#its just really frustrating to see how slowly everything is changing and becoming more inaccessible

[ravonix]

im genuinely so upset about tumblr gradually phasing out our desktop blog sites

[thelastloop]

Chapter 6: Tally

Read from the beginning or Read on AO3

Henry learns a lot of things. He sees even more. What to do with this information, and what is even useful? That's another story. 

VOICES.

All indiscernible whispers, but some gentle, some sad, some furious. Quiet tones murmured so constantly they rang deafeningly loud in his ears.

Blackness, total yet moving—no, swirling—around him.

The feeling of constantly being touched, yet knowing there was nothing around to touch him.

He was standing (but when) in a long, dark tunnel (but where?). The instant he moved (at least, he thought he did), orange and white spun together like an entrance, beckoning him towards it. The voices got louder once the entrance (or exit?) formed, and he felt the urge to see where it led, yet… this urge felt so foreign to him. It tugged on his mind so lightly, almost a suggestion instead of an attack on all other thoughts, so convincing he almost moved, but—

A shift.

Fear. Suddenly the noise in his ear gained clarity. The whispers rioted.

“No…”

“Please, leave-!”

“RUN!”

The former animator listened.

“|HENRY|.” One voice, crystal clear in the blackness, so disturbingly familiar it sent a shiver up his spine and yet he couldn’t place it.

A glance revealed an arm, untainted by ink, reaching for him through the blackness. Instead of relief at seeing something unmistakably human, he only felt horror watching it draw closer. He stopped moving, mind at war. Half demanded he listen to the voices and run, and the other…

|Wait.|

|WAIT.|

|NO—!|

Something else reached him first, suddenly grabbing him and yanking him to the side, away from both the hand and the exit, into the whispers now screaming—

And just as suddenly, he was expelled from that blackness, the hand making one final lunge for him before disappearing along with everything else. Henry lay sprawled on the studio floor, every inch of him trembling with pain. A low rumble above him slowly pulled his attention upwards. Bendy stared down, head tilted questioningly to one side in a caricature of concern. All he could do was groan and tense. His gaze flicked around the room, and he realized with a sick sense of relief that he knew exactly where they were.

“I… need a hand, buddy…” The ink demon stared questioningly at the outstretched hand a moment longer before giving him a tug, Henry hissing out some choice words as he was dragged to his feet.

He staggered down the hallway. The exit door taunted him, inaccessible due to the giant hole where he’d fallen in before. They were back on the top floor.

“You… brought me back up.”

Bendy chirped affirmatively.

“How?!” he demanded, only briefly feeling guilty as the ink demon bowed its head. Why was he even asking? Bendy couldn’t answer him, only chirp and trill and groan, like a cross between an animal and a bug. After a moment, he shook his head, leaning heavily against the wall. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose. We’re up here now. That’s something.”

Bendy held out his other hand. In his grip was the seeing tool. Henry gratefully took it. At least he could check out what the ‘little’ devil was so agitated about. “Alright, Bendy. What do you want me to see?”

The first hidden message lay next to the exit sign, adding ‘OR DIE’ to the side. Seemed self-explanatory, if confusing. Who could have written it? Judging by the displeased grumble, that wasn’t what he was supposed to look at. He glanced at the hole curiously.

I always fall.

Henry grimaced, stomach twisting without fully knowing why. The hole was new! Why ‘always’? Another grumble, louder and more frustrated behind him. The animator shot him an exasperated look. “Bendy, if you have something specific for me to see, you need to actually show me where to point this thing.”

The ink demon placed a hand on his shoulder, pulling him towards the posters. Henry raised a questioning brow. The demon just pointed again. With a sigh, he brought the glass back to his face.

His eyes widened as he stared at the countless markings that littered the wall, confusion mixing with deep-seated, horrible recognition that he couldn’t quite yet place.

Tally marks. He slowly exhaled, reaching out towards the very end of the list, running a thumb down that final line.

“Where did these—or, how… how do you get a new tally? Who put these here?”

Bendy jabbed him in the back.

“…Me? When? I didn’t—”

No.

He had. Completely reflexively, he didn’t even give the poster a glance as he did it in passing.

Hesitantly he moved his finger further up the wall. Where his memory failed, his body remembered: the second the digit touched the softly glowing marking, searing pain ripped through his body, across his back, flashes of injuries attacking him at all angles and driving him to his knees with a choked noise. The seeing tool clattered to the floor. His arms quickly followed, trying to brace himself.

Next came the visions.

Faces flashed in front of his eyes. Faces tied to events. Faces tied to deaths.

Putting a reel in a throne. A beast dissolving to white.

An apartment. A familiar apartment, housing familiar face, filling him with hate.

The entrance they were in, playing in a horrible loop, all slightly different yet everything that mattered never wavered.

“There’s something I want to show you.”

He gasped, only then realizing Bendy had pulled him up and started shaking him, whimpering and whining. As his eyes finally focused on the demon, he was pulled into a tight hug. Too dazed to really fight it, he let him do so until the fog on his mind cleared.

“I… I remember,” he muttered, and Bendy made a questioning trill. Henry added, a little louder, “…Somewhat. Fits and bursts. I think… if I kept trying out tally marks I could get more back, but like hell am I going through that again. Once is enough… Is that all you wanted me to see?”

The demon nodded, and the ex-animator groaned as he pushed himself away. Next question. “How did you find out?”

A long silence, before Bendy pointed at him. His mind went back to the audio log full of static.

Seemed like there was some use to it after all. Now they just needed a way to proceed. What use did this knowledge give him? A better idea of the people he might encounter (even if all he remembered was in glimpses), perhaps. It did give him an idea… one that combined Bendy’s awareness and Sammy’s… extra pair of hands? A chance to reunite and possibly rescue his old friend, but he didn’t dare dwell on that thought. Not with the prophet’s mind the way it was. He’d move the former musician away from being just a demonic lackey, but that may take some time.

“We should return to Sammy.”

Only after he spoke did he realize what he would have to do to GET back down. As Bendy turned to head back to the sigil, Henry stayed rigid, conflicted and worried. “W-wait, no, you are NOT putting me through that again!” His eyes scrunched shut, gripping the sides of his head. “Those voices, that hand, that pain… not again. Can’t I just hop through the hole again? Sure, that injured my—” He’d moved to show off his injury for emphasis… only to find his palm completely smooth.

“—My hand…” It looked like nothing happened. A thousand questions ran through his head, but the one that left his mouth played a very familiar tune. “What did you do to me?”

Of course Bendy didn’t answer, only stared. Henry wasn’t sure if it was because the demon didn’t know, or if he did and just didn’t have the means to say it. But, the ink demon did shuffle back to his side and tug on his arm. A request to follow. Henry wordlessly obeyed. That was easier said than done by the time they reached the sigil, though, Henry hesitating just in front of it. The ink demon grumbled again and gave him a little shove.

He reached out to catch himself on the sigil.

When that didn’t happen, he plunged straight through the wall and fell face-first to the floor with a yelp. He lay there a moment, staring wide-eyed at the makeshift walkway before him, until he saw Bendy walk over him with a pleased chirp.

“You knew that would happen,” he commented, pushing himself back to his feet. The demon whistled and nodded. Now it was his turn to grumble, resignedly following.

Hands reached out through the slats at him, but before he could fully react to the sight, Bendy hissed loudly. While Henry jumped, the hands yanked back, and the murmurs grew louder. Even with the knowledge he’d regained, all of… this… confused him. Realization hit.

“I’ve never seen this before,” he breathed. Bendy made an affirmative noise. He paused, having to take a moment just to let it soak in. “This is new…”

After so long of doing everything thousands of times, becoming so numb to it all that death received the barest of emotional responses, the idea that something could still be new… well, it was almost enough to give him a little hope for a change. In fact, the more he thought, the more he realized he’d never done before. Just existing the way he did, still being emotional, getting to be much closer to the Henry that first walked into the building however many years now ago… it awed him. The script was changing, and though part of him whispered to |go back to the familiar, to give up on what he knew would fail|, he found it ever easier to push that voice aside.

As they made their way out of the sigil they first came from, Henry noted Sammy patiently waiting to the side, hands clasped together as if in prayer. He seemed to notice the animator first, shoulders slumping. Henry raised a brow. “Yes? Glad you react now, and not when I’m being ripped apart.”

“…How?” The question came so… weak. Quiet. Upset, even.

“How what?”

“You are… you. How is that possible?” Sammy made a frustrated noise that he couldn’t quite place, and his next statement came with an accusatory edge. “Why YOU?”

That set Bendy off. A low growl rumbled from him, and the prophet froze. Despite his reverence for the ink demon, he seemed to scare him—petrify him, really. Bendy advanced, darkness seeping up through the floorboards in wisps and tendrils that curled around Sammy’s feet as he backed up, until he hit the wall. One large hand wrapped around his throat, lifting him. The prophet desperately tried to claw the hand off, choked noises of pain escaping him yet somehow still able to speak,

“M-my lord, please! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I will never question your judgement again, please—!”

“Bendy!”

Both stopped, looking at Henry.

“Put him down.”

Bendy whined.

“DOWN.”

Slowly, the demon set his prophet back on the ground.

Sammy stared, first at Henry, then at his own hands. Henry watched him with concern. “Are you okay, Sammy?”

He didn’t answer. Ink started to pool and drip beneath the mask on either side of his chin.

“Sammy…?”

Finally, he looked at him, still dripping. “My lord wishes, and I—but the humble servant—I obey,” he whispered, not a trace of his previous pride in his voice. “Where do you will me?”

[phantomrose96]

Tethered Down

Vlad isn’t used to being interrupted while working in his lab. Its walls are reinforced lead and its ceiling is buried twenty feet below basement level. The room is missing from the building plans, invisible to the code specs, and inaccessible to any snooping government agents. The Guys in White’s detection equipment has never found it. They would have better luck finding some hollowed out space by banging on the side of their own heads.

So when Vlad hears the clatter of tripped-over machine parts and light, breathy cursing from behind him, he knows no normal person has come to find him. This makes him crack a razor-fanged smile. Vlad lowers the welding torch he’d been using to stitch some metal parts together for a new portal hub. He raises the goggles from off his red eyes, and turns around in mock formality.

“Daniel you should have told me you were coming. I would have put some tea on for the both of us.”

Vlad is right—Danny is standing at the other end of the lab, but he doesn’t look how Vlad had pictured. No jumpsuit, no balled-up fists, no murderous green glinting eyes. Danny is entirely human, and he looks only a bit bothered, like he’s thinking too hard about what to say.

“Vlad,” Danny settles on.

Vlad’s smile doesn’t waver. He takes a few steps forward, boots clacking out hollow sonorous beats on the cavernous floor. Danny seeking him out is almost always a treat. It means he’s done something to annoy or frustrate or enrage Danny enough to be sought out without any effort on Vlad’s part. It’s already a victory of sorts for Vlad, and he’s eager to know what he’s done.

Vlad spreads his arms, as if to encompass the far wall of enormous floating monitors, the pink-swirling portal in the back left corner, the tables and shelves filled with cobbled-together metal gadgets. Vlad glances down. There are three empty toppled paint cans at Danny’s feet, clearly tripped over and just now settling.

“So, to what do I owe this delight? Have you come to hear about my specs for the new Maddie AI? Or maybe you’d like to hear about my recent cloning breakthroughs. Or—“ Vlad swoops in closer, circling Danny, delighting in the way Danny’s head whips about to follow his motions, “—is there something else even better you’d like to discuss?”

“Something else.”

Vlad frowns just slightly. There’s no passion in Danny’s voice, rare for a kid motivated almost entirely by his unstable emotions. There’s no fire in his eyes either. No accusation or quick remark lashing from his tongue. Danny’s eyes are calm, and his tone is simply flat.

“What, then?” Vlad asks, and he loses the traction of their banter.

“I went on a college visit yesterday.”

Vlad pauses. He’s half-stooped over Danny, expecting more to be said. Vlad finds himself with nothing to go on. “…Okay,” he says.

“I like the place a lot. And people with my grades get in there all the time. Especially if I keep them up for the rest of junior year I stand a good chance.”

“What place?”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Then why are you telling me.” Vlad slides away from Danny. His hope of being cursed out is fading, and his brow furrows. His face brightens at a sudden thought, “Did you feel the urge to tell me because I’ve simply become a sort of father figure to you?”

“I want to go there. It’s three hours away by car. One and a half by the Fenton RV, but that’s with my dad driving.” Danny’s voice has become clinical, like the very words are tedious, like he’s talking to a customer service representative and he’s bored. “And it’s an hour away if I fly.”

“Get to the point Daniel. I’m a busy man.”

“No you’re not. You just have a lot of creepy pet projects.” Danny motions stiffly to the pod-like vats that once contained Danny’s old clones. “My point is I can’t keep super-heroing if I go there.”

“Ah,” Vlad brightens again. He leans in. “A crisis then? A conflict of character, of morality, and you’ve come to me for advice? You’re desperate to know if you can hang up your cape to chase a dream so banal as a normal college life?”

“God—no—shut up just a minute. Not everything’s that dramatic.” Danny leans away, sizing Vlad up. “My angsty teenage phase has been over for like a year. And what are you, like, 40? Chill out for like five minutes, for once.”

Vlad deflates a little, frowning.

Danny clears his throat to continue. “I’m not ‘hanging up my cape’. I’m not making any rash decisions. I’m just going to college, because that’s what I want to do, for me. And I’m doing it. I’ve still got my own life to live. But that means I’m not around Amity to help with the ghost patrol.”

“You’d willfully leave them unprotected, hmm?”

“Please. Mom and Dad are still kicking ghost ass in the meantime. And I’m not that irresponsible. I’m hiring a replacement.”

“Oh…who? Valerie?”

Danny snorts. “Hell no. She’s got a full ride to some college out in Michigan for field hockey. She’s getting the hell out like I am.” Danny’s face sobers. “No, I’m hiring you, Vlad. You’re going to pick up whatever slack I leave behind, got it?”

Vlad’s face splits into a grin, and he barks a laugh. Then he throws his head back and roars, teeth glinting, eyes deeply red and alight. He regains his composure with a few rolling chuckles, and fixes Danny with a condescending smirk. “Oh, adorable. You think you can make me do what you want.”

“Yeah, I can.”

“Can’t.”

“Can,” Danny answers firmly. “Because if you refuse, then I’m going back home, and the second I get through that front door, I’m doing this.” Danny straightens his shoulders just a fraction, and a glimmering white ring splits at his midsection, enveloping him, repainting him as something sallow and yet bright, cold and yet flickering hot, dead and so monstrously alive. And in some ways, he looks exactly the same. “I realized I don’t care about keeping my secret anymore, really. Mom and Dad accept Phantom as a helper way more often than they ever try to shoot at him, and they’d accept me. And I don’t think it would really change much anymore. I’m not 14 anymore. I could handle letting them know.”

Vlad’s jaw is tight. “…So?”

“So that’s where we’re different, V-man.” Danny flashes a condescending smile to match the one Vlad had worn. “You can’t dare to let them know. The Wisconsin Ghost? You? God, it would end you. My parents, and the town, and the government—they’d all be at your throat in an instant. You’d lose everything.” Danny rocks back on his heels. “And I’ll out you in a heartbeat if you give me a reason to. Because you don’t hold any leverage against me anymore, Vlad. I’ve grown up, and I’m over it.”

“You don’t…mean that,” Vlad answers slowly, dumbly.

“I do.” Another flash, and the rings sweep past Danny to reveal the simple body of a human once more.

“…Just for college?” Vlad doesn’t like the edge in his voice, the quiet anxiety. “Four years?”

Danny shrugs. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll come back home after college if it turns out ghost hunting is the thing I wanna do with my life. Maybe I won’t.” Danny steps forward, encroaching on Vlad, suddenly taller and surer than Vlad had ever seen him. “I’ll be home during breaks—I’m sure I’ll happily pick up the ghost hunting then. But maybe I’ll get an internship somewhere? Maybe I’ll take a term abroad, you know? Maybe I’ll stay a whole lot of years more and get my PhD in astrophysics. ‘Dr. Fenton’, like my mom. It’s got a nice ring to it.”

“You wouldn’t…” Vlad mutters. “Who says I’ll keep doing it that long, hmm?”

“Go ahead. Break your promise whenever. But the second you do, I’m giving your identity to everyone I know. And besides. You’re not going anywhere anyway.” Danny takes a few steps back, and motions around him. “This? Your whole secret lair down here? You’ve tethered yourself to this place. You’ve got no family anywhere, and you’ve got no ambitions in your life that don’t involve me or my mom. You’re 40 and you’re sad and you’ve made your bed here and I know you don’t intend to go anywhere else, even with all your money, because what purpose would you even have anywhere else, Vlad? You could do this for the rest of your life, picking up my slack. You just might.”

Danny flashes to ghost form again, and kicks off into the air, and hovers up to the ceiling from which he entered.

“Me, Vlad? I’m young, and I’ve got my life ahead of me, and I can still do something with it. I’m everything you’re not.”

Vlad says nothing. He only stares. He hears only static in his ears.

“See you later, or maybe never again, Fruit Loop.”