Chapter Text
The Plex was quiet, if you ignore the buzzing coming from the neon lights and whirring coming from the security and map bots, of course. Chica decides that, while a break from the chaos that comes from preforming for the kids daily is nice, the complete lack of laughter and energy is jarring.
Well, complete lack isn’t quite true either, she thinks as she walks towards Freddy’s room.
She fiddles with the Fazbar in her hand as she nears the door. He’s not dangerous -she knows that, she’s not stupid!- he really isn’t, but she can’t see him and not remember the trash compactor.
It hurt.
Her arm twitches upward, a mechanical glitch, probably.
It hurt a lot.
“He’s just a kid, Chica,” she mutters to herself. “He was trying to survive.” She shakes her head at herself. She’s a giant animatronic chicken that performs for kids and she’s afraid of one kid because of one night. She walks to the door without another thought and knocks.
Normally, Freddy would answer, but he is in parts and service. Some kid put ice cream in Freddy’s chest, and it melted before he knew it was in there, messing up some sort of circuitry.
She wants to take Gregory to the kitchen with her to get a midnight snack -kids like those right?- and to try again to mend the broken relationship they have. He doesn’t always react well to these trips, but its worth a shot, right?
Gregory seems to have handled the change pretty well. He doesn’t mind the animatronics and adjusted well to living in the Pizza Plex.
When there’s no answer from the door, Chica assumes he’s asleep and turns to leave when a strange noise catches her attention.
Crying.
“N-no!” a soft and broken voice calls from the other side. “Get away!”
‘The poor kid,’ Chica thinks as she gets closer to the door. ‘He’s having a nightmare.’ She opens the door, wishing that the doors weren’t so darn loud, and is a little heartbroken by the site she sees. Gregory is curled into the fetal position, his knees pulled as close to his chest as his body will allow, and his blanket lays discarded next to him. His head thrashes back and forth, his hands shake violently from where they hold onto his pants, and his entire body shakes with the force of his, mostly silent, sobs.
He is muttering to himself, but his words are muffled with fear. “No!”, “Stop!”, “Get away!” and “Please!” are the only things that Chica can clearly hear.
She walks forward calmly, saying “Gregory, wake up buddy! You’re okay!” He goes silent at the sound of his name and Chica assumes that her words are working. “That’s it, come back to the land of the awake!” She gently touches his shoulders, and he screams, tearing away from her touch.
“Freddy!” He yells, “she’s going to get me Freddy!” A sob rips through his small body. “Pl-please don’t kill me…” Gregory is still clearly asleep, but this type of fear in a dream state is not normal. Chica takes a step back, alarmed by the outburst, dropping the candy bar. After a moment, he seemingly calms down so she leans back down trying again to wake him. She is met with the same outburst, although this time his screams are less coherent and sound more like pleading, like he is begging for his life.
She looks around the room, desperately trying to find something to make him feel better. Her eyes land on a Freddy plushy and she picks it up and takes it to him. She sets it next to him, expecting him to take it, but all he does is whimper and shake.
Before she can stop her legs, she’s walking out of the room and is just short of running to the Daycare. Sun will know what to do, or maybe Moon will. They deal with crying kids every day, right?
She turns the next corner a little too sharp and collides with Roxy and Monty. Chica falls flat on her metal butt, while the other two look at her bewildered.
“Watch it, Chica!” Monty snaps.
“You could have damaged one of us!” Roxy growls, gesturing at the three of them, not just Monty and herself.
“Sorry guys! But you don’t understand!” Chica says getting back to her feet. “It’s Gregory!”
“What about the little brat?! What did he do to you?!” If Roxy was a real wolf, the fur on the back of her neck would be standing up, and her hackles would be drawn back.
“Nothing! He’s done nothing!” Chica says desperately, trying to calm Roxy down. It works, mostly.
“Then what’s got you running like, well, a chicken with its head cut off,” Monty chuckles, proud of himself for his stupid pun.
“Very funny Monty,” Chica deadpans and Roxy groans.
“I thought it was.”
“But something’s wrong with Gregory,” she says bringing their attention back from the joke.
“What do you mean?” Roxy asks crossing her arms.
“I mean he’s sobbing violently in his sleep, and I don’t think he recognizes who I am,” she says, hugging her sides. “I don’t know what to do,” she says dejectedly.
“Sounds like a nightmare,” Monty says bluntly.
“This is worse than a nightmare! You can wake a kid up from a nightmare, but he’s not waking up and when he gets close to waking up, it gets worse!” Chica groans, throwing her hands in the air.
“Well, what do you want us to do?” Roxy asks. “We don’t like the little brat.”
“I know, I wasn’t looking for you!” Chica snaps, frustrated with their lack of care. “I was going to the Daycare to get Sun or Moon. They’ll know what to do!” Chica tries to shove past them.
“So, you just left the screaming kid alone in Freddy’s room?” Monty asks condescendingly.
“Well, what do you want me to do?! I didn’t have much of an option!” Chica exclaims trying to keep her voice level but fails horribly.
Monty and Roxy look at each other, caught off guard by her reaction and Chica takes a moment to gather herself.
“Either get out of my way or give me an alternative,” she says as calmly as she can manage.
Roxy and Monty are silent, so Chica tries to push past them again only to be stopped by Roxy’s hand.
“I’m faster Chica, let me run to the Daycare and try to get one of them to come with me. You and Monty go back and try to keep Gregory calm until I get back,” Roxy sighs.
“Hey, I didn’t volunteer for this!” Monty says as the girls start going separate directions.
“Would you rather go to the Daycare?” Chica asks, already knowing the answer.
Monty gets flashbacks to how long it took him to get the glitter glue off of his feet from just stepping into that place.
He shakes his head and follows behind the fast-walking chicken.
They reach Freddy’s room in no time, and despite the fact that Chica had been gone for several minutes, Gregory is sat in the same position, still shaking and crying. He doesn’t react to the door opening, he probably can’t hear it through his mutterings.
“Geez, you weren’t kidding,” Monty mumbles to Chica. She looks at him and shakes her head sadly before kneeling down next to the beanbag.
“Gregory.” He stops crying briefly but shakes even harder. “It’s me, Chica, your friend.”
“Please,” he cries softly, hugging his knees closer to his chest. She brushes her fingers over his arms, and he screams as if her touch burns him. She doesn’t have to look to know that Monty just jumped at his reaction. She sighs and stands up walking back to the sunglasses wearing gator.
They stand in silence just listening to Gregory cry, neither of them knowing what to do.
“Can’t you do something, Monty?” Chica asks.
“What do you want me to do? You’re better with crying kids,” Monty says honestly. He isn’t good with crying kids, and all the staff knows it. If a kid starts crying with Monty one of the staff will take the kid to one of the other animatronics to avoid disaster.
“Well, he keeps calling out for Freddy,” Chica says, and Monty can’t quite follow where she’s going with this.
“And? I’m not Freddy,” Monty says.
“Well, you also have a voice changer,” Chica says.
“So what? You want me to talk to him like Freddy and see if that makes him all better?” Monty asks sarcastically, but when Chica smiles pleadingly at him, he realizes that she’s not joking.
“You also have the same build as him!” Chica says stepping in front of him as he tries to walk out the door.
“Chica, no,” Monty growls. “I’ll only make it worse.”
“Please, Monty! I’ll do anything!” Chica pleads, clasping her hands in front of her.
“I said no.”
“I’ll play golf with you!”
Monty stops and looks at her.
“Two games of it!”
“Is that a promise?”
“Yes! Now, please try to comfort him!”
Monty sighs and turns away from their hushed conversation to the shaking kid. At some point he’s going to become dehydrated.
“I’m Freddy Faz-” he stops and clears his throat, using his voice modification to change his voice. “I’m Freddy Fazbear,” he says sounding almost identical to Freddy.
He approaches the human slowly.
“Gregory? Are you okay?” He says once he’s close to the beanbag.
Gregory opens his eyes at the sound of Freddy’s voice, and Monty is worried that the kid will freak out that Monty is this close to him. The kid looks around briefly, but it becomes painfully obvious that, while his eyes maybe open, they are not seeing.
“Freddy?” He asks, his voice hoarse from screaming.
“Yeah buddy, its me.” Monty leans down and out reaches a hand to touch Gregory.
“Can- can you hold me?”
Monty looks over at Chica and she nods pleadingly.
“Of course, Gregory,” Monty grits as he pulls the kid into his arms. Gregory latches onto him and sobs into his shoulder, letting out the last of his emotions. Monty glares at Chica, who is trying her best to not laugh, and he holds up a number three and she nods. Three games of golf will be worth all of this.
Monty starts to pat Gregory’s head, just have something to do with his hands when Chica gets his attention by waving her hand. She gestures to her throat and does a small dance. Monty understands what she wants him to do but just stares at her. She holds up four fingers and he sighs as he starts to hum the show tunes they do every day. And, to Chica’s credit, it does make him start to calm down faster.
Roxy comes in at about that time and Gregory jolts, but Monty just holds him closer.
“Just a security bot,” he lies as Chica pulls Roxy aside a tells her in a hushed voice what happened.
“Where’s Sun or Moon?” Chica asks. Roxy starts to speak but Monty clears his throat and tilts his head towards Gregory. Thankfully the girls understand and stand quietly, watching the rare seen of Monty not being destructive or rude.
“Freddy?” Gregory hiccups. “Can I tell you about my dream?”
“Of course,” Monty says, channeling his inner Freddy.
“They were chasing me again.”
“Who were?”
“Your friends…”
Monty looks up at Chica and Roxy who stare back, just as taken back as he is.
They were all under the impression that the kid had gotten over that night or had simply forgotten about it because he always tried to talk to them.
“I was trying to talk to Roxy, but then she called me a worthless brat and started chasing me.”
Roxy looks at him and, to the untrained eye, her expression would look blank, but to the other animatronics, they knew that expression as her guiltiest one.
“And then Monty came in through a gate and tried to hurt me.”
Monty hugs Gregory closer to his chest and the kid hiccups.
“I was fighting with Monty when Chica appeared and- and-” He started crying again, softer this time.
“And what, Gregory?” Monty prompts, still using his Freddy voice.
“And she grabbed me.”
Chica doesn’t mask her emotions like the others do, she always wears them on her sleeve, and this is no different. She looks heartbroken while Gregory continues.
“And she tried to put me in the trash compacter, and you weren’t there! Why weren’t you there, Freddy?” Gregory cries into his shoulder.
“It was just a dream,” Monty consoles. “Everything is better now.”
“I know.” A silence fell over them and Monty almost thought he was asleep when he says, “I wish your friends liked me.”
The three of them look up at each other.
“Why do say that?”
“Because I try so hard to be friends with them! And I know I hurt them, but I want to apologize…”
“I’m sure that they know you are sorry, Gregory,” Monty tries, grasping at straws. God how does Freddy do this?
“Yeah, but I want to tell Chica I’m sorry about the trash compacter and for taking her voice box. I really like it when she takes me to the kitchen for midnight snacks.”
Chica melts a little at the heartfelt apology coming from the sleepy kid.
“And I want to tell Roxy that I’m sorry about the go cart, and about taking her eyes. I want her to know that she is really cool, and that I want to go go-karting with her some time.”
Roxy shifts a little in her place, beaming at the compliment.
“I also want to tell Monty I’m sorry about the ball pit and for taking his arms. I want to play Montygolf, but I’m the most scared of him…”
“Why is that?” Monty asks. No, he doesn’t really care about the kid, he’s just acting like Freddy. Even though Freddy would have just told him that Monty’s not scary -shut up! He’s not soft!
“He’s big like you and is really mad all the time.”
A silence falls over them.
“I’m sure they know you are sorry,” Monty says, trying his best to keep his actual voice out of this fake one.
“Are you sure?”
“Very.”
“Okay… Good night, Freddy,” Gregory yawns.
“I’ll see you in the morning, Superstar,” Monty says with the last of the Freddy voice he can comfortably do. Within minutes Gregory is asleep and breathing softly. Monty looks up at the other two, who have similar expressions on their faces. He gently sets the kid back on the beanbag and pulls the discarded blanket back over him.
The three animatronics make their way out of Freddy’s room as quietly as they can manage.
“So, we are telling Freddy in the morning, right?” Roxy asks.
“Definitely,” Monty agrees, grimacing at the wet patch on his shoulder. The girls giggle at his pain.
“Maybe tomorrow, we can play some golf,” Chica says. “I owe you four games anyways and it sounds like Gregory wants to play a few rounds too.”
Chica goes off to get Gregory a glass of water for when he wakes up, and Roxy and Monty silently agree to go to their rooms.
Their relationship with the kid was nipped in the bud when Gregory had taken their parts. That doesn’t mean they can’t try to make it better, right?
The bridges have been burned, that much is for certain, but with some time and work, anything can be rebuilt.