Chapter Text
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Henry struggled out of his bonds while listening Sammy begging for mercy from his 'Lord'. Not intending to linger long enough to become the Demon's next target he immediately picked up his ax and started swinging. Unfortunately the ax he had been using ever since the first floor gave out beneath from him had finally had enough. The handle cracked upon impact with the final board blocking the path. The head of the Ax detached and fell against Henry's arm, slicing it open. Henry hissed sharply, placing his hand over the bleeding wound. It was pretty deep, and he tried to apply pressure to stem the bleeding, but a little bit leaked out through his fingers.
Henry sighed looking in front of him. Maybe that door was an exit? The flooding of ink was a bit ominous, but there weren't many places that did not have ink everywhere in this place. He only managed to take a few steps forward when a figure burst forth from the puddles. Bendy. Bendy only waited a second before lunging for Henry, who then turned heel and darted down the hall littered with loose boards. His foot caught on one and he lurched forward, chest hitting the floor with an "Oof." He flips over as fast as he can in time to see Bendy bearing down on him. His inky hands reached forward towards his neck Henry tried to block the attack, bloody hand grabbing Bendy's forearm but failing to hold it back. Bendy was stronger than his skeletal build would leave one to believe and his hand pushed passed Henry's resistance and wrapped around his throat, giving it a tight squeeze. Henry's legs flailed out. He kicked Bendy in the chest a couple times, but it didn't seem to do much. In a panicked act one of Henry's legs caught underneath Bendy's leg, leaving his entire body weight on the twisted one and sent the Ink Demon tumbling. After a second to recover and scrambled to his feet and rushed the rest of the way to the door.
Bendy's pursuit resumed immediately. As he was chasing Henry down he did not notice the bloody hand print Henry left on his arm began to be absorbed into his ink. Bendy was not deterred when Henry slammed the wooden door in his face. Bendy pounded on the door a couple times then reared back to ram it only to halt suddenly. A wave of dizziness passed over Bendy and he felt something strange that he never felt before. He collapsed on the floor.
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The first thing Bendy noticed when he came to was that it was quiet. Far too quiet. Only when he huffed a breath as he got to his feet did he realize why. Never had he gone without having to listen to his own labored breathing rattling out of his misshapen lungs, he was not used to true silence.
He stood up straight, for the first time his crooked spine not protesting, looked around and realized everything around him looked bigger. Much bigger.
Before his height would be greater than the door frame, as he looked to the nearest door he could find, he realized he did not even reach the nob. Bendy swung his head around in every direction as he took in his surroundings and then looked down at himself, taking in the rounded toes of his matching feet, both facing forward, no longer twisted or misshapen. His hands matched as well, both his gloves a pristine white as his skin no longer dripped like tar constantly leaking ink. His torso no longer crooked and emaciated but a round little bean shaped body. Hands on his face told him his eyes where now the clearly visible pie-cut eyes he was originally meant to have.
Bendy ran down the hall to the nearest bathroom, despite his greatly reduced length of stride he was able to move just as fast as before without the needling pain his twisted leg used to give him. No limp either. He swung the door open and ran to the sink, needing to stand on his tip toes to get his face visible in the cracked mirror.
God dammit! He was adorable!
How did this happen? He had been so close to killing Henry one moment and then he is this tiny little imp with pinchable cheeks the next. He bangs his fist into the mirror. It cracked, but it did not shatter. It seemed Bendy did not pack as much of a punch as he used to. This might throw a wrench into his plans. He survived on being the Ink Demon everyone feared. No one even tried to mess with him anymore. If they found him like this, would they still fear him? Is there a chance that they would remember the fearsome beast he used to be and not risk attacking him? Who knows. It was every ink spawn for themselves down here, so he could not exactly rely on their kindness to not attack him. At any rate Bendy should find a place to recover. Those searchers would be too mindless to think not to attack him even if he was his normal intimidating self. Before it did not matter, even if he was swarmed by them he could make them burst in a second. They weren't very strong so Bendy might be able to take on one, but he did not know if he could handle a group at the moment. The best course of action right now would be to avoid battle until he can figure himself out. Since the only thing needed to spark battle with a searcher is to cross paths with one he needed to find away around that.
Bendy looked around, watching for ink puddles that they might jump out of when he noticed a vent grate. That's it! The vents were generally devoid of the ink puddles searchers tended to pop up in, a rarity in this place. He could use them to navigate the time being.
Climbing through the vents was considerably easier now. When He had done it before to get to that fanatical lunatic in the mask he had been doing an army crawl to get through, which was difficult as his elbows and knees constantly hit against the walls. Now he just might able to walk through with a hunch instead of getting on his hands and knees. God dammit he was so tiny.
Although it was not his first time in the vents, it didn't rely on them too heavily before and spent a bit of time just wandering to get to know the layout. He eventually came to a vent opening. Bendy pressed his face into the grate, trying to get a good look inside. It was a room, did not look that different than any other but he definitely heard something strange, like a a pig snorting and then whistling. Apparently the grate was not screwed shut and opened up when his body weight pressed against it.
Bendy fell out of the vent and landed on something with a sharp huff of air, like a gasping breath that wasn't his own. Bendy looked over to the owner of said gasping breath to find that he was now sitting on top of a very confused and surprised looking Boris, who was laying in a hammock just underneath the vent Bendy just came from. Bendy looked at him, eyes wide in equal surprise. He had not really interacted with any Borises before. Most of them went into hiding when that hideous wannabe Alice started dissecting them. Bendy was a bit surprised that there were any left alive. He saw the dissected one on the first floor, so clearly Alice was finding ways to get to them outside her domain.
The Boris sat up, causing Bendy to tumble off his chest and onto the ink splattered floor. Bendy landed face first, as he pulled his face off the ground he heard Boris's feet hit the floor next to him. Bendy looked up to see a handy reach out to him and flinched, remembering the first interaction he had with Joey, but the hand just stayed held out to him, making no move to strike him, a silent offer to be helped up.
Bendy looked up at Boris warily. It's not like he had any relationship with him. Sure he knew that his character was supposed to know Boris from watching the animations, when he had been locked up for so long he never had much of a chance to interact with any of them before they went into hiding.
After a moment Bendy took Boris's hand and was hoisted to his feet. Boris hands him a rag out of his pocket, Bendy is still wary. There aren't many who did not either attack him or run at the site of him. Then again, he did not think anyone would be running from him looking like this. Feeling dampness on his face he figured he got ink on him and Boris was trying to give him something to wipe it off. That was another thing to get used to, having a body with a strong enough constitution that he wasn't constantly leaking. It was actually possible now for his skin to feel warm and dry.
Bendy felt somewhat awkward as he took the rag to wipe his cheek. He wasn't sure how to really interact with others. He had no personal experience, just what he saw in cartoons. He could guess this was not the type of situation he should spray Boris with a soda pop, not that he had one. He stared at the rag for a moment, he did not have any pockets to keep it in. Boris was just looking at him, his head cocked to the side as if he was waiting for something. It took Bendy a moment to realize maybe he would want it back and handed it to him.
"What's going on?" Bendy jumped and spun around seeing Henry. In rage he forgot about avoiding battles and ran over to Henry to begin his attack.
Bendy raised his fists as high as he could while standing on the tips of his toes as he tried to hit Henry in the face, but barely made it to his chest. Dammit, this was embarrassing. Bendy was not used to being so tiny. Henry grabbed his wrists, struggling to get Bendy to stop.
"Calm down," Henry spoke softly, "We aren't going to hurt you. There is no need to fight."
Bendy did not care that Henry was not fighting back. He left them! He left the studio and did not come back for thirty years! He was left alone with Joey Drew, who locked him up in chains. Kept him trapped alone in that room, with nothing but those flashing images of what Joey wanted him to be on repeat. He would never forgive Henry for that.
Bendy would remember hearing the employees mention Henry. They said that he was really the only thing preventing the place from going to hell. He would always push Joey to do the right thing, to be a better person. And Maybe if he stayed things at the studio would not have gotten so bad. What do you call someone who has the ability to fix things and just turns a blind eye to it? The only person he hated more than Henry was Joey himself.
Bendy drew back his fist and socked Henry as hard as he could. Henry doubled over in pain, putting his throat in grabbing range for Bendy. Before he could start throttling him Boris held onto wrists. Bendy glared at Boris. Borises had never really been on his enemy list. He was not planning on attacking this Boris, but he was testing his patience.
Bendy was not sure why he did not snap at Boris for holding him back.
Bendy looked back at Henry, who was still trying to catch his breath after the blow.
"I'm sorry to have startled you." Henry said in as soothing a voice as possible, "but I'm not going to hurt you. Boris and I are just hiding from those other creatures out there. We don't want to fight anyone."
Bendy just glared at up at Henry as he stood up straight to his full height. Not too long ago Henry would be the one looking up at Bendy. "I understand if you want to stay here as well, especially with that other Bendy, he seems quite hostile."
Apparently Henry had seen Bendy's interaction with Boris, and thought it meant he wasn't necessarily hostile, but had been frightened by Henry's sudden appearance, and was unaware that this was in fact the same Bendy that chased him earlier. Bendy could work with this. In his new tiny body killing Henry was not going to be as easy as before. Maybe now he could catch him by surprise. And when Boris wasn't near by.
Bendy did not say anything, or make any move to communicate, but Henry took his lack of punching as a good sign.
Henry went to sit down at the table and looked at the cloth wrapped around his arm, right where his ax head hit. It was now mostly red. Henry sighed, the first aid kit Boris grabbed from the infirmary did not have needles and sutures for stitching up deep cuts. He pulled out the kit from under the table and got ready to redress his wound. Fighting his way out of this hellscape of a studio would be difficult with a deep gash on his arm so he figured it would be wise to stay until he could move his arm without risking the wound re-opening. Hopefully they had enough soup stockpiled now that there were three of them.
While Henry was distracted Bendy stated poking around the kitchen area. Looking for something he could use against Henry later, like a knife or a carving fork, maybe a frying pan would be good for blunt trauma.
"Are you hungry?" Henry walked up beside him, now with a pristine white bandage on his arm. Bendy stopped his rummaging and frowned. He did not turn to face Henry but glared at him out of the corner of his eye. Bendy did not want to tip Henry off to what he was planning, but he didn't think he could stomach pretending to be nice to this abandoner. "I can make you something to eat, but unfortunately all we have is soup."
Boris made his appearance and licked his lips and patted his stomach, seconding that he thought it was time to eat. Boris dragged an extra chair to the table while Henry collected soup cans and Bendy grumpily sat at the table and looked down. There was a a scattered deck of cards and a few sheets of paper. On one of the papers was a few tally marks underneath Henry and Boris's names. The other had a doodle of Boris himself. So Henry was still drawing. He could have stayed at the studio if he liked drawing so much. Bendy huffed.
Henry came over with three bowls, one in each hand and a third balanced on his uninjured arm, then turned around to get spoons. With one bowl in front of Bendy and another in front of Boris the last one could only be for Henry. Bendy quickly switched his bowl with Henry's. Boris saw this and cocked his head curiously, but made no move to warn Henry of the switch when Henry returned with spoons.
Bendy watched Henry and Boris take a few spoon fulls before looking at his own bowl and tentatively took a spoon full. With one taste Bendy's eyes widened and began eating voraciously. He could not remember ever having had a warm meal. Being an ink creature brought to life with dark magic his body did not function quite like a normal living being, and managed to subsist on absorbing ink, as Joey was content to let him starve to death. And absorbing ink was not a flavorful experience. Bendy briefly wondered if he could still absorb ink through his skin, as it felt much less permeable that in his previous state. Whatever. He'd think about it later. Back to bacon!
As soon as he emptied the bowl he held it up and started hitting it against the tabletop to get Henry and Boris's attention.
"You want seconds?" Henry chuckled. Bendy nodded eagerly, as did Boris. Henry took both their bowls to refill them. When refilled Bendy ate the second just as eagerly as the first and was ready for a third.
"You might want to slow down there," Henry suggested, "You're eating so fast you won't know when you're full." Bendy just tapped his bowl against the table more insistently. Henry obliged, all while thinking that if he ate like this at every meal they would definitely be out of food before he was healed. About halfway through his third bowl Bendy started feeling it. He had never been full before, with so much warm food in his belly. It was satisfying at first, but became uncomfortable as he finished. Ugh. He may have made a mistake. Bendy slumped back in his chair feeling sluggish. He didn't want to move. He just closed his eyes and sat back in the chair for a while, waiting for the discomfort to go away. After a bit he began to lose touch with his surroundings. He thought he felt himself being lifted, ordinarily alarming, but at the moment too tired to care. He then felt he was set down in a lying position and something draped across him. That was the last thing Bendy remembered before dozing off.
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