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At first, there was only pain. Sharp, stinging pain, the kind that fills your thoughts and demands your attention, the kind that has you clutching yourself and screaming for it to stop. Pain and darkness, intertwined so tightly that there was no distinguishing between the two.
Eventually, though, the pain subsided. It dulled into a warm ache. Thoughts other than the immediate swam to the surface. Who am I? a voice called. Where is this?
She heard a groan from far away, then realized that it was coming from her own mouth. The thoughts were her own. She struggled to open her eyes.
Morning light shone through the bare windows, spilling itself across Charlie and the motionless forms around her. The floor was stained red; she would have thought that it was blood if she hadn't known better. Lying beside her was a woman who looked to be almost identical to her. Elizabeth, came a thought, and she knew it to be true.
Charlie tried sitting up, then realized that this was too painful and relaxed once more, opting to just look at the form of Elizabeth lying next to her. She wasn't breathing, not in any obvious way. Charlie sighed, then realized that she didn't need to breathe either. It was just reflexive, muscle memory from years of believing that she was a person. She wondered if Elizabeth was still alive.
Slowly, ever so slowly, she lifted her arm and reached for her. The woman's hair was tangled and matted with fake blood, and she brushed it aside to find Elizabeth's calm expression. She felt a pang of regret, but then she saw her eyes flutter open.
"What...?" Elizabeth muttered. She blinked, then Charlie saw her eyes focus on her. "You..."
"Elizabeth," Charlie said.
"You... killed me. You killed us."
"Yeah," she responded. "But we're here."
Elizabeth's face contorted into one of distaste. "Don't touch me," she said, reaching to swat Charlie's hand away. "I hate you."
"I know." Charlie moved to sit up; the pain was much more bearable now, and she wanted to assess the situation. The bleeding had been stopped and makeshift bandages made and wrapped around the two girls, and she touched the soft fabric in wonder. The bed had been completely stripped, and the sheets lay in tatters on the ground.
"What happened?" Elizabeth asked, breaking Charlie out of her reverie. "Why didn't we die?"
"I don't know," Charlie answered. "I think someone helped us."
"Who?" Elizabeth demanded, slowly starting to sit up on her own. "Why?"
Charlie thought for a moment. "John..." she said. "He was here. Last night, I mean. I think he did this."
Elizabeth scoffed. "Tried to save two dead animatronics? What a sentimental idiot."
Charlie laughed, in spite of herself. "Yeah," she answered, looking back at Elizabeth. "He really is."
"So he just... what, patched us up and left us to rot? Figures." Elizabeth shook her head, and her green eyes flashed as they locked with Charlie's. "I'd understand him helping you, but me? I tried to kill him. It doesn't make sense."
Charlie shrugged. "None of this makes sense," she replied simply. "I won't complain."
They fell silent. Charlie found herself lamenting the giant knifetear and stains of fake blood on her father's flannel shirt. Elizabeth combed through her brown tresses with her hands, trying to work out some of the tangles.
"You've worked with animatronics, right?" Elizabeth said, breaking the silence between them. "Do you think you could... fix us?"
Charlie winced with pain as she started to stand. "I don't know if Aunt Jen has any tools here," she thought aloud, "but I could do my best."
They worked in silence after that, Charlie slowly collecting materials to operate on Elizabeth and herself with, and Elizabeth lying herself down on the couch. Charlie tried not to look too closely at Aunt Jen's lifeless body lying in the hallway as she worked. The sun was at its peak spot in the sky when they finished.
"Thanks," Elizabeth said awkwardly. "I uh... I think I'm gonna go shower. Aunt Jen won't be using her clothes anymore."
Charlie hummed in response, but the thought of stealing Aunt Jen's clothes made her feel hollow. "You could borrow mine, you know," she said. "I probably still have some here."
Elizabeth rolled her eyes and left, leaving Charlie alone to her thoughts.
It was evening when they reconvened. They both felt fresh after a shower and a change of clothes. Charlie was making scrambled eggs in a pan.
"Is that all you eat?" Elizabeth joked as she sat at the table.
"Better than Circus Baby's greasy pizza," Charlie shot back. "Isn't that the place your father opened? Where you tried to take me?"
The other girl fell silent. "I don't want to think about that," she said quietly. "I don't know what he'll think of... well, any of this."
Charlie placed a plate of eggs in front of Elizabeth before sitting across from her with her own plate. "Yeah," she said. "Does it matter?"
"Does what matter?"
"What he thinks?" She slid the eggs around with a fork, waiting for them to cool before eating them. "He doesn't have to know we survived. No one has to, I guess."
"Yeah, but..." Elizabeth's voice broke, and she cleared her throat. "He needs me," she said softly. "Without me, he might die."
Charlie snorted at that. Elizabeth shot her a glare. "Trust me, he doesn't die easily. I think he can manage without you."
"But he's my father!" Elizabeth shouted, standing up from the table. "You wouldn't understand. I love him. I want to help him however I can!"
"He didn't care about you!" Charlie shouted back. "You said so yourself, he only cared about me! Isn't that why you were trying to kidnap me in the first place? A real father wouldn't love so conditionally!"
"How would you know?! Your father killed himself when he realized that you could never replace his real daughter!"
Charlie stood up from the table at that. She felt tears pricking at her eyes, and Elizabeth's fiery green ones bore into her with rage. "So?" she sniffled. "Then both of our fathers were fucked up. We don't have to live for them anymore."
Elizabeth sat back down, crossing her arms. "Then what are we supposed to do? We're purposeless without them. We aren't like other animatronics; we don't have a show stage to dance on or a community to act for. We aren't human, and we aren't robot either."
Charlie wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve. Despite the stains, she couldn't let herself abandon her dad's old flannel shirt. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know. It feels like everything's been taken from us." She took a deep breath. "We aren't regular robots. We aren't people. We're a weird combination of the two; we're memories and mechanization woven into one."
"I hate it." Elizabeth's voice sounded light and fragile, like she could burst into tears at any moment. "I don't want these memories. Yours and mine. I wish I could get rid of them." She pushed the plate of eggs, now growing cold, away from her and rested her head on the table in front of her. "I wish we had died last night."
"Hey... don't say that." Charlie sat back down, her voice soft with empathy. "What matters is that we're here, right? We can figure the rest out later. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, we're dead."
"I was never alive to begin with," Elizabeth scoffed. "I was always just his servant, his plaything, his nurse. I'd dress up as you and pretend to be you, but I wasn't good enough. He wanted the real thing." The girls locked eyes, and Charlie could see that her lookalike was leaking tears. "I was so jealous of you. You know that? You got to have a real life, and I didn't."
Charlie got up and knelt next to her, reaching to hold one of her hands. Elizabeth didn't push her away. "Then let's make our own lives," she whispered. "Let's run away together. Let's make up our own rules. We don't have to be like our fathers, or live for them. We don’t have to be anything but ourselves."
"I don't know how to be myself without him," Elizabeth cried. "I spent my whole life trying to please him and it never worked. I've never been anything but your shadow!"
Charlie pulled Elizabeth into a hug. She could feel her sobbing into her shoulder, gripping her shirt, staining the flannel with tears instead of blood. "It's okay," she murmured, stroking the crying girl's hair. "Everything will be okay."
They stayed like this for a while, just holding each other, until the sun sank low under the horizon and the stars blinked into focus.
Eventually the girls moved to the living room, wrapping themselves in blankets from the bed of Aunt Jen's bedroom. It was comforting, in a way; not as intimate as a hug, but much more individual.
"We need a plan," Elizabeth said, her voice still wavery from crying. "Especially if John plans on calling people in for..." She trailed off and glanced over in Aunt Jen's direction.
"Yeah," Charlie agreed. "We don't want to draw any attention to ourselves. We're dead."
"We're dead," Elizabeth echoed.
"Listen, I'm gonna..." Charlie paused to think. "You can alter your voice, right?"
"You can too," Elizabeth said, frowning.
"I need you to call the police and report Aunt Jen's murder," Charlie continued. "Make it anonymous. I'm going to pack us some clothes."
Elizabeth nodded. "What about John? He'll know what happened when he hears the reports."
Charlie stopped. "John..." She shook her head. "He can come to his own conclusions. He's not our problem anymore. We can't take any risks, especially if we want to avoid..."
"...My father?"
"Exactly."
Elizabeth stared down at her feet. "Okay," she said. "I'll wait until you think we're ready to go before I make the call. I should probably gather some cash or something."
Charlie winced. "It feels wrong to do this. Steal Aunt Jen’s stuff, I mean. I don't want to just..."
"There's no other option," Elizabeth stated firmly, standing. The blankets slumped off of her and bunched into a heap on the floor. "She's not using any of this stuff anymore anyway. We might as well."
"I guess..."
She grabbed Charlie by the shoulders, locking eyes with her. "Look. What's done is done. We can't stay here. We need to act fast, before we don't have the option to leave anymore."
"Yeah..." Charlie let her gaze drift over to Jen's lifeless form. "Just... let me say my goodbyes to her first. We had our hangups, but I never wanted her dead."
Elizabeth turned away at that. “Sorry,” she said plainly, refusing to meet Charlie’s eyes. “I just… sorry.”
Charlie didn’t say anything. She was lost in her own thoughts. She felt too numb to cry; her emotions felt removed from herself. So much had happened last night that it was hard to process it all at once. She knew that someday the reality of Aunt Jen’s death would come crashing down around her and she’d have to deal with her emotions then, but for now it was just enough to acknowledge that she was gone.
“Goodbye, Aunt Jen,” Charlie whispered. “I’ll miss you. Thanks for everything.”
Aunt Jen, of course, couldn’t respond. Charlie sighed and started to pack.
It was midnight when they both agreed that it was time to make the call. They drove into town using Aunt Jen's car and called the police with a payphone, Elizabeth garbling her voice into the phone until it was unrecognizable as hers.
They drove and drove until the car ran out of gas, and then they drove some more. They didn't know where they were going, but they knew that they needed to get far, far away from Hurricane and anything that even closely resembled Freddy Fazbear's. They needed to start over in a place where no one could ever hope to recognize them. But they were doing it together, and that was enough.