Bendy had had enough. It was time to reunite with his beloved Angel.

TRIGGER WARNING: Body horror (kinda?)

Over time the studio became dilapidated by design. Molded this way by old broken souls and fragmented memories, churned up by the Ink Machine and spat through the pipes in a molded slush. A corrupted sludge that made the very walls melt and warp, changing to reflect the very state of the minds of its inhabitants, spurred on in its existence only by the fear of not. And yet Bendy was the only one who seemed to realize that.

He was the only one connected to it all, as he was. Still bound and chained yet more free then the rest of them. As monstrous as he was formed, he could still think, he could still move - all for the sake of a mad man's story. Little things that he had to be given, to be able to act.

These little 'freedoms', though for the purpose of the story, could not bind him all the time. As the creator fell asleep each night and the dim light that shimmered into the ink machine room twinkled Bendy would find himself able to move with his own mind, to breathe in his own body, to be able to flow freely through the ink as he was always meant to. Despite this, he knew he'd never be able to use it to get out, knew that despite his creator's hubris no ink flowed outside the studio walls, but that didn't stop him from playing out his picture shows, dancing as best he could with the inklings, to turn nightmares into dreams. At least, in his own head. It was the best he could do.

However, there was another fire that burned in him tonight. One that had been festering for as long as he'd been condemned to this place. Everything had been taken from him, but there was one thing he wouldn't stand for, consequences be damned.

Alice Angel. Gift from above. Her smile could make him melt, her laughter like the ringing of bells. Her ink had been fused with the rotting corpse of Susie Campbell. A woman who showed about as much hubris as their creator had. Somehow her soul had still lingered, taking residence in that form - twisted and tainted, and taking his sweet Alice with her. She was afraid of him, and his creator revelled in it. It kept her far away from the demon in a desperate attempt at self preserving the amalgamation that kept him away from his sweetheart. Kept him away from the last shimmering bit of light he still had down here. Knowing she still existed wasn't enough. He had to see her, he had to be with her. To hear her voice again, her real voice, and know once more what it felt like to be calm and content.

He ripped into the ink in the walls, the pure dripping blackness welcoming as he stepped into it. No more.

Susie liked to think in her twisted little head that she could venture as far as she wanted from the demon. Hide in a sanctuary cleaned away from all the ink puddles, away from anything that wasn't a dissected soul and hunker down, believing she was safe from him. But once you became a part of the ink, you could never truly leave it. Her thoughts echoed in muffled beats wherever her voice had reverberated off the puddles. Her will - and Alice's - molded together sloppily. A candle dimmed by a stained cloth, no longer able to burn away obstructions with angelic fire.

For all the precautions Susie took, she was never one to be quiet, never one to back down from anything that wasn't an Ink Demon. She had all the time in the world to run her gab, cracking in and out between voices and pretending that killing more and more copies of an old friend would rid her of herself.

He needed merely to wait as the ink acted as his feelers. Pulsing, feeling, cold.

Ink bubbled around him as he pulled himself out of a pipe. Sound warped and distorted as he plopped down and grew. High heels and a scratchy shrieking voice came into moderate clarity as his toothy unnerving grin showed white over his visage.

"The demon! The beast!" Susie's voice was dominant, her skin white as snow but streaked with ink as she scuttled backwards away from him. He stood tall when she finally decided to push the Charley in her clawed hands down to the ground. Bendy's feet finally pulled up and stepped forward, and he willed his knees to work, to move as he started to run in the only fashion he could with a limp leg and hampered visuals.

"Stay away, stay away! Don't take me back!" Her voice cracked to Alice, briefly, but it only spurred him onward. He scraped a clawed hand against the wall. The ink rippled in rivulets and streaked into the wall, carving and covering more ground than he could ever reach on his own two feet. One by one each door in successive order was closed shut, ink coating the door knobs and spurting out from the frames as Susie's footsteps echoed.

"No, no no no!" The shaking of handles, the pounding of a fist on a door, and then he'd hear her scurrying away just as he'd round the corner. His teeth vibrated in his skull, his chest welling as he shrieked. The sound echoed down the hall and made her freeze up, just for a moment.

Then a pipe burst, directly in front of her, which had her stumbling back to avoid touching the ink. Her breath was coming out in harsh pants and she turned around. "No, this isn't how it ends, no!" A clack of a heel. Bendy slowed down as he approached. Her whole body trembled, her arms spread out to either side of her as her one eye darted around. "I will be perfect! I will be beautiful!" Again her voice cracked, his beloved showing through the seams. His feet pulled and stuck off the boards like gum on a shoe. He was only a few feet from her now. "I-I will not…" Susie's voice wavered and she stepped back into the ink and screamed.

The voices, no doubt, sang into her mind and Bendy took the opportunity and leaped forward, grabbing a hold of her arm. The ink rippled upon contact as she started to melt in his grip and she shrieked, her voice breaking and warbling. "No, no!"

Her hand melted as she struggled to pull it away, binding with his own ink. Her one eye widened and she struck at him, "You demon!" High-pitched and shrivelled. Her hand got stuck in his shoulder and she shook, shaking her head. His other arm wrapped around her and pulled her in. Her body splashed into his ink and her face, the one good side to her, started to melt and contort as she struggled and screamed until she no longer could.

Even with his own arms melting, his own grin dripping into a frown, he ignored the outside world and focused instead on the inner. Eyes beaming, he looked and looked and called into the dark.

"Alice! Alice where are ya? Don't leave a guy hanging here!" He laughed, elated and cheery and happier then he'd felt in decades. He'd done it, she was his again, he could focus on her once again, to make her happy and see her grin.

"Ben...dy…" Her voice, but in a mechanical sort of hiss. Bendy flowed through the ink, finding the spark that lit his world.

He hadn't noticed till he approached her. A melted mass of sludge with a halo digging into the hair that used to shine brilliantly on her head. Her body was melted and in a muddy puddle, her eyes hollow as she stretched a stub of a hand out of the slime, pale and white. He stood just before her and fell to his knees. "Ben...dy….Bendy…"

"Doll..?" He thought dumbly, taking her one hand in his as she came over him. His thoughts trembling in a stillness he hadn't felt since he'd watched the machine be turned on after the studio shut down.

Memories rushed over him as his mind started to melt, as a lost part of the ink returned to him. Of a studio he never saw, of a woman who used to be his, of the laughter that echoed pleasantly in his head and the sound her halo made whenever she'd flick it. A ding, and a stuck out lower lip. A tap of black heels with bare white legs. A jutted hip and a scowl, then a smile when she had been given the part of 'Alice Angel'. She'd shown brightly in the black and white world they called home. In the yellow and black world they'd called work.

A moaning black mass writhed on the ground. It rippled and popped, ink bubbling and splattering onto the walls as it moved around in a drunken state. Muddled with faces that shifted and shaped, with limbs that grew and melted and split apart back into the black amorphous mass, as if it couldn't decide on which form to take.

As if it couldn't decide what was real and what was fake.

A/N: This is well past the event (by almost a year now) but I will finish it, it's just going to be at a more lax pace then how the earlier chapters were made. I'd been stuck on this one for awhile but actually made my word count (yay!) and made it in a manner I was mostly satisfied with. Good way to kick back up working on this.