Batim oneshots

Curses and misunderstandings ~ Ink demon!Joey x Henry

Where was the man he loved so much and cared about even after all these years? Seriously, where was he, while these things happened in here? He was responsible for everything in the studio, for every worker's fate, for Allison not remembering she and Tom had had a past life together, and yet he wasn't here to face any consequences of his terrible actions. Instead he had sent his old friend to deal with it by sending him this letter. Did he even care it was his responsibility? Henry doubted it. Why did he still love the man who had done so many bad things to his own workers? The former animator had not really an answer for this question. Feelings just couldn't logically be explained sometimes.

He stopped when he heard a sound and could make out it was one of the corrupted Butcher Gang members approaching, so he quickly rushed into Joey's office and closed the door. Had it seen him? Hopefully not or else he was going to have problems getting out again. Henry looked around the big room and his eyes widened in shock.

The walls were covered with dozens of ink messages, you could basically not see anything of the true wall color. Most of the messages were either being I'm sorry, Help, Please or Forgive me. But there were one message that stuck out from the rest: I have become a monster.

Henry reached out his hand to touch the ink messages. They were all from Joey, it wasn't very hard to tell because of his hand writing, even though it looked like his hands were very shaky while he wrote them. The man only wondered, how had the his love survived the hell he had created himself? Had he even survived it? Was he maybe one of the inky creatures Henry had encountered before? They were the only once who had written on the walls with the ink, so it was very likely. If Joey was still a full human he would have wrote it on the paper on his office desk. Every employee had turned into a creature made of ink, so why not Joey as well?

But...Joey had also written he had become a monster. Did he mean the person he had become while he was working as everyone's boss or was it something entirely different? Had his best friend literally become a monster? He was pretty sure Joey wouldn't remember who he was as a searcher, lost one or Butcher Gang member, and the Boris clones also lost most of their identity.

A monster...

A demon...

The ink demon...

It made so much sense. Joey would always run after him to try to apologize back when he hadn't been craving for power and money and not being careless about everyone else. Back then he acted just like the ink demon did right now. Searching for him to apologise, when he did something wrong and regretted it, and trying to make it up to him.

He could still be wrong, the ink demon wasn't who he thought he was or Joey just wanted to kill him. But wasn't it worth to try and search for actual answers, even if there was a big chance he would die? Henry took a deep breath. There was only one way to find out if his theory was correct.

The former animator peeked out of the room, and to his relief the Butcher Gang member had left, whoever it had been. He slowly stepped down the corridor, looking for any danger that could suddenly come around the corner, but the little monsters weren't there anymore. He had almost reached the end of the labyrinth when he saw the ink demon crossing his path in front of him. It was time to finally find out the truth.

"Joey?" Henry asked quietly.

The ink demon turned its head in his direction and whimpered quietly. The smile on the creature's face was more forced than it had ever been, and he just felt so much pity for it. The demon then finally nodded as a reply and came closer, limping because of his twisted foot. Joey was approaching very slowly probably due to the fear that Henry might run away again. He set back his horns like cats or dogs would do.