Chapter Text
Despite the fact that the whole development of the nightmare’s physical forms was his idea, Evan felt admittedly kind of useless in the workshop.
Michael had the general stuff handled, Lizzy was allowed to help with the smaller things, and William did some of the finer detail work that, honestly, Mike could have also handled.
Evan didn’t really know how to do any of that stuff, so he just relegated himself to making sure that William didn’t try to fuck anything up by hovering over his shoulder the whole time. And occasionally checking in on his siblings’ work too, to make sure they didn't either.
It proved a little difficult, considering that he didn’t wholly know what they were building, but he knew enough to figure out what was and wasn’t on the blueprints. There were no animatronics inside the workshop today, with the exception of Ennard - it was just the four Aftons, with their mother occasionally popping in for reasons that Evan didn't quite understand.
He hadn't spoken to her much since they'd all reunited. There weren’t a lot of reasons to. Out of everyone in the Afton household, his mother somehow remained the least present. An impressive feat, and there were already two ghosts in the house.
Evan absently flicked a wing, boredom starting to worm its way into the remains of his brain.
“Ennard,” Mike said, breaking the quiet of soldering tools and metal ticking against metal of the room. The amalgamation tilted around, the wild tangle of wires and pieces of their masks slipping in and around stray parts. “Can you grab the allankey box?”
A grating noise of annoyance from the amalgam, and Mike bent his neck back over the chair in a distinct way that wouldn’t work if he’d had most of his organs. “Don’t give me that sass.”
“It’s always ‘grab this, grab that’ with you, Benedict,” Ennard huffed, and Evan let a grin cross his face. “It does not help that you keep moving things around and forgetting where they are.”
“You have way more eyes than I do,” Mike shot back. “Literally. It can’t be that hard to find.”
“Says the one who forgot a socket wrench in his own oven.”
That caught Evan’s attention, a hesitant curiousity sparking to life in his mind. His brother was usually so strict about leaving tools in the workshop where they belonged, so the idea of leaving a socket wrench in the oven proved to be something different
“That was only a couple times!” Mike hissed, actually turning around to glare at Ennard instead of snapping his head backwards over the chair. Either way, Evan found himself trying not to laugh at the sight.
“Twelve, if we are recalling correctly.”
“Shut up.”
“Never. It would be too tragic if we did.”
“Just find the stupid allankeys, please.”
With a metallic huff, Ennard slinked away into the workshop. Evan watched him go with curious eyes, before turning a critical eye back to William’s work.
It seemed like nothing was actively going wrong, the way something always seemed to around him. Alongside that, butBesides, Evan really wanted to pester Ennard for the full story of how Mike had left socket wrenches in the oven. Maybe that was why there were burn marks on the elements.
I think he’ll be fine if I leave him alone for a second, Evan thought, dismissing the immediate warning bells that sounded off through his head. Leaving William alone to do any kind of work on his friends’ endoskeletons felt like a horrible, horrible idea.
Yeah, okay, he didn't trust Willam that much. Having backup would be smart.
He flickered over to Lizzy, who was fiddling with a few parts of a clawed hand while Michael continued to debate with Ennard. Evan sharply observed the goings-on of their work, noting that nothing seemed out of place for them.
“Liz,” he whispered, and his sister looked over without jumping. She was much more immune to his potential scares than Michael was sometimes. “Can I ask you a favour?”
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Getting blackmail on Mike,” Evan answered instantly. His wings flicked as he waited for her answer. “Can you watch William for me?”
“Because you don’t want him messing with stuff, right?”
“Yeah. Just… I don’t know, yell for me and I'll kick his ass,” Evan said, before vanishing away as Michael turned back to his work. Lizzy gave him a quick thumbs up, and he let his shoulders relax, just a fraction.
With the reassurance that Liz would hopefully let him know of any wrongdoing on William’s part, Evan teleported over to where Ennard was searching across metal shelves, presumably for the allankey box.
“Hello, Evan,” they said, without any hint of worry or fear toward him. He didn’t particularly mind the fact that Ennard wasn’t too scared of him, but sometimes the total lack of reaction felt insanely desensitized. “What brings you over here, instead of watching him?”
No name was needed to assert who the ‘him’ in question might be. William's notoriety seeped even into the walls of the house he lived in now.
“I wanna know why Mike left a socket wrench in the oven more than once,” he stated simply. “That can’t just be a regular occurrence.”
“For a while, it was,” Ennard confirmed, shifting aside a toolbox with one long, wound together strand of galvanized wiring. “For the most part, because Mike was working so many jobs, he would leave things lying around to find later. Primarily, according to him, it was because they would show up wherever he needed them. And usually, we were the one keeping track of where he left everything.”
“Why the oven?”
“We are really not certain why.”
Ennard shifted a few eyeballs forward into the shelf, and Evan let himself drift back into a more ghostly form to try looking through the shelf himself. There were plenty of tool scattered all over the place, with things that he neither recognized nor understood unless they were the most basic of things, like screwdrivers, hammers, and wrenches.
“Why doesn’t he do it anymore?”
“We do not trust William with any of our tools or parts,” Ennard hissed, with a variety of grating and clicking noises. “It is safer to keep them within one space as opposed to leaving them in places that may be too easily accessible.”
That’s understandable, Evan thought, shifting through the shelf and hovering a little higher. He flapped his wings idly - not really necessary to keep him afloat, more of something that just kept him calm.
“Did Mike ever do other weird stuff before we got here?” Evan may be taking a small risk asking Ennard these questions - usually, the amalgamation was always happy to talk to people, but turned quiet around mentions of life with his brother before they’d all started living in his house. Not like Evan actually wanted to talk to Michael about it anyway. He still needed to ensure that his brother wouldn't start being an asshole if Evan asked the wrong questions, or just returned to old habits over time.
At least if Michael did start being a jerk again, Evan could actually bite back now. Being a spirit and possessing a deadly animatronic gave him an advantage.
“He did,” Ennard replied. “But if you are so curious, you can ask him yourself.”
Just as he'd expected. Really, he shouldn't have thought he'd get any new answers this time.
Evan phased through the shelf with a huff, reaching the lowest one he could. Sitting there was a navy blue allankey box, covered in small dents with scrapes on the clear plastic lid.
“I found the box,” he announced, although not really to anyone in particular. Ennard’s wires grated and shifted until the creature had lowered mostly to the floor, where a bright blue eye caught the box Evan was pointing at. With a grateful churning of scrap metal, it grabbed the allankeys out from the shelf.
“Thank you. These usually go on the third shelf,” Ennard said, while Evan drifted out of the shelf and returned to a more physical appearance.
“You can thank me by-”
“OUT!”
Elizabeth’s shout stopped everything in the workshop, and Evan’s head snapped around to see his older sister very forcefully grabbing William by the wrist and hauling him out of the chair.
“Elizabeth Afton, you will let me go this instant,” William snarled, and a pulse of fear actually worked its way into his heart. If William dared to hurt his sister, Evan would personally ensure this man stayed buried deeper than a twelve-foot grave.
“Get out of the workshop!” she shouted again, equally as crossly. Apparently, the illusion disc she’d been using deactivated, as Ennard let out a grumbling sound at the sight of a terribly furious and horribly scrapped-together Circus Baby. The lights in her eyes burned bright with some rage he'd never seen toward William, and the clawed metal hand that she’d wrapped around William’s wrist doubled in size as she pulled him away.
“Liz, what did he do?” Michael demanded sharply as their sister forcibly dragged William out of the workshop. Evan snapped himself out of it, furious enough now that he only wanted this man out of the space where his friends were being built.
“You need my help!” William protested furiously. He glared directly at Evan, almost asking for help, but no part of him wanted to throw up any form of sympathy for the murderer. He pushed the man toward the workshop door alongside Elizabeth, his own illusion disc glitching at the prospect of needing to fight William. “You’ll need my help sooner or later, and you know it!”
“I told you no weird malware on my friends!” Evan yelled, and with a final push, he and Liz shoved William unceremoniously out of the workshop door.
“And stay out!” his sister shouted, her voice box glitching furiously as she slammed the door in his face. Evan watched in astonishment as the animatronic let out a few more angry sounds, twitching and snapping the giant claw at the end of one arm, before reactivating the illusion disc and just becoming his older sister again.
“Elizabeth, what did he do?” Michael asked carefully. “You know he won’t take kindly to being kicked out like that.”
“He put a weird looking chip thing on the arm, and it really didn’t look like it was supposed to be there!” Elizabeth said, her voice rough and shaky now. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I just did that.”
“That was badass, though,” Evan said with a grin, floating around her now. Ennard and Mike rushed over to the table that William had been working at, and Evan couldn’t really stop the anxious little whispers in his brain from making him teleport over to see what had happened.
He got there just as Lizzy did, and in that moment Michael let loose a furiously creative volley of curses. Evan leaned closer to get a good look, and the sight only stoked his anger further.
A purple chip laid embedded into the arm’s framework, with smaller purple wires spread throughout the entire thing. Whatever his father had tried to put in here, it couldn’t be taken out without needing to dismantle and probably melt the whole thing down, just for safety.
“It’s too deeply worked in,” Mike snapped. “He must have been doing this for hours already.”
“We will go verify any components William has crafted thus far,” Ennard said, entirely too calmly for how infuriated Evan felt. “If he has managed to slip this past watching eyes more than once, then there is a chance that it may affect more parts than just this one.”
“Thank you, Ennard,” Michael said, picking up the arm and moving toward a different area of the workshop. Evan let himself sink back down to stand on the floor, a tiny, sick sensation of guilt worming around in his gut.
He’d been watching William the entire time. Evan should have noticed that he was doing something different, or at least that he’d been maybe acting suspicious, or something like that. If that had actually made it into the final endoskeleton… the idea of William remotely controlling the nightmares like puppets would have made him sick had he eaten at any point today.
“Ev?” Lizzy’s voice forcibly hauled him back to reality, and Evan’s wings immediately stiffened at the sound. Lizzy didn't need to see him worrying about this. Besides, even if William had managed it, they had their blueprints. They could make new parts without that bastard’s help.
“It’s nothing,” he mumbled, almost tiredly. Not that he'd admit he was ever tired.
His sister pulled in closer to herself, eyes wide and staring at William’s chair. “I didn’t think I could do that,” she whispered. “Get so mad at him, I mean. But I really thought that maybe he wouldn’t try anything evil this time. You said he promised not to.”
“He did. And if I’d been over there, I’d have probably strangled him,” Evan said, and Liz smacked him with one of her own, smaller wings. “How did you even notice he was doing something?”
“I… I guess I wanted to see what he was doing. So that maybe I could try doing it too and finally make him proud,” she said, clearly all too bitter about the idea. “But it didn’t look like anything on the instructions or the blueprints you and Mike made. He kept looking up to make sure everyone was busy. And the chip said everything.”
Evan winced at the begrudging, sad tone in his sister’s voice. She’d been getting less loud about how she wanted to make William proud lately, and if this was the final nail in the coffin for her, then it definitely wouldn't be easy to deal with.
“At least you caught it,” he said, after a few more moments. "Thanks. For doing that."
Lizzy grinned, although her smile remained half-hearted, and pulled him in the second unannounced, completely unwarranted hug of the week. Two too many, in his opinion. But his sister needed this one, and Evan didn't want to be a complete asshole about it, so he resigned himself to letting it happen.
Mike returned just as they finished up the hug, a notably annoyed look on his face. Ennard dropped down from the ceiling alongside them, multiple of their eyes glaring around the room and a few keeping a particular eye on the door.
“Well, half of the jaws and arms need to be redone,” Ennard hissed, and Evan felt his stomach drop. How had he missed so many? “But aside from those, it’s alright. We will be behind on the construction for a bit though. Sorry, Benedict.”
“Damn it,” Mike hissed, and Evan immediately threw up an irritated face to make sure none of the distresss he felt could slip through too obviously. Even so, his wings drooped a little further. “At least we can see what we’re looking for if he tries interfering again, though.”
“So, whose parts are we redoing?” Lizasked, still practically glued to his side.
“The hands and jaws on Foxy and Chica,” his older brother said, and Elizabeth immediately let go of Evan to cross her arms. They were among her favourites of the nightmares, which probably only made William's obvious scheming worse for her. “And probably Bonnie’s voice box container, because he managed to stick a chip in there, too.”
“I should springlock him again,” Evan snapped, voice audibly layering over itself as he snapped his wings. “I should have kept a better eye on him.”
“It will be okay,” Ennard said, probably the most soothing thing to ever come out of the amalgamation in days. “The damage to our current inventory and models is not extensive. Based on how quickly this has already been moving, the project should resume pace in about a week’s time, if not less.”
The Afton siblings all glanced between each other, before Elizabeth smiled. “Now does that mean you’ll teach me how to use welders, Mike?”
“Me too,” Evan said, the words coming forth unexpectedly even to himself. “If he’s not gonna help us, then I want to be able to do the work too. They’re my friends.”
Their brother sighed, and Ennard’s signature grating laughter echoed out through the workshop. Evan’s own grin returned, although much less brighter than his sister’s.
“I will,” he said, and they both flapped their wings in excited motions. “But you have to actually listen to what I’m telling you, got it?”
“Understood!” they said in unison. Michael sat back down at the work chair, with Evan, Liz, and Ennard all hovering around him as he set back to work on Freddy’s jaw. If he was gonna learn how to build his friends, he may as well watch to make sure he knew what to do. Properly this time.
“Oh, yeah, and Liz?” Michael said, turning toward their sister with a grin. “I’m proud of you for catching that.”
“Yeah, who knows how much more damage he could have done if you didn’t,” Evan added, although a tiny spark of jealousy radiated out from him. It was supposed to be his job to watch William, and he’d failed at it.
Lizzy's face went slack, obviously processing for a couple seconds, before black tears welled up in her eyes and she hugged Mike. Ennard moved off elsewhere, leaving them to have their little moment.
“You too, Ev,” Mike said, catching him by surprise. “For one, you didn’t actually threaten to kill him again to his face. And for two, you’re the one who found the allankeys.”
Confusion swamped him at his older brother's words. Evan had no clue if his brother meant it or was just trying to mess with him, but either way, it soothed the jealous sting a little. Evan resigned himself to hovering a little closer than before, shielding his face from Mike in case something got through.
“You sent us to find the allankeys!” Ennard complained, earning a small round of laughter from him and Mike. Liz laughed too, but didn’t move.
“You’re not gonna let go any time soon, are you?” Mike asked her.
“Nope.”
“You’re stuck with her forever now, Mike.”
“That’s fine.”