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Vanessa’s cat hated Gregory.
It wasn’t that unusual, to be fair. Tofu Bowl barely tolerated Vanessa most days, and the sudden inclusion of three animatronics and a young boy were startling and deeply unwelcome. Whenever one of the animatronics moved or spoke, Tofu Bowl dashed for cover, complaining loudly about the interlopers.
By the time Vanessa was able to move to a new apartment, Tofu Bowl was starting to adjust to her metal roommates. Once, she had even sat down next to Freddy while he was sitting on the floor as the group was watching a movie-he was far too heavy for the couch. She had immediately started cleaning herself, giving him a plainative look of don’t make a big deal out of it.
But Gregory was different.
Tofu Bowl wasn’t a violent cat, Vanessa promised, just a grumpy one. But Tofu Bowl growled whenever Gregory came into her line of sight, her snow colored fur standing on end as she stood up and arched her back, watching Gregory carefully with open distrust. She hissed loudly when he came within a five foot radius of her, and went out of her way to swipe at him if he was in the same room as her for too long.
“I really don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Vanessa apologized, bandaging up another scratch. “It’s…this is out of character.”
“Perhaps you two just need more time to adjust.” Freddy suggested.
“The cat has a grudge against him, Freddy,” Roxy said, glancing at Tofu Bowl, who was remorseless. “For crying out loud, she didn’t run when I snuck up on her by mistake. You’d think she’d be better with, you know, another human person.”
Tofu Bowl meowed, an open threat, and Gregory frowned. Chica tsked, trying to sound reassuring. “I’m sure she’ll come around to you eventually! She’ll like you!”
“I don’t care if she likes me,” Gregory said grumpily. “I don’t like her.”
Tofu Bowl growled, a deep and angry sound.
*** *** ***
Tofu Bowl’s outright aggression increased to the point where Vanessa had to lock her in the bathroom whenever Gregory was around. It was a small thing, really, and Freddy suspected that eventually the cat’s animosity would be a funny anecdote, but right now it was one more strain on everyone.
Vanessa had another job, but throwing herself into overtime right after a horribly traumatic event was bad enough, but she also had a kid to take care of and three animatronics to hide. The toll it took on her was obvious and painfully unavoidable. Freddy wished he could do something to help besides household chores, but it wasn’t like he could get a job too. Roxy and Chica felt the same, wound tight from being stuck in an apartment all the time.
Gregory wasn’t doing great either. He constantly looked dazed, sleeping too much and too little at the same time. He picked at his food lifelessly, disinterested in everything around him. He snapped for no real reason, at silly things, just a bit more jagged around the edges, just enough to be noticeable. He seemed empty, a little off, and while Vanessa kept promising everything would get better once everything got settled in, it was hard to believe her when the bags under her eyes looked like bruises.
The shadows of Monty and Michael sat heavy over them, inescapable specters filled with grief that demanded to be felt, and Freddy still wasn’t sure where the DJ and daycare attendant were.
And the cat just kept attacking Gregory.
Freddy wasn’t human, but he didn’t need to be to feel tension in the air, so thick he thought he might be able to grab it between his great paws and throw it out the door. Simmering silence permeated the apartment, punctuated by Tofu Bowl’s bloodthirsty yowls from the bathroom. No one spoke, and if they did, it was tense and quick, only out of necessity. There was never an argument-it was understood that any argument was going to quickly turn ugly. But something had to give. Something had to crack under the incredible pressure.
Vanessa had to drive an hour or so to pick up paperwork for Gregory’s adoption.
“You wanna come?” She asked the boy, pausing on her way out.
“I do!” Roxy said, oddly desperate.
Vanessa blinked. “I wasn’t really…offering to you…”
“Your car is big enough,” Roxy said. “You can put some sheets up in the windows to block everyone else’s view.”
“Is it big enough for both of us?” Chica asked.
Gregory made a face, sprawled out on the couch, lazily watching TV. “Why do you wanna go so bad?”
“I’m going crazy here,” Roxy said. “I gotta get out of this apartment. Even just for a bit. Even if I have to stay in the car.”
“Sorry I’m such horrible company.” Gregory muttered.
Chica smiled. “It’s not that! It’s just…you know, a big adjustment. For all of us.”
Tofu Bowl let out an especially loud yell, and Vanessa flinched.
“I did offer it to Gregory…” Vanessa said, but Gregory shrugged.
“No, it’s okay, I don’t really wanna go.” He said, sitting up and stretching. The bruises around his neck had mostly faded.
“Really?” Roxy looked relieved.
“I can’t fit three-” Vanessa said, but Freddy shook his head.
“I will stay behind to watch Gregory.” He volunteered.
Gregory made a face. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
“Legally, you do.” Vanessa said.
“Legally,” Gregory rolled his eyes. “We have three animatronics that don’t belong to us.”
Vanessa shrugged. “Got me there. Anyway, you sure you’ll be alright here alone?”
“Not to worry, Officer Vanessa!” Freddy said, still unable to shake the title. “We will be just fine!”
Vanessa still looked skeptical. “...alright, fine. I’ll be gone a bit. Don’t do anything stupid, don’t make too big a mess-oh, Freddy, do me a favor and feed Tofu Bowl at around four-”
“Ugh.” Gregory said.
“-and you know, call me if there’s an emergency.” She paused, still looking unsure.
“We’re fine,” Gregory said impatiently. “Go ahead.”
Tofu Bowl was scratching at the door when they left.
*** *** ***
“Hold on, I’m going to grab a snack.” Gregory said, hopping up from the couch not all that long after they had left.
“Make sure it is healthy!” Freddy said. “I believe that Vanessa recently bought some bananas-”
“Al-right,” Gregory said, openly annoyed. “I don’t need you to tell me what to get.”
Freddy paused, listening to Gregory rummage around the kitchenette before slowly standing up. “...are you feeling alright, Gregory?” He asked.
Gregory glanced back at him, confused. “...I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You have been…” Freddy struggled to find the right words. “...a bit off, as of late.”
“No kidding,” Gregory said. “It’s not like there’s a lot going on or anything.”
Freddy was quiet for a long moment, merely watching Gregory look listlessly through the fridge. The boy caught him staring and looked at him sideways. “What?”
“I am merely worried.” Freddy said, which wasn’t untrue, but he wished he knew exactly what he was worried about. Gregory’s sharpness had the easy explanation of trauma compiled upon itself, but when he tried to brush it away as such, he simply couldn’t.
He wanted to offer himself as a helping hand for Gregory, someone who would always be there for him, but the comforts died before they exited his voice box.
Gregory was staring back, his face indecisive. His eyes were calculating, like Freddy was a problem he was just on the verge of solving. “...Gregory?” He asked, uncertain and strangely disconcerted.
Gregory blinked-the expression was gone. “Sorry,” He said. “I zoned out for a second…I think you need to feed the cat now.”
Freddy glanced at the clock-four in the afternoon on the dot. “You appear to be right.”
“I’ll take cover.” Gregory said, grabbing a yogurt and meandering over to the silverware, rummaging around for a spoon.
Freddy grabbed a can of cat food off the shelf, once again feeling sorry for Tofu Bowl as he heard her scratching desperately at the door as if a horrible demon was trapped with her. He started towards the bathroom door-
Error messages lit up his vision, so suddenly it overwhelmed him and he didn’t realize he had collapsed to the floor until a few moments later. His body twitched without his control, and he couldn’t make his limbs move. “Gregory!” He barely kept himself from shouting, barely able to conceal panic in his voice. “Gregory, stay back, call Vanessa-”
“Will you shut up?!” He heard Gregory snap, in a very un-Gregory manner.
Tofu Bowl screamed.
Gregory stepped into view, and for some reason he was holding Vanessa’s largest kitchen knife. He looked pleased with himself, as though he had just solved the equation. “Thank God that kept the spine paralysis safe mode,” He muttered, mostly to himself. “I wasn’t quite sure what I would do otherwise.”
“W-what-” Freddy’s voice came out heavy and glitched. “W-what did you d-d-d-do?!”
“You’ve got the metal plating around your back,” Gregory said, waving the knife with too much ease. “So one lucky shot between it, and…” He gestured vaguely. “Severs the endoskeletal spinal column. Before, they had a button, but, well…buttons don’t always work.”
“Gregory-” Freddy started, but froze after Gregory grinned at the name.
Dread curled up inside him like an unwelcome rat, and with dawning horror, he nearly whispered: “Afton?”
Gregory-no, the monster using Gregory’s body-smiled, looking more pleased than ever. “Took you quite long enough, though I think I will take it as a compliment to my own acting abilities. I evaded arrest for that long, didn’t I?”
It was like a physical shift now that the jig was up. Gregory’s edges, his wrongness, had always been there, concealed under a thin layer of desperation and an unwillingness to consider the alternative. But now it was looking at an entirely new person. Gregory was standing too straight, and he moved with none of the uncoordinated movements of a young child. He held the knife with too much ease, too much experience.
His smile was too big, too wide, and never reached his eyes. But his eyes were still filled with monstrous glee.
Freddy could hear Tofu Bowl, wailing in grief for being too late.
“L-l-l-let Gregory go.” Freddy commanded, wishing with all his might he could move, but his body remained stubbornly disobedient.
“Well, since you asked so kindly,” Afton rolled Gregory’s eyes. “Did you really think it would be so easy? To just burn the place down? I’ve faced fire more than once-burning is a routine. Pain is the norm. But this…”
He stretched out Gregory’s hands, staring at the fingers with awe. “This is new. I haven’t felt so human, so free, so alive in decades…it’s incredible to see the sun after being shut away in darkness.”
“L-l-let Gregory go,” Freddy said again, desperate and terrified, knowing he didn’t have a hand to play. “He does not d-d-d-deserve any of this, h-h-h-he is just a child.”
“Are you so stupid as to think he’s still here?” Afton asked, amused.
The dread inside Freddy grew heavier, gnawing at his useless endoskeleton. “No.” He said, but it was more of a beg than a protest.
Afton laughed. “He put up a fight, more than I expected him to, but as you said, he is merely a child.”
He knelt down next to Freddy. “Do you know what he did, in those last moments before I quashed him? He cried out for you, of all people. Terrified and pleading. It’s not the first time I’ve heard a child cry out for their failed protector to save them, but it’s the first time that protector has been an animatronic.”
Afton shook his head. “He really thought you were going to save them.”
Freddy saw red, but that might have just been the error messages still flashing. Unable to think of anything other than how much he hated this beast, his arm jerked on it’s own accord, swiping out at Afton. Afton made Gregory’s eyes widen in shock, and stumbled back, but not fast enough before Freddy slashed him across the face. Freddy immediately felt horrible, in spite of it all, because that was Gregory, that was his superstar-
Afton rose slowly, looking surprised. The cuts were shallow, and bled sluggishly, and in spite of his earlier efforts, Freddy could no longer make himself move. “That was unexpected,” Afton said softly. “You animatronics continue to hold surprises, don’t you?”
“Y-you…” Freddy blinked away more flashing warnings of his dire state. “You cannot do this, p-p-please. Have y-y-y-you not done enough a-a-a-already?”
Freddy thought he might break apart from grief before Afton had a chance to finish him off. “My f-f-friend died to s-s-stop you,” He said. “Your own s-s-son sacrificed himself!”
“That was the lizard’s choice,” Afton said dismissively. “And it was a bad one. And as for Michael…”
He grew dark. “He is little more than a disappointment. A failed son, a failed technician, a failed guard, a failed killer.”
“T-t-the others will know s-s-s-something is wrong,” Freddy said. “Do you t-t-think they will just ignore w-w-w-what you did?”
“Oh, Freddy!” Afton made Gregory laugh. “It was in self defense, you see! You were trying to repair a small issue with yourself, and, well…you aren’t quite yourself when that happens, are you? Poor Gregory was so scared, so terrified that his precious Freddy was going mad, he begged for you to stop, but you got his cheek…” He gestured to his bleeding face, and Freddy would have felt nauseous if he had a stomach.
“So I did what I had to do,” Gregory sighed. “And when the time comes, I’ll have to do it again. And Vanessa…” He scoffed. “Vanessa hasn’t even got metal skin to protect herself. And then, I will have finally washed my hands of them, and I can finally, finally, start over.”
Tofu Bowl was running around the bathroom frantically, knocking things over.
“Y–y-you…” Freddy’s voicebox was failing. “You w-w-will not succeed. The ghosts…the s-s-spirits…”
“Are gone,” Afton finished, taking slow, methodical steps towards Freddy. “And if they so choose to return…” He made Gregory shrug. “I will simply do what I always do. Adapt.”
“S-s-s-someone…” Freddy said, his vision flickering. “Someone w-w-w-will…stop y-y-you…”
“And if they do,” Afton said, raising the knife. “I will come back. I always do.”
Gregory, Freddy thought, because he could no longer speak. Gregory, I am so, so sorry.
The knife came down, there was another error alert-
Blackness.
*** *** ***
The cat had burst through the glass window in the bathroom when William went to kill it. That was fine.
He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, rubbing his eyes furiously to give the impression that he had been crying hard, and for a long time. He had done the same thing at the Emily child’s funeral, actually. It had been like a little game, a play-pretend at grief. He was quite good at it.
He looked up in the mirror and saw them in the angled reflection behind him, standing in the hall.
A young redhead girl, covered in blood, so much it was impossible to tell the source of it. A young boy, blood pouring from his head, missing a chunk of his skull.
And behind them, what was left of a man, a dried corpse the same color as wine, hunched from emptiness, his hands hovering protectively over the two younger children.
They stared silently at William, their expression unreadable, and he smiled at them. He knew better than to fear shadows.
“Hello, you three,” He said. “It’s been a while.”
He turned to face them, but they were gone. When he turned back to the bathroom mirror, he was alone again.
William had not been strictly lying when he told Freddy that Gregory was gone. Sometimes, when he was between sleep and wake, he would hear a voice that was not his. Barely a whisper, barely a noise at all, but it was there. It was always confused and afraid, fading more and more each time he heard it, holding on by a grasp.
There had been a sharp stab of electric sadness when he had decommisioned the Freddy, but it had lasted a second, and then vanished.
William stared at the reflection that was not his yet, but would soon become his. “Gregory,” He whispered, almost too quiet for himself. “I hope you’re there, I hope you can hold on a little longer.”
He leaned forward, staring at the reflection, watching scarlet, oh-so human blood trail down his cheek and drip into the porcelain sink.
“Because I want you to see all the good work we’re going to do.” He said, and laughed.
William Afton was back.
*** *** ***
Gregory woke with a start, and the start of a bitten off scream.
For a moment, he had no idea where he was, and then his eyes rested on a lamp in the corner, casting stars onto his ceiling in a gentle white glow. Vanessa had gotten it for him, when he had complained he was too old for nightlights but he still faltered at pitch black rooms.
He was home, in his own room, safer than he had been since he could remember.
If he was so safe, though, he wasn’t sure why his heart still raced like a greyhound on the track. Or why he suddenly thought he was going to burst into tears. Or why he was certain that just out of the corner of his eye, the foul-smelling monster that had nearly taken him in the Pizzaplex was hiding, waiting to swallow him whole.
He leapt out of bed, suddenly energized and determined to check the house to make sure it was free of intruders. He darted away from the bed, suddenly remembering his fear of things that may hide beneath it. His room was silent, as it always was at this time of night, but he thought that if he strained his ears, he could just make out the rasping breathing of a beast.
He opened his door, shaking, and looked out.
The tiny living area of the apartment was quiet, as it always was, save for the trio of animatronics standing on their portable chargers, their heads bowed and eyes dim. They didn’t see Gregory in standby mode, but if he made too much noise, he might wake them up, and then they would know he had yet another nightmare.
This was the first time the nightmare got far enough to where he actually killed Freddy. Usually he managed to wake himself up before that, even as he observed the horror through Freddy’s eyes, watching his body controlled by Afton.
He peeked down the hallways, seeing Vanessa’s room, with the door open like it always was, in case Gregory needed her. He had never once gone to her after a nightmare, usually choosing to stare at the ceiling with knots in his stomach until the sun came up after one, but this one was a doozy.
He stared at his hands, realizing he was shaking badly. He wondered if he would have shaken if Afton had taken him, if his hands were steady when he held the knife with practiced ease, to kill everyone that Gregory had ever loved, and he had so few people, but he had only just gotten them. Maybe, even now, if he peeled back his skin and viscera, he would find robotic bones, and find that he had never existed at all, or maybe he would wake up and find himself back in the Pizzaplex, never having escaped at all, or maybe this was all a hallucination before Afton crushed him out, once and for all-
Something brushed against his legs, and Gregory nearly screamed, clapping a hand over his mouth.
Tofu Bowl was weaving between Gregory’s legs, rubbing her head against his ankles, a deep purr emanating from her chest like a motor. She looked up at Gregory, stretched, and meowed.
“Sh.” Gregory whispered, trying to shoo out the cat with his foot. “You’ll wake them, you can’t be in here, what if I-” He choked before he could finish his sentence.
Tofu Bowl paid him no mind, hopping over his foot and venturing deeper into his room. She started batting at the sleeves of his sweater, uncaring that it was the middle of the night.
“Hey!” Gregory shut his door with a soft click, and rushed over, snatching up the sweater. “Stop that, Vanessa just got me that for school.”
Tofu Bowl meowed again, hopping up on his bed, and staring at him inquisitively. The stars reflected in her eyes, making her expression oddly magical. Gregory frowned, reaching out hesitantly. She immediately purred again, rubbing her cheek against his fingers.
“What if I’m bad?” Gregory whispered. “What if he did get me? What if everything Mike and Monty did…was for nothing? What if they regret it, from wherever they are?”
Gregory sat back on his bed, oddly exhausted, and Tofu Bowl wasted no time, climbing into his lap and rolling on her back. A month or so ago, Gregory might have fallen for her trap, but now, he stroked her face instead of her belly.
It was hard to reconcile the Tofu Bowl from his dream with the one on his bed. But then, Dream Tofu Bowl had sensed something evil. This one couldn’t have been more relaxed.
Something about that made Gregory’s heartbeat slow a bit.
“You’re happy I’m here, aren’t you?” Gregory whispered. “That I made it out?”
Tofu Bowl meowed, and in spite of himself, Gregory smiled.
“Yeah,” He said. “I think…I think I am, too.”
He suddenly felt exhausted as the panic drifted away. He laid back down, waiting for Tofu Bowl to jump down and nestle into his pile of dirty clothes like she usually did when she ventured into his room.
Instead, she meowed pitifully, and headbutted Gregory’s arm. He giggled, reaching up to pet her, but she immediately dove under his arm and found a place against his chest. She purred when Gregory brought his arm down, eyes closed and relaxed.
Gregory smiled, his nightmares feeling distant and impossible. “‘Night, Tofu Bowl,” He muttered sleepily. “Don’t tell Vanessa you like me more.”
He dreamed of cats and ice cream.