Welp, here's the second installment. I wasn't too happy with the appendix thing I had going on, so I changed both here, and in the last chapter.

I don't own Bendy and the Ink machine, or the HatIM au.

The studio looked even worse than Bendy remembered. Wooden walls had rotted after the fire, causing the whole second and third stories to cave in. Thick, dark ivy knotted around the wall and gate, partially blocking the view of the first story, but it couldn't be in any better condition. Bendy looked at his letter, wondering once again if Joey meant somewhere else. But there was no other place Bendy thought of as home.

Slipping the letter back into his jacket, he checked the road around him for people and crept to the heavy iron gate. Bendy hadn't ever seen the outside of the building before it burned down, except once at night, but the only other gate he'd seen had been in front of a government lab.

The gates were solid, and the bars were set too closely together for Bendy to squish between them, so he went to go look at the hinges. If he could break one, he'd be able to get in. Rough, rusted metal greeted him, and Bendy was just starting to look for a rock when he saw a faded trail of ink leading around the back.

Curious, he followed it.

On the far side of the wall there was a tunnel under the masonry. Dank air wafted from the hole, but Bendy could see light on the other side.

With a whispered, "Here goes," Bendy took a step back and plunged into the hole.

The cramped space was hard to crawl through. Bendy almost got stuck a time or two. He'd have a moment of panic before he could get his arms in front and pull himself free. Dirt invaded his mouth despite his best efforts.

Reaching the end, Bendy pulled himself up with a great heave of air. He spat. He used his tongue to clear his teeth. Afterwards, he pulled off his jacket, giving it a careful shake and brush down. Fingering the lining, Bendy grimaced at the ink stains on the inside. It had been a good few days since he'd last had a decent dose of ink, and so his coat had begun sticking to his softening skin.

That was okay, though, Bendy thought. Joey would have ink. And if he didn't, there was always the ink machine.

Wading through the overgrown lawn, Bendy could finally see the whole building. Yes, the burned out floors had completely collapsed, but they were resting solidly on the second level, leaving the ground floor remarkably intact. Not safe, not by any stretch of the imagination, but... the door looked like it would open.

The weeds gave way suddenly. Bendy stopped on a dime. Bare ground lay between him and the studio—not one stalk of grass grew there. A shiver ran down the demon's spine, but he brushed it off. "It's nothin'," he told himself, "They just, nevah broke up the ground or whatnot, afta' all th' big machines an' stuff built the place and packed down th' dirt."

Still, a tingle went through him as he stepped on the dirt. It felt like that thing in the alley: smothering and wrong. He tensed, but nothing happened. Attempting to laugh off his unease he said, "See? Joey wouldn' waste anythin' on a bunch a'weeds. Who needs them, anyway?"

He still ran to the door.

The wood opened easily at his touch. "Joey?" Bendy tried to yell, but his voice only came out as a whisper. He coughed and tried again, "Joey! Where are ya?"

For a long moment, Bendy couldn't bring himself to step inside. Used as he was to the bright afternoon sun, he'd be blind in the dark studio. But that wasn't what made him hesitate.

"Come on!" he hissed to himself. "It's Joey, he'd never hurt me. And he's not dead, so the rest prob'ly aren't neither. so I can't let a lil' dark scare me off!"

Two steps in, and the door slammed shut, almost knocking Bendy off his feet. The echoing thuds held a sense of finality, that his doom had been sealed same as all the lost employees. Bendy gulped, and turned away. The freaky door could wait. Joey was alive!

Excitement thrilled through him, and Bendy took off. His eyes hadn't adjusted to the gloom yet, but that didn't matter. This was his home. He knew it like the back of his hand. Dull black shoes eagerly traced the familiar path to the back of the studio, to Joey's office.

"Joey? Joey, I'm home! I thought ya all were dead, Joey. If I'da known, I swear I nevah would'a..." Bendy paused, coming to a stop. "What happened ta th' door?"

Where Joey's office had been, was now nothing but a blank wall. Bendy placed his hand on the wood. Bold word were written in ink. "'Th' creator lied t' us'?"

Unease built in the toon's stomach. "This... this ain't right. Joey's s'pose ta be here. I—what's goin' on?"

He turned around to the ink machine. It was off. Seeing the lifeless contraption brought Bendy's hunger back powerfully. He needed ink, and soon.

Back before the fire, Bendy had often tagged along behind Wally as he went about fixing things. It was loads of fun, and Bendy learned a lot! So he was confidant he could start up the machine. He had to start the ink flow, and then hit the power.

It was only a short walk to the flow control, and Bendy drug a chair over so he could reach the lever.

He put a hand on it and grimaced. Technically, he wasn't supposed to mess with this without a grownup. Wally had to turn this off whenever he was fixing the pipes, and the one time Bendy had flipped the switch without asking, he'd sprayed Sammy with ink. Bendy still remembered the dressing down the music director had given him for that. Sammy wouldn't let him into the music department for weeks.

But... Bendy really needed that ink.

"Welp," he sang, "There ain't nothin' fer it, I guess. Sorry Sammy," and he put his back to the lever and shoved. It gave way without any resistance, making Bendy overbalance and fall.

Bendy looked up at the machinery in abject confusion. Where was the ink pressure? He glanced at an indicator light. "Th-the power's out? But-but...how'm I gunna turn on th' machine now?"

A loose glob of ink ran down Bendy's tail and he swallowed thickly. "Come on, Bends, there has ta be ink somewhere. How 'bout you go check Henry's desk. There migh' be some in the drawer. 'Least, there bettah be."

Most of the animators worked upstairs, far away from the noisy sound department. But not Henry. His desk was off the original projector room. It was a really cramped space, but Henry never complained. There was no other space left on the main floor, and Henry refused to use an upstairs office. Joey wouldn't be able to reach him there.

Instead, he converted an old storage room into a makeshift office and used the space outside as a board room. That way, Joey didn't have to be carried up and down the stairs all the time. Henry had always been considerate like that.

Bendy didn't race through the studio again. His limbs were too weak. But now that he had slowed down, he could finally get a good look at all the little things that had been bugging him when he first arrived. The studio looked animated, as if someone had drawn it by hand. Thick lines traced the boards. Oddly bent nails stuck out of random places. Doorways sat at off angles, and they were all identical, down to the tiny chips in the top leftmost corners.

The effect would have been pleasing, endearing, were it not in reality.

Here, in a forgotten studio, it was unnerving. In fact, the lighting and atmosphere brought Bendy back to the some of the scary episodes Joey had been so fond of, the kind where things tended to jump out and chase the devil around. Back then, it was a good joke, one Bendy enjoyed as much as his audience. No one was laughing now.

Ink dripped off Bendy's horns and into his eyes. Frowning, he wiped it away, and focused his attention on the closet like space. "What happened here?"

Henry's desk was right where it was supposed to be, with the old cutout grinning on the side, but ink covered the space. It blanketed the desk completely, trailed up the walls, and settled in heaps on the ground.

The only thing left mostly untouched was the cutout. Ink stained the floor around it, but hovered a careful distance away, as if afraid of dirtying it. One bit of ink ran down the top, as if someone had poured a small jar of it over the head. It was...sweet, in a terrible creepy way.

Bendy gingerly stepped onto the inky mess. It crackled under his foot, but it was solid and held his weight. The toon didn't want to think about how long the ink had to have sat there for such big puddles to dry through like that. Probably a decade or two.

Ink had glued the drawer shut, and Bendy braced himself to give it a good yank. The draw gave way, and sent Bendy flying across the room. He sat down hard, blinking, before realizing that he was holding the drawer. Turning it over quickly, he felt a wave of disappointment to find it empty, only to have a jar of ink bounce off his head.

Eagerly popping the cork off, poured the ink into his mouth. It was vile. He fought to swallow the coagulated blobs that had formed, like in curdled milk. "How-how old is this stuff? Nevah mind, I don' wanna know."

Pocketing the jar, Bendy decided to leave it as a last resort. First he'd go see if there was any way to jumpstart the machine.

He looked around one last time at the tiny desk. It had been his birthplace. What had happened to it?

And what had happened to Henry?

April, 1942

Henry stalked down the hallway of the studio, doing his best to return the smiles of his co-workers—former co-workers. He still hadn't broken the news to them, and it looked like Joey hadn't either. Likely, the cripple was trying to pretend that the whole thing was a joke, and the Henry hadn't been drafted into the Great War. Or at least, that he wasn't planning on going.

But Henry had been drafted, and he was going, so Joey was just going to have to get over it.

Henry had hoped that he'd be able to come back to work after his service, but Joey... Well, that didn't seem all that likely anymore. In fact, the only reason Joey had agreed to let him come back in at all was because Henry had forgotten his papers in Joey's office.

Reaching the frosted glass, Henry knocked, cautiously. The light was out, so maybe Joey wasn't there.

"Come in," Joey called.

Henry fought back a flinch. The older man had never sounded so cold, before.

When he opened the door, Henry's first instinct was to hit the light, but the switch didn't work. Joey was on the opposite side of his office from his desk, which was odd, because there was nothing but a couple of bookshelves there. A candle sat on a end table, providing the sole illumination for the room. Joey used one hand to wheel his chair around. He held a book in his other hand.

"Good. You are right on time."

"What is this, Drew?"

"I told you, don't you dare come back. I knew you would though, these documents are rather nessicary, aren't they?" he held up a folder.

Henry's eyes lit with realization. "You kept it on purpose."

"Of course. I needed you to come back. And now that you're here, the real show can begin."

With those words he snatched up the candle and threw it to the floor. A pentagram burst into flames. Dark runes spiderwebbed away from the fire, and Henry watched as the circled and anchored into the nearly forgotten ink machine behind him. The building shook and warped, reforming itself in accourdence with its masters whim.

Flames rose higher and higher into the sky, and the inhabitants of the building ran to take shelter in the newly formed basement. The way shut behind them.

And thus all of Sillyvision Studios fell to the mercy of Joey Drew.