#five minute blobs of colour from the beginning still looked best

[ritoryb]

[realm-sweet-realm]

Breaking the Time Loop chapter 11: Revival

“Let’s have Sammy and Allison interact because I don’t know what to do with Grant.”

“Uh oh, now I’m into it.”

Palm, meet face.

---

"Y'know, I'm not at all bound to use my powers for good. There's more than a few things that I'd love to do to that Bertrum guy."

"For example?"

"I don't know. Give him social anxiety? An inferiority complex, maybe?"

"As if he doesn't already have one! That would explain why he's so touchy about... well, everything. He used to get so hot under the collar when Joey got is name wrong, I'm surprised he didn't burst into flames."

Alice laughed. "Okay, but he doesn't, or I would have seen it. And I'm just joking. The first thing I'm doing once we get to the hideout is to finish up with Susie's soul. She was a bother, but I'm almost done with her. I just have to work out her identity issues..."

Sammy's gaze became wistful. "Hmm... maybe that's something you should leave between her and a therapist. It's awfully personal to her, after all. Unless you need to change it to make her well."

"Well, considering that she literally thinks she's a cartoon character, I will. But you raise a good point. I mostly just want to undo what this place has done to people. What do think it would be unethical to change? Let's say, hypothetically, that I found out that someone had been suffering from depression since before he even worked here, but working here made it worse. It would be fine if I just torched it, right?" She kept her voice light, but that sounded a little forced.

"I... strongly suspect that's not hypothetical," Sammy teased.

"Okay, you caught me." Alice was still smiling. "But really. What would you do?"

"I don't know. Ask Henry. He's actually lived in the real world sometime in the last decade."

"Okay. Henry?"

"Yep. Cut it like a parasite. Grant won't miss it."

"I love how you just assumed it was him," Alice said blithely before returning to her idle chatter with Sammy.

Henry laughed a little. It did him good to see Alice acting so lighthearted for once. It honestly reminded him of how his daughter used to act around cute boys her age, though a swollen searcher in a Bendy mask could hardly be considered cute.

They made it to the safe house. Henry, Bendy, and the two Boris clones began to play cards as Alice got to work. She was still talking to Sammy in the meantime, which was clearly dancing on Tom's last nerve. He let out a low growl when Alice said it was nice to have someone to talk to for once, and when he started delighting her by describing the real world, Boris had to keep Tom from getting up and slugging his competition. Contrary to her plan, Alice worked on Susie's soul last.

"Okay, Sammy. I want you to tell me some things you know about Susie- especially anything that she could define herself by. Alright?"

"Well, she used to do musical theater before becoming a voice actress, which makes sense because she has the voice of an angel. And she's such a delight when she's happy! She gets all bubbly and excitable. She has the most sensitive heart, though, and your heart will break with hers. She makes you want to take care of her. Very sweet and innocent and sunny. She makes you feel as though you matter. She does have an egotistic side to her, but... I do wish we could go back to being together, like we were before of all this. We might have only dated a couple years, but I loved her."

Alice etched the information she could use into the soul, which certainly wasn't all of it, since Sammy had been more interested in providing praise than description. It all came as a surprise to her, but it was probably for the best. She was technically with Tom, after all. "Sammy, I'm going to fix you both up as authentically as I can, alright? If your relationship with her could have worked before, I'll do everything in my power to make you just as compatible now. I promise. And for the record? I'm looking at her on the deepest possible level right now, and this girl seems like a catch."

Finally, it was Sammy's turn to be killed. Henry got up and raised his axe. "Oh, Sammy. I have one last thing to ask of you."

"What is it?"

"I tried to be good about killing people in a way that wouldn't leave them panicking. But, well... with Susie I failed that. So, since you two were close, I thought that I could revive you first and have you comfort her as soon as she's back. Is that alright? I want to make sure she's okay.

"Alright? I'd be sacrificing you to Bendy if if you didn't tell me! Oh, but..."

"What?"

Alice spoke up. "I didn't realize that killing people in a good state was a big deal, and Grant kinda doesn't even know where he is or what's going on, so..."

"No problem. I'll explain it to him," Henry said. "Ready, Sammy?"

"Ready." With that, Henry gave Sammy a solid whack to the jaw to knock him out, and five strikes to the head and chest to kill him. He hadn't even grown his legs back yet and he was still one tough ink creature.

Sammy's soul took a fair amount of time to heal. Afterwards, the group took a break for some soup and then set off for the inner chamber of the ink machine.

In the inner chamber of the ink machine, the group set to work drawing a pentagram before one of each of the four glass tubes. Bendy instructed them. Henry, being that he had the most artistic experience, drew the most intricate details. When they were sure it was ready, they placed Sammy’s hair in the center of it. Alice released his soul into the glass tube. The group of ink creatures backed up as Bendy took his position before the pentagram and the ritual began.

Bendy summoned a mist of ink into the room, and Henry could hear a familiar pounding in his head. What Bendy had once used to seem menacing was now being used for good. Bendy raised his arms, causing the bundle of hair to levitate. Posters were torn from the walls and floated through the air, and small items rose as well. The hair spun quickly, turned into a blob of ink, and entered the glass tube. The tube flooded with high-pressure black ink. After a few seconds of this flooding, the ink began to drain. A man, coughing up ink but otherwise unharmed, was left behind. The pillar rose. Sammy stared at his thoroughly ink-stained but definitely five-fingered hand a moment.

“Did...” he coughed again. “Did it work?”

“You bet it did,” Bendy said, levitating the ink from Sammy’s clothes, hair, and skin.

“Sammy! Why, you haven’t changed a bit!”

“Yeah, try getting murdered in your early thirties. Really keeps the effects of aging at bay, you old codger.”

Henry laughed. “Says the one still using 30’s slang. You’re going to seem so behind the times it hurts. Now, you go get your music and say goodbye to your cult while we get these four pentagrams drawn up.”

“Alright. And thank you, everyone.”

By the time Sammy returned, they were ready to begin the second ritual. "You might want to back up for this one. It's going to take four times the power," Bendy warned. The group backed away to the the room's entrance. The mist Bendy summoned was thicker than even the one he'd summoned to threaten Henry with- the features of the room aside from the still-spotless pillars were almost invisible. Posters, now soaked in more ink, flew off the walls and began to spiral. The group felt as though the same might happen to them, and Alice clung to Tom to make sure it wouldn't. Bendy himself was floating, as though he were in the center of a storm. The bones rose, spun, and turned to blobs which entered the tubes. Bendy's eyes began to glow as they flooded with ink.

Finally, the spell ended. Bendy landed lightly on his feet and removed the ink from everything in the room- the walls, the the floor, and the four new people- before falling to his knees from the spell's exertion. Sammy ran over to Susie, who was shaking.

"Susie!"

"Sammy? What's going on? I feel like I've woken up from a nightmare."

"It was no nightmare. But but it's okay, now. Henry and Alice and Bendy? They saved us."

"Hey, you didn't call me 'lord'." Bendy said.

"No. I mean, I can't thank you enough, but I understand that it was a group effort."

Bendy smiled. He wasn't sure whether to attribute Sammy's change in attitude to Alice's literal magic or her feminine charms, but he was glad that Sammy wasn't worshiping him anymore. Meanwhile, Alice was watching. The two real, in-colour humans looked so fresh and unscarred, and so happy to see each other. With their matching white-blonde hair, feminine features, and slender bodies, they looked almost like twins. It wasn't at all how she'd thought Sammy would look. She'd seen them both on the deepest level and knew that if their relationship could last one year, it could last thirty. If. Still, it warmed her heart (and broke it a little bit).

Meanwhile, Henry approached Grant, who was looking around frantically. "Hey. You must be pretty disoriented. This is a pretty disorienting situation. You're just going to have to trust me, alright? Soon, we're going to be in New York, in the year 1964."

"1964? That's, well-"

"Yeah, you've been trapped in a kind of purgatory for over twenty years. That's why everything looks like a drawing. But the others can explain more to you later. We're about to leave."

"Well, thank you. That's... wonderful. How?"

Those three letters hit Henry like a brick. He'd forgotten that without the end tape, he had no idea how to leave. "Give me a couple minutes. Um... Alice? Do you have any ideas about how to get out of here?"

"Well, we have a dog with a robot arm, a demon who can control ink, a sword fighter, and enough axes to arm everyone in this room. What if we just went to the first floor and knocked the front door down?"

"We'll do that if we can't think of anything else. I'm pretty sure this place is in some sort of pocket dimension and that wouldn't work."

"Well, how do you usually get out, then?"

Henry sighed. "Using the end tape. But it's gone."

"Oh, you guys use that thing to get out?" Bendy said, smacking his forehead. "I thought that all it did was kill me." Bendy reached behind his back and took out the end tape. "Here you go."

"Where...?" Henry began.

"It's toon logic, don't question it."

Henry nodded, deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Alright. That's perfect. Everyone, to the throne room!" The five revived people gathered around the throne, but the toons stayed put. "Aren't you coming with us, guys? No sense in leaving you behind."

"Thanks, Henry. But I made a promise to Sammy. I'm staying here to release the souls of his cult. It could take months, so Tom and Boris have agreed to stay and keep me company. But, it's okay. I always figured that I wasn't meant to leave."

"Alice," Henry began in a firm, gentle voice. "That's bullshit. You don't even know why you were made. Knowing Joey, it was probably for something incredibly stupid that falls miles short of what you're capable of. Take 'meant,' and throw it out of your vocabulary. I'm going to figure out how this dimensional thing works. After you're done here, we'll get you get you out if there's any possibility of it. You're a good person, Alice. You have gifts that could help people. And you deserve better than this."

Alice blushed. "I don't know what to say. Thank you."

"No problem. And, goodbye Boris." He gave Boris a hug. "Now come on, Bendy," Henry said, sitting down on the throne. "The journal says that items in my right hand stay with me through time loops, so I'm going to hold onto you. Avert your eyes from the tape. Alright?"

Bendy nodded and obeyed. Henry gathered Bendy and his journal in his right hand and set the end tape with his left. In a moment, the group vanished.

[allyinthekeyofx]

Fading light -Part 2- 6/6

PART ONE  - Chapters 1-6

PART TWO -  Chapter one   Chapter two   Chapter three   Chapter four   

                       Chapter five

NOTES - There are another two parts to this fic - keep that in mind when you get to the end of this chapter.  That’s all I’m sayin’ 

PART TWO

CHAPTER SIX

There have been no more nosebleeds. Not since that frightening day in the park has Scully lost so much as a spot of blood. But this time, what she is actually losing is so much worse, because this time, as the tumour pushes an unrelenting path in to her brain, what she is steadily losing is herself.

The first time I really noticed was about a week after I had brought her home from the hospital, a week after we had sat cross legged on the couch, facing each other as we fed each other forkfuls of coconut Birthday cake and vanilla ice cream. And for a few hours I had been happy. The pain in my injured hand not even really registering as I watched my partner laugh as I dabbed a blob of butter cream on to the end of her small, sculptured nose, leaning forwards in response to the playful challenge she threw down to me from those sparkling blue eyes. And just for a few hours we forgot everything as we lost ourselves in each other.

Should we have made love that night?

Probably not; Scully was still weak from the blood loss and by rights shouldn’t even have been released from the hospital, but there was an unspoken need between us that we couldn’t ignore so we just took it steady, tempering the passion through necessity and truthfully, something happened to me that night as I gazed down at her enlarged pupils; perfect lips that were swollen from a hundred teasing kisses and my whole perception of life seemed to shift slightly on its axis, rendering me almost unconscious with love for this woman. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before – a joining of two souls that nothing would ever tear apart and I swear I could almost see the shadows melding in to light around us, chasing away the darkness, leaving only this love, a love so blinding in its intensity that I somehow knew it would survive somehow inside me even as the physical structure was taken from it.

Maybe it’s true that love is eternal. I don’t know. But that night, just for a few moments, I felt sure that it could be.

And as Scully gently cupped one of her small hands around my face, her eyes told me that she felt it too.

I held on to that feeling in the days that followed as Scully’s headaches intensified; rendering her unable to function on any level at all for more than a few minutes. I lost count of the hours I spent holding her against me, spooning myself around her as I gently tried to stroke her pain away. Sometimes I succeeded. Most times I didn’t. And it became very obvious very quickly that it was time to up the pain meds.

She cried then. Huge wracking sobs that almost tore me apart, knowing as she did that stronger medication was the first small downward spiral towards the abyss and she had fought so hard, so fucking hard to deny the need to herself and to me. Until one day when I came home from work to find her curled in a ball in the bathroom, surrounded by the sickly sour-sweet scent of her own pain induced vomit clutching her head as tears and snot marred her beautiful face; screaming at me to make it stop. 

To please just make it stop.

We already had the morphine; prescribed by Dr Zuckerman, to be used when things got bad. He had shown me how to inject her, an action necessitated by her refusal to be admitted to the hospital where her pain could be better managed and if I had initially baulked at the idea when she first suggested it as a compromise, when it came right down to it, plunging the needle in to her that first time to stop her hurting was singularly the easiest fucking thing I had ever had to do in my entire Godforsaken life.

I had held her then, right there on the bathroom floor, I rocked her gently until her anguished cries gradually tapered off in to occasional hitching sobs and she turned and buried herself in the folds of the jacket I hadn’t even had time to remove, knowing then that, even if she couldn’t voice it, she needed me there; that I could deny it no longer.

That night, after I had cleaned her up and carried her to the bedroom, laying her gently down as she succumbed to the medication now numbing her senses I picked up the phone and called Skinner to let him know I required an indefinite leave. That for as long as it took, I wouldn’t be returning to work.

It put him in a difficult position. I know that now. Because Scully and I, on paper at least, were nothing more to each other than partners. Work Colleagues. Bureau policy on the fraternisation between male and female agents was very clear and while relationships surely occurred on a regular basis, it was never acknowledged. And yet here I was, expecting to be granted a leave of absence without a single question being raised; but he managed it. God knows how he managed it but I received the paperwork just 48 hours later, the box labelled ‘expected return date’ marked ‘unknown’.

And to my surprise, I effectively walked away from my life’s work without even a murmur of dissent.

Because the X-Files suddenly didn’t matter anymore.

Nothing mattered any more except Scully.

Don’t get me wrong, we still had a measure of normality. The morphine, whilst sometimes leaving her fuzzy and disorientated, did its job admirably and without the constant pain, Scully was able to carry on. Her appetite was poor though and she began to lose weight, beginning to look as sick on the outside as she was on the inside. But despite this, she was still my Scully. She still laughed, still poked me in the ribs playfully when I overstepped the mark, and still admonished me when I casually dropped my discarded clothes on the bedroom floor instead of crossing the few feet to the laundry hamper. She could still beat me hands down at Yatzee and Clue , grinning at me with satisfaction at my frustration when I lost over and over again despite my best efforts.

Oh yeah, she was still my Scully.

We spent hours walking. Usually around Rivergate, as slowly winter turned in to spring and new life began to bloom around us. The irony of that wasn’t lost on either of us I don’t think.

Occasionally we got in the car and just drove. Aimlessly driving, needing in some unspoken way to keep moving forwards. We just let the road take us, stopping if something or somewhere caught our interest. Often she would fall asleep with her head resting against my shoulder, and I would find somewhere to park just so I could look at her. Sometimes being with her was so excruciatingly painful that something hard and cold took up residence in my chest cavity, stealing my breath from me and rendering me incapable of speech. And she knew; she always knew when I was falling and she would find a way to emotionally catch me before I hit the ground.

Only very rarely did we talk about her cancer.

We both refused I think, to allow ourselves to be defined by it or more crucially, for our relationship to be defined by it.

Until one day, one frightening day, when Scully began to drop random words in to her sentences, substituting in a way that clearly made sense to her but only to her. And even more frightening was that she was totally unaware that she was even doing it. The first time it happened I thought she was kidding.

Had you big time Mulder

But it was all too clear that she wasn’t.

She had refused all offers of a further MRI scan, arguing that since she was on no actual treatment protocol, tracking the progress of the disease was pointless. But really, I think she was simply afraid. I didn’t blame her since I seemed to spend every waking hour suspended in a state of perpetual terror that gnawed at me with an uninterrupted tenacity that would have, if I’d allowed it to, swiftly rendered me unable to function on even the most basic level. I wasn’t sure I was ready to physically have to face the demon that was slowly and relentlessly taking her away from me, not ready to have to weigh the time we had left in weeks or months. It was just too damn painful.

So instead, we made memories. As best we could at least.

A trip to the fair where we rode the ferris wheel again and again, laughing as the wind whipped around us, her slapping me at the centre of the chest in mock admonishment as I made the car rock when we were right at the top of the arc. And I kissed her, slow and deep as coloured lights twinkled beneath us and the starlit sky stretched to infinity above. I kissed her with my eyes wide open, to preserve this moment in time for ever. The sight of her face, flushed as it was with almost childlike happiness as I prayed to whatever God controlled the universe to please let me keep her for one more week, one more month, one more year; knowing the futility even as I wished that it could be so.

Because day by day, it was becoming clear that there was no stopping the progression of the disease, that the Scully I had fallen in love with so many years ago was slowly being taken. Not just from me, but from herself.

Her short term memory was becoming poor. For the most part she managed to hide it from me although I know she was in the habit of checking to see if her toothbrush was wet; to check that she had remembered to clean her teeth in the morning. And that she had begun to carry a small note book and pen with her in to which she jotted small snippets of daily life, to refer back to should she forget. She never asked me for help in that regard, fiercely trying to hang on to her independence, refusing to be cowed by the relentless damage being wrought upon her by this cruel disease.

I had reconciled myself to the fact a long time ago that this time there would be no miracle cure. That any intervention I had thought might come had been nothing but a scant hope from a desperate man. I had been stupid to even think that there might be. Because finally I knew, that everything leading up to this point had been carefully orchestrated and calculated. To give her back to me the last time. To allow me to fall in love with her, only to take her now was almost too heinous an act for me to comprehend.

On one night, not so very long ago, Scully had made me promise that I would continue to fight for justice. For her, for me, for everything and everyone who had been taken from us both. And I promised. Of course I promised. I would promise her the sun moon and stars if I thought it might bring her peace.

And when she was gone, when I had finally let her go, I would beg for her forgiveness before putting my gun against my temple and pulling the trigger.

Because without her, there could never be justice.

Because no amount of legal or moral recompense could ever be equal to what they have taken from us.

And now, as I sit on the sofa, listening to the sound of Scully’s desperate sobs from within the bedroom where she fled, I no longer have any fight left to give. I feel hollow inside. As though my heart has been ripped out of my chest.

Because this evening, as we curled up together on the sofa to watch TV, my beautiful, brilliant partner with her incredible mind, the woman who re-wrote Einstein when she was 23 years old, discovered that she could no longer read; that the words on the screen meant absolutely nothing to her.

And as I watched her literally fall apart before me, months of futile denial finally becoming undeniable, something cracked and broke free from her and she fought me with everything she had as I tried to take her in my arms, to soothe her even as I knew that there was nothing I could hope to do to make this right. Watching helplessly as she sought escape from me.

I didn’t follow her.

I couldn’t follow her.

Because I am alive and she is dying. For perhaps the first time she has to acknowledge that she is dying.

And I will give her the time she needs to at least begin to make sense of all this and then I will hold her against me as I search for the words that will convince her to keep going, to keep fighting.

Because I can’t lose her yet.

I just can’t.

XXXX

I think I fell asleep for a few minutes. I have no recollection of even closing my eyes, but the shadows in the room have deepened slightly. My watch tells me that barely half an hour has passed, but the apartment is quiet. The sounds of Scully’s distress have silenced and I decide to risk going to her.

But when I enter the bedroom, I am suddenly frozen with an inexplicable fear that paralyzes me. I am unable to move as I realise she isn’t there. And like a magnet, my eyes are drawn to the centre of the bed, to the leather holster that usually holds Scully’s service revolver in place.

It is empty.

And she is gone.

My eyes narrow as I see a single page torn from a book has been left alongside the holster and with shaking hands I pick it up. My throat is burning with a combination of raw fear and an all encompassing guilt that I fell asleep.

She was hurting and I fell asleep.

I recognise the page as being the preface to one of Scully’s favourite books, a collection of poems and anecdotes that speak of love, of remembrance. Of loss.

She knows that book by heart.

‘ Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away in to the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly the way it was. I am I and you are you, and The old life we lived so fondly together remains unchanged. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. Call me by the old familiar name. Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference in to your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity. What is this death but a negligible accident? Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am but waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well’

And even as I am scanning the words, I hear a noise, a strange animalistic keening sound that builds in volume and intensity until I realise that the sound is coming from me as realisation slams into my consciousness.

No Scully. Please No. Not this. Never this.

And I literally throw myself out of the apartment, screaming her name.

But there is only silence.

CONTINUED PART THREE

NOTES -  Credit for the beautiful piece of writing at the end goes to Henry Scott Holland (27 January 1847 – 17 March 1918) who was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford.