Creation began on 06-30-20

Creation ended on 06-30-20

Candyman

Merciful Mercy

A/N: I checked the list of fanfic categories and found none for the franchise. There should be mercy for those that got twisted into the dark side of existence. Here's my attempt to do so.

He watched as she died saving the life of an innocent baby boy that had been snatched by the vengeful spirit of a prosperous slave's artist son that desired to strike fear into the residents of a housing project, living forever through their fears of his legend. A life saved from death, but at the cost of a life shunned by those that believed the woman to be going crazy…and all because of a myth about a slave that had been tortured by people for bedding a lord's daughter…and leaving him to die.

"Candyman?" He uttered in disgust, holding a glass sphere of sapphire in his left hand, unable to tolerate what had led to the murder and eternal suffering of Helen Lyle. "There needs to be mercy…even to those that others believe don't deserve it. Mercy has to be deserved."

He dropped the sphere and got off his wooden throne, and it fell onto the grass where it lay. The man that had done his duty, time and again, fixing the darkest mistakes made by the darkest of souls against the innocent, vanished from sight in the vast meadow where his domain resided.

-x-

As Helen Lyle held onto Anthony McCoy as she carried him through the burning bonfire, she felt the flames scorch her flesh and hair. She had never felt such pain in her life, but continued to focus on only one thing that mattered to her, which was to save the baby and return him to his mother. She looked up and saw a man in front of her, reaching out to them.

"A myth," she heard him say to her as he pulled them out of the flames and carried them away to a clearing. "Nobody should pay such a price…because of a stupid, saddening myth."

She looked at him, feeling like she was going to die because of the burns on her body, and felt he was not like the other people that were there. Like other residents of the Cabrini-Green housing projects, he was a black man, but his eyes… There was something about his eyes that didn't make him seem like other people, like he was beyond what she knew, beyond what anyone else knew…or would ever know.

"Who…who…are you?" She tried to ask him as he removed Anthony from her arms and handed him over to Anne-Marie.

"Someone that wants you to survive this…and be free of the myth," he told her cryptically. "I have been around for a long time, much too long for anyone to have a full understanding. Myths born from legends, legends born from history, and history born from those that record the actions of others. My actions become myths…and myths only tell as much as the people that know about them, nothing more, nothing less."

Time seemed to stand still around them as Helen stopped feeling the pain caused by her burns. She looked around…and the bonfire that had been burning behind them looked like a frozen image on a television set.

"What?" She wondered, and the man helped her up, showing the people were also immobile. "Am I dead?"

"Far from it right now," he told her, handing her a thick blanket. "I need your help to undo something that sparked this madness you were swept into."

"The Candyman?"

"Yes. Undo the myth behind him…and you undo all of this."

"But…how do you undo a myth like his…when everyone that talks about it knows it?"

"Often the best way…is to go back to where it all began."

"Life after the Civil War, in the Nineteenth Century?"

"That's right."

Helen became suspicious of this man, despite him seeming like a peaceful person that didn't seek to torture her, whether he was with the police or with the people from the housing projects.

"Who are you?" She asked again. "Really?"

"A pursuer in the further regions of justice and redemption," he explained. "I have been seen as many things to many people, time and again. To some, I am a demon, a ghost, an unforgiving phantom, and to others, I am an angel, a guardian, a merciful nonentity. Who am I to you? Who do you think I am? There's no right or wrong answer, only what you think to be the answer."

"I…I don't really know who you are," she admitted. "I mean, you look like everyone else I see every day, a regular person. You say you want to help me, so I believe you're a good person, but…that's what worries me a little…because I don't know if I should trust you. I wouldn't trust my sense of belief after confronting the Candyman…and seeing his ribcage covered in bees and the assumption that I'm a reincarnation of his lover. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Like I said, there are no right or wrong answers to knowing who I am. There is only the answer you chose based on what you already know. You said 'I don't really know who you are'…and that was a good answer. The name I choose to live by, that I've lived by for a long time, is Brother Correction. Your death and retribution as a part of Candyman's folklore is a mistake, one of two mistakes that need to be corrected. To save your life and your soul, we need to save the soul of the man that became the vengeful spirit known as Candyman. We need to save the life of Daniel Robitaille."

He reached out for her with his right hand, and she accepted.

"God, forgive me," she pleaded as he took around the immobile people in the frozen time.

"He will forgive you," Brother Correction told her. "God forgives all that seek his forgiveness…just as I forgive those that seek redemption to undo their mistakes."

To be continued…

A/N: I thought I was going to write this as one story, but I felt compelled to do the next scene in the next chapter. I hope you can see the possibility of redemption for both characters, and because having to wait for the plot of the new sequel and lack of a category for this franchise leaves much to be desired. Until the next chapter.