Chapter Text
Henry sighed as he flipped the switch to enter the Ink Demon's lair for the several hundredth time… or was it the thousandth time now?… Henry had given up counting the exact number he had been through the loop long ago as it did little to help his by now very fragile mental state.
He tuned out Joey's voice as he started the recording, knowing the entire thing by heart anyway. His eyes looked over the screens showing the cartoons he had helped create and could only feel bitter at seeing those bouncy animations that had once brought him joy. Oh, how he wished he was back in that time. When things were simpler… before everything had been turned into this nightmare by Joey's madness.
Henry dully picked up the reel, its words mocking him as it seemed his torture would never end. He remained impassive as the Ink Demon appeared behind the throne and went through his monstrous transformation only feeling numb as he went through this tired old routine. He had long stopped flinching when the beast roared in his face, terror having given way to just exhaustion and apathy. Instead, he just closed his eyes and braced for the hit that would send him crashing through the wall before their game of cat and mouse to begin once more.
But the hit never came…
Instead, Henry felt the weight of the beast's arms wrap around him while it made a strange growling whine.
It took Henry a few moments to realize the beast was sobbing…
What the..? Henry's brain stalled and his body froze as he tried to process this strange and sudden turn of events. In all the time that Henry had gone through the loop, the Ink Demon had never strayed from its pattern. So why was it doing something like this?
Then it clicked.
A few dozen cycles or so ago, Henry had broken down in tears because he was just so tired of everything and the pointlessness of it all. He had sobbed until he had no more tears and those he had shed had long since dried. He had sat in the middle of the hallway, staring blankly into space until he could gather enough willpower to press on.
For the Ink Demon to be reacting the same way…
It could only mean…
"You're aware of the loop…" Henry whispered in shock. The Ink Demon's only response was to sob harder and tighten his embrace, though he was careful enough not to hurt Henry with his impressive strength.
Henry had been convinced he was the only one aware of the loop all this time, not that he hadn't tried to tell others about the loop. He had brought it up several times with the more sentient ink creatures he'd come across, especially Allison and Tom. But whenever he mentioned the loop, all he ever got was blank stares of confusion. And whenever he insisted and tried to convince them that the loop was real, they just brushed him off as another crazy inhabitant of the studio, so he had given up.
But never in all these repeated tries had he even imagined that the Ink Demon… that Bendy of all creatures was aware of what was happening. It meant that Henry wasn't alone…
Coming to that realization, Henry's body finally began to unfreeze. He lifted his arms to return Bendy's embrace, patting him in a comforting manner. As Bendy was still in beast form, he ended up only patting Bendy's giant arm.
"It's alright, it's alright," Henry assured, slowly calming Bendy down. "We'll figure this out… We'll find a way to break the loop… We'll find a better ending…"
For the first time in a long time, those words didn't sound hollow to Henry. Even though he had no idea how to break the loop, he once again had a spark of hope that it could be done. A belief that he could break out and the determination to free himself and the others. After all, he wasn't alone anymore, he had Bendy.
"You're not alone anymore…"
They were in this together now.