Tides of Longing (Bendy and the Ink Machine)

1- Just a Man

Author's Notes: The art for this chapter is by my dear friend AceofIntuition on Tumblr, who is also my beta reader.

__________________________________________

"He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him." – John 1:10

__________________________________________

Do you know what it's like to be just a man?

To be enveloped by your own pain, suffering, and longing?

To be submerged until you drown within your own doings, your own machinations, your own ignorance...your own evils?

To feel that there's nothing you can do to make things right? Nothing. Not now. Not ever.

Forever.

And it was all so avoidable...so unnecessary...so permanent.

If only you weren't selfish. If only you had seen. If only if you appreciated what you had, maybe you could have saved what was supposed to be.

Instead of having it end up like this.

He wasn't dead.

He wasn't the ink demon.

He wasn't even God.

But he might as well have been all these things, because that's what it is to be human- to be a lot of things. Impossible things. Beautiful things.

Terrible things, too.

Somehow existing all at once inside a single soul, paradoxes swirling in both loving play and fierce combat, somehow managing to not destroy their captor inside out with the vigor of merely being. A grateful imprisonment it is to be an emotion inside a human body- both a precious blessing and a curse you wouldn't trade for anything...even if you wanted to.

As the woman emerged into a cove of ink, on its shore stood a figure stiff with fear and yet shaken with amazement.

A cream suit washed with endless time still remained stained, smudges of black rotting away the tips of coattails and the bottom of pantlegs.

Underneath the brim of a hat dulled with dust and candlelight was a line of orange- ginger hair peaking just above two honey-colored eyes behind round glasses, their shades so bright in this dark, dark world that they seemed to glitter with gold.

Resting under a jaw dashed with sideburns was a bowtie of indigo, a galaxy of cloth woven around a neck that should have been iced over with the cold of death many, many years ago.

And Francine had fought to stand before this rainbow with her own, mossy green pants below a pale blue shirt, the symbol of a heart sewn over where her own was beating- where it had managed to remain beating despite everything that threatened to stop it for good...or to have her to wish that it would. A speck of her pink essence stayed on her chest for all to see, no matter how much she had endured for allowing it to remain within sight.

A man of antiques and a woman of revolution were two bold strokes of color from the paintbrush of living among the undead, a pair of contradictions that had finally found themselves side by side, crossing paths and shaping lives. Their hues were both opposite and identical in reception, each bestowing light to this aching, black world that gnawed at their hair, their clothes, and their souls.

The curse of immortality could not drain their colors away, no matter how hard it tried.

So now here they stood together at last, marveling at each other's existence and preposterous glory, both believing the other to be impossible...and yet here they were.

As Francine absorbed his presence, she could feel that it was fundamentally different- unlike anything else she had ever encountered both within these borders of ancient yellow magic and outside amid emerald transience.

He was many unfeasible things- as many people are and yet aren't- but with one look she saw...she saw that even this nameless uniqueness that lingered about him couldn't keep him from being as scared of this moment as she.

And that was when Francine knew.

That Joey was just a man.