “Nothin’ I couldn’t handle,” he said, most definitely not thinking about how he’d been swearing up a storm—so much so that it’d been one continuous stream of incomprehensible words—during his battle with a living machine, and he also definitely wasn’t thinking about how satisfying it’d been to dismantle that rotten amusement park ride at the end of it, and there was no way he was thinking about his grumpily muttered words of, “This studio must attract psychopaths, ’cause there’s no other explanation.”
Of course, his victory had been interrupted by a burst of sheer panic that he’d known hadn’t belonged to him, but he certainly wasn’t thinking about that either.
Henry gave him a look that said he didn’t believe him, but he let the matter drop to take the first tentative steps towards the Haunted House. A little car bearing Bendy’s signature smile waited for him inside.
With a defeated sigh, Henry collapsed into it, accepting his fate. It gave a little lurch before trundling forward, leaving Henry’s two massive, self-proclaimed guardians to trudge along behind it.
‘Alice’ started talking then, though Henry didn’t bother to pay much attention. To be honest, he was on the verge of simply slumping over for a nap, and he probably would’ve if Bendy hadn’t kept reaching forward to nudge him awake.
Sounding both serious and amused, Bendy reminded him, “Now’s really not the best time to be fallin’ asleep.”
‘Alice’ was going on about wanting to be beautiful—nothing Henry hadn’t heard before—as he stretched, knowing Bendy was right. “Yeah,” he said, holding in a yawn, “I can sleep when I’m dead.”
Both toons behind him made highly distressed noises at that.
“Henry,” ‘Alice suddenly said, drawing his name out almost playfully. “Why are you here?”
Snorting, Henry shook his head. “Because my former best friend decided he wanted to kill me, that’s why.”
Either ignoring him or unable to hear his answer, ‘Alice’ kept right on talking, and Henry kept right on rolling his eyes in response. He didn’t notice that Bendy had come to an abrupt halt at ‘Alice’s question, or that Norman had paused to look back at him in evident confusion.
And, quite unfortunately for all of them, none of them noticed the set of gates that swung closed behind Henry’s cart, taking him far, far away from the protection of the studio’s most feared inhabitant.
• • • • •
Unable to tear his eyes away from Boris—“Meet the new and improved, Boris!” ‘Alice’ cried out in obvious glee—Henry could only blindly stumble away from the monstrous form of his friend. The pried-open copy he’d found on the first level of the studio, the one he’d been so horrified by, was nothing in comparison to the creature in front of him.
Eyes x-ed out, leaking organs visibly pulsing inside the hole in his chest, and utterly, terrifyingly massive, Boris lumbered after him, growling. Hiding was pointless, as Boris just smashed his way through boxes and barrels alike.
“And this time,” ‘Alice’ said, her tone chilling Henry to his core, “there’s no Ink Demon, no escape!”
It was true, too. Somehow, Henry had been separated from Bendy again, and he had a horrible gut feeling that, for a reason he couldn’t even begin to guess, Bendy wouldn’t have as easy of a time finding him as last time.
Henry misstepped, and in the long second where he frantically tried to regain his footing, Boris’s fist slammed into his chest. His feet left the ground, and he cried out as he crashed to the floor more than a yard away. Body aching anew, Henry stumbled to his feet as Boris loomed over him again. Through the speakers, ‘Alice’ laughed in twisted delight.
• • • • •
Bendy’s mind stalled out over why Henry would be there, because honestly, why was he? Joey had been overdramatic and petty enough to be the type to summon a former friend and coworker to his death, but Joey had been killed long before Henry received that letter signed by him.
And ‘Alice.’ When she had dropped the lift with them in it, panicked over Bendy choosing to side with their Creator, she’d claimed to know why Henry was there. But now, she acted as though she had no idea—
No. That wasn’t it.
Her voice had been playful, teasing. She knew the reason Henry had been brought back to the studio, and she also knew that Henry himself had no idea. Even Bendy didn’t know why Henry was asked to return. For that matter, though, who had sent the letter in the first place? It certainly hadn’t been Bendy, and he would’ve known if ‘Alice’ had gone any higher in the studio than her sanctuary. Sammy hadn’t seemed to recognize Henry at all, and he doubted Boris would’ve thought to pose as Joey Drew.
But someone had to have sent the letter. Someone had to have a reason to want Henry to come back.
He got the feeling that he was missing something right in front of him, some obvious clue. Bendy glanced at Norman, who was watching him with a curious tilt to his projector head.
“Why ask Henry to come?” he asked, despite knowing that he’d get no response. A thought struck him. In his conversation with ‘Alice’ just before he discovered that Henry was their Creator, she’d acted like she had no idea who the intruder was. And just like that, everything clicked together.
“She wants him dead,” Bendy said, eyes widening as it all became so wonderfully, horribly clear. “Either by me or her, however it happens, ‘Alice’ doesn’t want Henry around. And I was playing right into her hands, I was killin’ him left and right, but what kept Henry alive, what wanted him to stay?” He took off down the hall, finally realizing that his Creator had vanished.
Norman followed, making a confused, grating noise.
“The Ink Machine!” Bendy cried. “By using the ink in the studio and the studio itself, it brought him back to life, over and over! Do ya know what this means?”
Unable to actually answer, all Norman could do was release a wordless cry, the closest thing to no that he could get. But Bendy didn’t answer, and Norman was helpless to do anything but trail after him, hoping that they weren’t too late.
• • • • •
Life. Creation. Wonder.
Despite what had happened, despite the things that had gone wrong, those were the concepts that went into the building of the Ink Machine. Those made up its purpose.
It had been abused. Its power, manipulated. Its ability to create, used to destroy. A world formed beneath its nozzle, stretching down into the earth—yet through the machinations of others, what should’ve been beautiful became hell.
Bendy had told the Creator that everything was connected, the toons to the studio to the ink to the Ink Machine. So when evil reigned and death permeated the studio’s halls, when destruction fully overrode creation, it took action. For its sake, for the toons’ sake, for the studio’s sake.
It went back to the beginning and summoned Henry Ross. It summoned the Creator.
Help us. We are broken. We are hurting. We are Lost. Help us.
‘Alice’ had to go, and she was smart enough to avoid the ink. The Machine could do nothing about her wickedness, and for the most part, anyone capable of killing her generally, well. Didn’t.
What does one do when powers of destruction became too strong?
Why, you balance the scales—you summon the powers of creation. Of healing, and hope, and love.
Henry’s palm skittered across Bendy’s face, clearing the ink from his eyes.
You summon someone who can change things, and cares enough to do so.