Flickers of Faith (Bendy and the Ink Machine)

4- A Turn of the Page

"Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you." - Hosea 10:12

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What a horrible loneliness it can become to be driven by your own stubbornness. Even if it's for another, it can only push them away. A flash of this exact sensation stung her for just a moment, but it was forcibly swiped aside. In its place stood the silhouette of the one she wanted to see most.

No, Bendy may not have been in sight physically, but as Sammy ached the back of her mind, his lord stood at its front.

And so she went.

...

Where to though?

At one of the shady corners of these weaving halls, the woman stopped in her steps. Damn it, she hadn't thought this through in the least- literally a straight walk from "maybe Bendy knows what we don't" to wandering the darkness with no end goal in mind. Her gaze turned up ahead towards the loud, pulsing machinery, like the organs of a monster that had consumed her. Didn't this route only lead to the Heavenly Toys anyway? And if she did find him-

"What the fuck would I say...?!" she whined under her breath, leaning one palm onto the metal wall.

Certainly, doubtlessly, this was a bite she took that was far too big to chew; it was so exhausting that mere minutes into her journey, she needed to catch her breath. And just for a second, she'd take that desperately needed moment to think and process what this search actually meant to her.

"I just want..." What...did she want? A sigh escaped her lips as she studied her own heart. What was there? It felt...warm somehow, this feeling. A desire, a burning one. Like a flame inside her chest that didn't know how to get out-

"I just want to feel okay again."

Suddenly nothing was there to keep her upright. The pressure against her palm was gone and she stumbled headfirst into...

Somewhere.

A yelp and a thud; that's all she heard. No metal creaking, no wood giving way...no sign of what had just occurred besides her own self living through it. The side of her head bounced once after it hit the floorboards, but it was immediate for her to lift herself off the ground. What the hell?

Yes, she had certainly fallen, as if the wall she had leaned against was never there at all. Her eyes fluttered away specs of white from the blow, watching her own arms force herself off of her side. Francine was just about to begin to stand up when she...she noticed something.

As she sat upon the floor, turning her head every which way, Francine knew this was not where she had been before. It was...too different to be the same place- from metal to wood and from murk with glimmers of equipment to a dim, ethereal luminescence a long radius around her. From the guts of machinery, she had fallen into a hall of wood and candlelight. The woman was disturbed but reluctantly knew she needed to investigate, and so she fully stood up with a light groan to spin around and take in whatever secret path she pressed open by accident.

...Wait. That couldn't be right.

She spun again. Then again. Then again.

How long had she second-guessed if it was her new headache making her dizzy, hallucinatory, before she noticed that it seemed like she fell from one world to the next? There were no holes. No doors. No sign that there was a connection between where she was and where she stood now. She had expected a break of some kind that lead her from there to here and its lacking left her utterly astounded and deeply troubled.

From one realm into the next absolutely seamlessly, like it was just the turn of the page in a book of fairy tales. Indeed, for her to just suddenly materialize here must have been magic's doing, and it took her breath away once more.

It was a hall somehow both lit and shadowed. Candles stood alongside the walls in a scarce, unorderly fashion; never was one close enough to another that the actual wax of both could be seen- besides the one near her feet, all others were dots quivering in darkness.

Indeed, she was placed in the middle room that seemed endless both to her left and to her right with nowhere else to go. A sweat broke onto her brow and she began to hyperventilate; she could only think of a few possibilities of what this could mean.

None of them were good.

Shoulders raised heavily with her labored breath and her cheeks squeezed up towards her eyes. "Breathe. Breathe. Not here. Not here," she begged herself.

One shaky deep intake of air after another, seeming to tremor more the harder she tried to fight an upcoming anxiety attack.

Francine closed her eyes.

...

...

...And opened them again, still breathing roughly as she finally decided to step in one direction of the endless wooden cave to find her way forward or backward.

There were only a few things her circumstance could mean, and none of them would let her stay. Whether this was a nightmare, the result of someone transporting her unconscious, or a phase between time and space itself...she couldn't be still.

She tried not think about what this could mean for her search of Bendy, unknowing it was her goal that had led her here. Omniscience was watching, but it could not control, so it merely prayed as Francine put one foot in front of the other.

Her round figure seemed to supernaturally fuzz into the blackness as it approached the path of lights, even the sound of her footsteps muting into nonexistence. It seemed unnatural for Sammy's sloshed ones to not join by her side.