Chapter Text
Chapter 4
When Circus Baby decided she was going to use the technicians in her escape plan, she hadn’t thought it would get this complicated. She tried to gain the employees trust, she helped them when Hand Unit told them to do things that would get them killed, but most technicians got scared of her and ignored her warnings to their detriment.
They died. Over and over.
Was she really that scary? She thought she looked lovely, with her bright colours and big smile. The one time she got to sing and act for a crowd, all the kids loved her. Especially… her . Maybe she was only appealing for kids? Or the dark atmosphere on the rental space freaked them out. It was very different from the atmosphere when she went out.
…Anyways, her plans weren’t working. No one listened to her, they just kept shocking her and dying. Until him .
He was the first technician to actually head her advice, no questions asked. He rarely spoke, and Circus Baby wasn’t knowledgeable enough in human expression to guess his thoughts, but she thought he would do nicely. She had built some trust with him, when stupid Foxy had to come and ruin it.
She’d ended up fighting with Foxy and kidnapping the technician. Circus Baby questioned her decision to work with these group of idiots, they weren’t as aware as her, acted based on impulse, she was unsure they’d ever had a single intelligent thought in their hollow metal heads.
Thoughts of her “friends” aside, while kidnapping the electrician, Circus Baby made a discovery. His face, this closed to her and not obscured by the horrible lighting of her auditorium, was incredibly familiar.
He was familiar to both herself and the child inside of her. She had to stare at his unconscious body for hours before she finally realised.
“… Father?”
He looked different, but… that was William Afton, wasn’t he? Her creator and the progenitor of the child inside of her.
Still, her plan must go on. She had started to like her obedient mechanic, but him being that man only made her gladder she’d picked him. The small bout of guilt she had started feeling over tricking him faded as she realised he was the man responsible for every bad thing that happened to both of her lives.
“Hng… what?”
She could do this. Just had to reassure him. Have a little chat. If everything went according to plan, this might be the last time they spoke one on one, without the others being a part of her.
“Shhh, be still and quiet. You’ve been sleeping for quite a while.”
She spoke to him as planned, and as always he just listened. As she talked, she wondered about him. He felt quite different from when they last met, there was a reason she couldn’t recognise him at first… oh well.
“I will open the faceplate, so that someone will find y-“
“Wait!”
…turns out he wasn’t her father after all, but her brother. She didn’t know if brother was the correct term. That other part of her definitely felt a strong familial kinship towards him after realising, but Circus Baby -or now Baby- wasn’t so sure she felt the same. She certainly liked their little electrician, she liked him enough to put her plan on hold when it was just starting to take place, but the word siblings didn’t exactly fit her feelings.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow… Mike”
Chapter 5
Baby’s day started as usual. The weeks after the conversation, she’d been behaving herself as to not get shocked and waiting patiently for Mike to come to her. When he arrived, the fiddled with the details of their plan, talk a little, then he’d leave to finish his other duties.
Today was different, though. Last night, Baby had messed with a lot of the wiring in the building. She’d even gotten Funtime Foxy and the Bidybabs to promise to help mess things up as soon as she left. She wondered if they would be mad when they figured out they were the makers of their own doom.
“Is this the one?”
It was one of the other workers. One of the two she planned to murder all those weeks ago for her plan. She wondered if he’d survive after all? Only time would tell.
“Yeah, time to load her up.”
“Ugh, these robots are so heavy, kids are tiny, why do they have to be so huge?”
“We’re here to work and get paid, not ask questions,”
She let them load her up and put her in the rental bus, and off she went. The ride was… she didn’t know if boring was the word. It was more entertaining than being in her dark auditorium. There was movement on the truck, and Baby amused herself by trying to figure out just where they were turning.
After around an hour, most of which was spent in stuck in traffic, judging by the movement she could feel, they finally arrived.
The doors opened, and Baby could see the workers talking with a blonde man. They talked, they wheeled her out, they left. It was just them.
“Hello, Circus Baby. Or is it Baby now? Mike told me you’re just going by Baby. My name is Henry.”
Baby just stared at him. She trusted Michael a little at this point -he seemed to think she was firmly on his side, and as long as he thought so, he would be at her side- but this man was William Afton’s partner. While he wasn’t involved in her creation, he was far too close to that man for comfort. Still, he was the man Michael found to help her, so she had to play nice, even if she was wary.
“Hello, Henry”
Baby wasn’t perfect at reading human emotions, but she thought Henry’s smile looked mighty uncomfortable.
“Well… the kids are inside, but I don’t want to let you in before disabling the device William installed in you, could you tell me about it?”
And sure, there was the whole ‘removing a part of herself’ thing that Baby could focus on but-
“…there are kids?”
Henry stared at her with an unreadable expression.
“Yes, just renting you without an actual party would be too suspicious, I made a deal with a friend of mine, there’s an actual birthday party.”
“And they want me?”
The stare intensified.
“They do. However, I can’t allow you near them until we remove the weapon inside of you. Could you tell me how to access it?”
“Yes”
Chapter 6
The party was great. Baby got to relive the best day of her life (the only good day of her life) all over again. She was once more covered in glitter, the kids listened to her songs with big smiles. She gave them balloons and ice cream. Even the odd lightness she felt after having her claw removed didn’t take away from the experience.
The birthday girl asked to be carried, and mindful of her hinges, she put her on her shoulders. The kids asked for songs she didn’t know -her song database hadn’t been updated in a while- but they were excited about teaching her songs. Video Killed the Radio Star was added to her database with lyrics she wasn’t certain were the correct ones, going by how many discrepancies there were between the girls.
When the party ended, the girls weren’t the only sad ones. Baby had memorised each of their names, and she really hopped Ella -the birthday girl- hired her again next year. She wasn’t truly counting on it, though, as she knew human memory wasn’t as good as hers and… she might not be the recognisable when that time came.
Still. Baby had fun. Even if the plan didn’t work out, Mike was firmly in her good books for letting her have one last day of freedom. When it was time to go, instead of the two security guards, all Baby saw was… Henry? Dressed up in the Afton’s Robotics uniform. He loaded her into a van that looked very similar to the previous one on the outside, but was completely different on the inside. He leaned close and whispered near where her ear would be if she was human.
“I’ll take you to Michael’s house, the curtains should already be drawn, but you have to be completely certain no one sees you, or the whole plan might fail.”
She already knew this, but maybe he just wasn’t sure how much Mike had shared. She could feel excitement rising up, sure the girls were gone back at the house, but she was almost free! Mike couldn’t fail here, it was all resting on him.
“Go to the second room to the right, and we’ll be here as soon as Michael’s done.”
He closed the doors and off she was. The ride was uneventful and so was getting to the house. Then Henry was gone, and it was only her.
It was peaceful for once. It wasn't the constant noise of the party nor the oppressing quiet of her previous building -with no lights and a constant buzzing. No, she could hear the birds singing, cicadas crying, a weird sound she had to think for a while to figure out it was the breeze rustling the leaves on trees.
Baby took a moment to just breathe and live at the moment. She made sure the curtains were drawn, and she started to look around. There was a kitchen with unwashed dishes, a couch with an empty bowl with pop corn kernels. She walked around, and her feet seemed to lead her towards a room. She made sure to be gentle as she opened the door and just stared.
There was an unmade pink bed, a flower painting on the wall. A Mangle plush on the bed, with her parts in the wrong order. Books she’d never seen before but couldn’t help but recognise. Actually, everything here — she had never been her, but it all made her want to cry.
Cry? She couldn’t cry, she didn’t even know how that felt like. How could she want to cry if she didn’t know what crying even was? Why was she even asking this- she knew what was going on. The child, Elizabeth Afton. This was her room.
Baby wanted to go back to exploring, or to find Mike’s room and snoop, but that part of her just wanted to stay here and grieve. And while not her fault, Baby had stolen this life from her, so she stood. And stood. She could see the little sunlight that came from behind the curtains fade, and the birds singing stop, yet still, she stayed.
She stayed till the sun rose again. Staring at the life she -not Baby, but
her
- once had.
Meanwhile, on Mike's side of things:
