Chapter Text
Inkwell based on how Cuphead remembered it seemed like a pretty nice place.
Of course, since this was a dream, Bendy took it all with a grain of salt. He was positive this wasn’t accurate to how his boyfriend’s birth home was really like. Especially since he was a demon on the islands where the Demon Hunting Knights were formed, and none of the dream people were reacting negatively to the ink demon walking among them.
Still, Bendy kept his guard up just in case. There was something weird going on with these dreams, and he was really hoping he and Cuphead would find their friends and siblings soon.
“Oh my gosh! Babe look! The theater!!”
Snapping out of his train of thought when Cuphead pulled him inside a building, Bendy let himself get dragged until his boyfriend stopped inside the theater, and watched as some blond woman performed on stage. With a smile on his face, Cuphead excitedly spoke. “Oh man Mugsy and I would come here all the time to watch Sally Stageplay’s shows all the time! We even tried auditioning once, but that was when Mugsy had REALLY bad stage fright.”
That was news to Bendy. “Mugman has stage fright?”
“Yeah, though he grew out of the worst of it. He used to freeze up completely, now he just gets really sweaty and anxious when a crowd is watching him.”
Huh, well go figure.
The two stood and watched the dream play go on. Bendy wasn’t quite sure what the play was about exactly, Cuphead’s memory must have been fuzzy on what the show was about because whatever Sally was singing on stage sounded like gibberish.
It, has been a long time since Cuphead was back home… “Hey Cup?”
When the red cup brother turned to look at him, Bendy continued. “Does it make you sad that, you might never be able to come back home?”
Surprised to hear that, Cuphead watched his boyfriend for a moment, seeing how his wings and tail were starting to wrap around himself, making it clear that he felt bad. Most likely blaming himself for Cuphead and Mugman not being able to return to Inkwell.
Frowning, Cuphead looked back at the stage. “This isn’t my home.”
Not expecting that answer, Bendy looked up at Cuphead in confusion. “What?”
“This isn’t my home. Not anymore. Yeah, I miss Inkwell. I was born there and I have some good memories, but it’s not my home anymore. After this past year, I don’t think I’d be willing to go back and handle watching the Demon Hunting Knights go after demons trying to hide among the public and do nothing to stop it. Sure, a lot of them are probably doing the Devil’s bidding, but what about the ones who aren’t? I’d probably end up getting myself killed trying to help those demons. By them or by the Knights.”
Moving closer, Cuphead stood behind Bendy and wrapped his arms around his boyfriend’s shoulders. “This dream is about me showing you the Inkwell I remember and miss, but my home is with the people I care about. I have Elder Kettle, Mugman, Chalice, all my friends, and you. So I don’t care if I never go back to Inkwell, because I’m already home.”
God damn it this knucklehead was going to make Bendy cry.
Turning around in Cuphead’s hold, Bendy wrapped his arms around his boyfriend and hugged him tightly. “That was so cheesy.”
Chuckling, Cuphead hugged Bendy back tightly. “You’re the one making me this sappy you know.”
“Aaaaaw, how THEATRICAL.”
Both jolting from the unexpected voice, Bendy and Cuphead pulled apart from their hug and turned to the stage.
Standing in the middle of the stage with the spotlight on her, staring at them with red eyes and a horrific toothy grin, Sally spoke with a masculine sounding voice. “There’s nothing more poetic than forbidden love. Very popular choice for the theater. Especially with a TRAGIC TWIST.”
The entire audience stood up from their seats, and turned around, letting Cuphead and Bendy see their Demon Hunting Knight uniforms.
Tightly gripping Cuphead’s arm, Bendy slowly started to back away. “Cup, I think the tour needs to be over.”
The red cup brother nodded in agreement. “Yeah, the show was getting boring anyways…”
With a feral snarl, “Sally” pointed accusingly at the couple. “GET THEM!!”
Spinning around, Bendy and Cuphead bolted out of the theater and ran back outside. To their horror however, the Inkwell citizens were all replaced with Demon Hunting Knights. All of them approached with weapons drawn.
Quickly grabbing Cuphead, Bendy made sure his cloak wasn’t in the way and he had a firm hold as he spread out his wings and shot into the air, leading to Cuphead yelping in surprise and wrapping his arms tightly around the ink demon. Which was a fair reaction since Bendy hasn’t tried flying while holding someone yet, due to Felix and Oswald forbidding it unless it was an emergency.
This seemed like a good emergency.
Though Bendy could barely get himself higher than the theater building before a cold and hard chain wrapped around his legs and yanked him back down to the earth. The ink demon immediately wrapped himself around Cuphead to protect him as the two impacted the ground.
The two teenagers groaned, but a sinister laugh made their blood run cold as they looked up, watched as the crowd grew closer to them, with Saltbaker leading them all.
Pulling out his sword, Saltbaker spoke as his red eyes pierced their souls. “A demon walking among the mortals, and a mortal betraying his kind by loving a demon, prepare to meet a fate you both deserve! A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH!”
While tightening his protective hold on Cuphead, Bendy’s brow scrunched up in confusion over Saltbaker’s voice.
It sounded just like Sally’s weirdly masculine voice...
The knights surrounding them began drawing their own swords and raising them above their heads. Pointing his glowing hand at the crowd in a desperate attempt to defend himself and Bendy, Cuphead yelled in panic. “IF ANY OF OUR FRIENDS CAN HEAR US, WE COULD USE SOME HELP RIGHT ABOUT NOW!!!”
There was no response to Cuphead’s call for help. Instead, Saltbaker just cackled in a deranged fashion, and swung down his sword.
Bendy quickly threw himself on top of Cuphead, spread out his wings, and screamed. “NOOOOOOOOO!”
Everything stopped.
With his arms tightly wrapped around Bendy in an attempt to shield him, Cuphead stayed tense, waiting for the pain of a blade cutting into his skin, but when that didn’t happen, he opened his eyes and peaked over Bendy’s shoulder.
They were no longer in Inkwell, they were somewhere unfamiliar to Cuphead. He could hear birds chirping, and as he looked up at the sky, the red cup brother saw apple tree branches above them. “...Uh, Bendy?”
Lifting his head up, Bendy looked around as well, and gasped.
Ahead of them were three cabins and a barn. In front of one of the houses was a tree with a wooden swing.
Getting off of Cuphead, Bendy stood up at full height and stared with a blank expression on his face. Back on his own feet as well, Cuphead tilted his head curiously as he looked where Bendy was looking. “Uh, is this your dream now? Where are we?”
“... A place I used to call home…”
Oh?
…OOOOOOH!
Oh wow.
Eyes wide, Cuphead blinked a few times in amazement. “This is where you lived with your Mama and Papa?”
Nodding, Bendy slowly started to move forward towards the cabin with the tree swing. Cuphead following close behind.
His heart was pounding, and his mind was buzzing.
Bendy wanted to go inside, but at the same time he didn’t. What if he didn’t like what was inside? What if he did? What if it was too painful? What if-
Reaching the front door, despite all the conflicting thoughts bouncing around in his head, Bendy raised a shaky hand for the door handle-
The door creaked open, and the ink demon completely froze in place, unable to bring himself to look up when he was facing a very familiar shirt.
“Hey there Kiddo. I see you borrowed my cloak again. At this rate I’m going to have to let you keep it, you wear it almost as much as I do.”
…Well, he did want to hear that voice again. Now that he hears it though, it felt amazing, and awful.
Especially since none of it was real, this was just a dream.
Looking up, Bendy started fighting the urge to burst into tears as he locked eyes with his Papa, Henry Stein.
Smiling warmly, Henry looked over at Cuphead, who was staring at him in stunned silence. “Oh, you brought a friend, Bendy? Is he hungry? I just pulled your Mama’s apple pie out of the oven. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if-”
Henry let out a grunt when Bendy hugged him with a surprising amount of force. A bit thrown off by this, the older man didn’t hesitate to hug back as he looked down at his son in concern. “Bendy? Are you okay?”
Nodding, Bendy smiled as a few ink tears ran down his face. “I’m okay Papa… Some pie would be great.”
______________________________
Okay, a dream montage to find Cuphead and Bendy faster didn’t work.
After Dewey suggested the idea when searching Huey’s, interesting, dream resulted in nothing, the group bounced around from dream to dream in a quick pace to see if they could find anything faster. Though all that resulted in was the group nearly dodging a few extra nightmares.
When it started raining candy, a dream version of Baroness Von Bon Bon appeared and tried chasing them with her candy castle, and nearly ate Mugman until Cala, Boris, and Huey started to eat the castle instead, which got the castle to run away in terror. Though that led to everyone questioning the blue mug brother about what other insane people are ruling over the Inkwell Isles. Mugman swore that Bon Bon was the only one who would turn people into candy to eat them.
That reassured absolutely no one.
Then there was the dream of the triplets having a fourth brother named Phoey, which then turned into a nightmare of inky melty clones of Boris, Alice, and the Butchergang trying to rise from ink puddles. At least until Dewey showed up on a giant dream whale that looked like Launchpad and blasted water at the ink puddles, washing them away.
They all continued on, all of them jumping from one floating island to the next, when Ellroy at one point started squawking in panic when faceless dream soldiers tried grabbing him by his legs as he attempted to fly away from them. When the soldiers tried shoving him in a small bird cage, Alice quickly charged in and decked the soldiers so hard it sent them flying out of the dream.
Now in Violet’s dream, which was a nice, peaceful, library dream, everyone took the chance to sit down, catch their breath, and try thinking of a solution.
No longer as an animal cat, Louie dropped his head on the library table. “Is it possible to be tired in a dream? Dodging nightmares is exhausting.”
Huey looked at Cala curiously. “I’m impressed we haven’t run into one of your nightmares. Don’t you get any recurring ones or something?”
“I’m the source of other people's nightmares, kid. I don’t get bad dreams.”
Leaning back in his seat, Boris dragged his hands down his face and let out a very aggravated huff. “We're getting nowhere with this! We're never going to find Bendy or Cuphead at this rate! We're just going to be running from our nightmares until we wake up!”
Curiously checking out the inside of some of the books, and rather impressed that Violet can vividly dream books she’s read word for word, Ellroy frowned in concern. “Any idea when that will be? Feels like we’ve been doing this all night.”
Alice hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe time passes differently in our sleep? For all we know, we all might have just gone to bed a few minutes ago while it feels like it’s been hours in here.”
Violet then pitched in. “Or because of the magic behind all of this we’re in a comatose slumber until this is solved, and our parents/guardians have discovered our bodies and can’t awaken us from the outside.”
Feeling Lena dig her elbow uncomfortably into her side, Violet rubbed the sore spot and glared at Lena, who then pointed at Boris and Alice. “As much as I hate to be the buzzkill of the idea that I trapped all of us in a dream. Maybe don’t voice the coma theory out loud around the two that were in a 30 year death sleep?”
As she looked at the brother and sister, Violet quickly realized her error when she saw how disturbed and sick the two of them looked. “Oh, my apologies. I had no intention to cause discomfort or imply blame. If it’s any consolation, the coma theory is extremely unlikely. Odds are that it’s just not morning yet, and if we do get discovered by our families, I’m positive Prince Oswald and King Mickey won’t hesitate to seek Yen Sid’s assistance in waking us up.”
Sighing, Boris rested his elbows on the table and dropped his head in his hands while Mugman patted his back to offer comfort. “Don’t worry about it Violet. Or you Lena, we get that magic powers are difficult to deal with. Honestly it’s good to be open minded on the situation so we can prepare for anything and be ready to face off against these nightmares and protect you guys from the worst of them.”
Lifting his head up, Louie asked. “Does anyone else find it weird that these nightmares seem to be just from the teens?”
Stacking books as if he was making a card tower, Dewey peaked over his creation. “Well they HAVE seen some messed up stuff.”
“Yeah, but so have we during some of our family adventures. We met ghosts, the undead, monsters, psychos trying to kill us, and survived Launchpad's driving. I've had nightmares now and then about the things we've seen, but it's always just Lena and the older guys' nightmares always trying to attack THEM.”
Everyone paused after Louie pointed that out.
That was a weird coincidence…
Mugman was the first to speak up. “Each time we run into a nightmare it's like it's trying to separate us from you guys. Those ink creature clones trying to grab at Boris and Alice, Bon Bon trying to make her castle eat me, Ellroy nearly getting dragged away by the dream soldiers, those GENT employees trying to get us, and Cuphead and Bendy ended up falling into a hole in the ground as if they fell straight into hell. How'd you manage to get away Lena?”
Thinking back, Lena did her best to explain. “My hand slipped out of Cuphead’s as we were falling. As we fell, I- um, kept thinking… ugh, that I wanted Webby because she makes things better. The next thing I know, I ended up back with Webby and the rest of you guys.”
While Webby loudly went “AAAAW!” and hugged the now deeply red Lena, Ellroy crossed his arms. “Too bad that’s not keeping your dream stalker away.”
Huey turned to the bird boy in confusion. “Dream stalker??”
“Yeah, while we’ve been dodging our nightmares, Lena’s been dodging her own. Back in Dewey’s dream some creepy figure tried approaching her before I stepped in. During the other dreams I kept an eye on Lena and continued to notice a dark figure in the corner of my eye. Lena’s been seeing it too, she just doesn’t want to say anything.”
Pulling apart from the hug, Webby asked. “Is this true Lena?”
Giving Ellroy a dirty look for how he snitched, Lena huffed and rubbed her head. “Yeah but it’s not like it’s been trying to attack like the other nightmares, which frankly should be our biggest concern since they keep trying to split us up! Can we please focus on that?”
Though they all seemed hesitant to drop the subject, with how Lena was tense and clearly not wanting to talk further about it, Violet thought over the nightmare problems they’ve been having and spoke. “Perhaps the desire to be reunited with Webby is what saved Lena from being separated? Seems like the most logical conclusion.”
Alice objected. “But we want to find Cuphead and Bendy. Why haven't we?”
“Magic might have something to do with it. Lena's magic powers giving her an advantage to save herself from being separated could explain that, as well as us not finding the boys yet because she and Bendy are still learning about their powers. However, with that being said, it's quite suspicious that something is trying to pull our group apart. Lena clearly isn't doing that with how desperate she was to have Bendy assist her, and I highly doubt Bendy is doing any of this either.”
Placing her hands on her hips, Cala asked. “So then what-”
Humming started echoing through the library, making everyone freeze in place. Though while the others look confused, Alice and Boris’ expressions turned to absolute dread.
Taking a deep breath, Boris stood up and covered his chest with his hand. “Fuuuuuck.”
When Alice took hold of Ellroy’s hand, the bird boy turned to his girlfriend and started to grow concerned seeing the look of absolute terror on her face. Using both of his hands to hold hers, Ellroy asked worriedly “Alice? What's wrong?”
“... There’s something I neglected to tell you when I filled you in on my back story… My Mama wasn’t my first mother figure in my life.”
Footsteps echoed through the library and started to grow louder. Boris and Alice quickly herded all the younger members of the group behind them as they, Mugman, Cala, and Ellroy braced themselves and faced the direction the humming was coming from.
Walking out of the section of the library labeled as “Horror”, a woman with red eyes, whose entire left side was drenched in ink, smiled in a disturbingly twisted fashion and held up her arms as if she was expecting a hug. “There’s my beautifully perfect little angel.”
Growling, Boris held out his arm to shield his little sister and braced himself for whatever this dream Susie Cambell had in store.