Chapter Text
The Puppet was alone.
They’d been alone for some time. Sure, there were the other animatronics, Fredbear and Bonnie. But they couldn’t carry a conversation the same way the Puppet did. They didn’t seem real in the same way the puppet was.
They remembered muffled laughter. They remembered violent hands, but also the close press of a box. Rain on both cold skin and soft fabric. Pained breaths and faltering gears. A burst of energy in both memories, pain, pain, pain.
The Puppet didn’t understand it. They couldn’t think, and now they could. But they couldn’t do anything with this newfound ability. The people couldn’t hear them, and the animatronics weren’t alive enough to understand them.
There had been a man in the restaurant one time. His voice was familiar. It pulled the Puppet to some memory, a hint of who they were supposed to be. But then he left, and he hadn’t come back.
Instead, a different man came in. He was familiar too, but in a way that was viscerally uncomfortable to the puppet. His voice made their skin crawl, and whenever he glanced towards the Puppet’s box, they hid away. Anything to avoid his searching eyes and unsettling grin. They didn’t know what it was. But something about him made them want to hide in their box and never come out, if it could keep him away from them.
So that was what they did most of the time. They stayed in their box, and peeked out at the children that came to see Fredbear. This came with the added bonus that they didn’t have to look at the animatronics if they didn’t want to. They found it incredibly unnerving to look at them, only to find hints of a human hiding inside their shells.
This routine also had the side effect of leaving them a lot of time to think. And ask themselves questions like, why they were in the restaurant at all. The Puppet knew they had a purpose on a base level. They were made to protect the children. But that didn’t matter anymore. Nothing ever happened inside the restaurant itself, and no one had bothered with the Puppet since the first time they had failed.
They didn’t know how they had failed. They could barely remember anything from before they had a mind. But they knew they’d been broken, and a child had been broken, and they had failed.
Inside the box, the Puppet curled in on themself. They could think, but they had no one to speak their thoughts to. Thinking was all they had.
The restaurant was getting quiet. They must be closing soon. The Puppet waited.
Eventually, it was silent, and they pushed against the lid of their box. There was a rush of relief that the Puppet couldn’t explain, it came every night when the lid opened easily. And they stepped out to begin their patrol.
They’d been mostly repaired since their failure, but the Puppet could still feel the damage. Their joints were stiff, and their gait was awkward. But they still walked the perimeter of the restaurant every night.
The animatronics on stage were turned off, sitting quietly in the dark. Some nights the Puppet would talk at them, just to get their thoughts somewhere. They walked past the duo tonight. They weren’t in the mood.
They reached the merchandise counter, filled with shirts, posters, and plushies. There were some items promoting the newer sister restaurant, Freddy Fazbear’s, but most of it was for Fredbear.
The Puppet gently picked up a Fredbear plushie. They liked soft things.
All was quiet.
And then a noise.
It came from outside, quiet at first. Someone was talking. They grew louder, and louder. And the Puppet knew that something was deeply wrong.
They paced to the front entrance, quickly as they could. They pushed their hands against the door handles, and they rattled uselessly. Locked. The yelling was getting louder.
They walked back, in stiff, jilted steps. The service exit maybe? They went as fast as they could, still far, far too slow. The person outside was screaming for their life.
The door was so close.
Their leg clicked. Then jerked to the side.
It had been weeks since they were properly maintained.
They crashed to the floor. Their mask clattered against the hard tile, but they couldn’t hear anything over the screams. They were failing, again, again, again.
It became silent.
The Puppet lay on the floor, listening. They could feel something.
An energy buzzed in the room, pricked at their fabric. They braced their elbows against the ground and propped themself up. In front of them was a web of brilliant energy, bright and sparking. The more it moved, the more it seemed to take shape.
It was confused, untethered, and in a moment, it’d be gone. The Puppet didn’t know where it would go. But the energy was familiar.
“Wait,” they scrambled to lift themself up. “Don’t leave!”
They reached out. The second their hand brushed the light, it clung, tangled between their fingers. The Puppet jerked their hand back, startled. But the energy came with, spiking between the floor and up their arm. Pain, pain, the same pain as before, it came in little knives over their body, their face, their arms. In a panic, they tried to ball up the energy and shove it away.
And then it was done. The energy wasn’t visible anymore, and it didn’t prickle the air around the Puppet.
But they could still feel it. The weight of a presence.
There was a Fredbear plush on the floor in front of them. The Puppet hadn’t realized that they’d dropped it in their panic. It looked different. It’s soft blue eyes were now jet black, with little white pinpricks for pupils.
There was something in the plush. And it was staring right at them.
A little girl’s voice spoke.
“Hello?”
“...Hi.”
“What happened? Where am I?” the plush paused.
“What did you do to me?”
The Puppet tried to think of a response. But then they heard footsteps, and the service door opening.
“We need to hide.”
The plush barely had time to ask another question before the Puppet scooped them up. They scrambled up and limped back to their box, before diving inside. They closed the lid after them, gently, and cradled the plush in their arms. Both were silent as they listened to footsteps go back and forth inside the restaurant.
Whoever was there seemed to pace in and out for an eternity. Footsteps went back and forth, doors opened and closed. At one point they heard running water. Then finally, the service door seemed to close for the last time. The Puppet waited.
It was silent for several minutes longer before they felt safe enough to peak out from under their lid. The restaurant was empty. They pushed the lid open fully, and gently placed the plush on the floor in front of them.
"Are you okay?”
“No,” the plush answered simply. “Leave me alone for a while. I need to think.”
“Oh. Ok,” the Puppet rested their head on their arms.
A few seconds passed.
“You don’t need to stare at me the whole time!” the plush snapped. The Puppet jumped back, startled.
“Sorry,” they sank back into their box, keeping the lid open. They couldn’t blame the plush for being confused. They were pretty confused themself.
It was quiet for a while until the plush spoke again.
“Ok. I’m ready. I have some questions.”
The Puppet rose up and put their arms back on the edge of the box.
“So… I’m dead right?”
The Puppet was caught off guard. “... I think so,” they admitted. “I heard screaming outside, and when I went to help, I found you instead.”
The Puppet leaned forward to ask their own question. “How did you come to that conclusion?”
“Well, one minute, I’m being- attacked. The next, I’m in a completely different place, ten times smaller, and talking to a giant creepy doll. I don’t think that would happen if I were still alive.” The Puppet shrugged off the creepy doll comment. More important things at hand.
“Next question. What did you do to me?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what did you do! I don’t know what happened to turn me into a stuffed animal, but I know I felt you.”
“I-” the Puppet hesitated. They didn’t know they had done anything. “I don’t know. All I did was touch you and-” pain, pain, pain. The Puppet shook their head.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Hm,” the plush considered their answer before continuing. “Ok. Then who are you?”
“Me?” The Puppet had to pause. They hadn’t had a reason to refer to themself before. They could introduce themself as Puppet, but it felt… Clunky.
“I’m Marionette.”
“Bit of a mouthful.”
Marionette decided to ignore the comment towards their newly chosen name, and instead gestured towards the plush. “And I suppose I should be calling you Fredbear?”
“What? No! Gross! My name is Cassidy!” The plush looked them up and down with white pinpricks. “Where did Marionette come from anyway? That can’t be your real name, right?”
Marionette finally started letting themself feel irritated. “What do you mean my real name?”
“Well, you’re like me right?” Cassidy’s gaze pierced Marionette. “A ghost?”
A couple things clicked into place. The memories of being out in the rain. Their sudden ability to think. It wasn’t even a possibility they had considered.
It wasn’t that they were a robot that was suddenly intelligent one day. It was that they were a human person once.
But it didn’t explain everything. They still had the memories of their joints breaking down. Knowledge that they couldn’t protect their charge, that they had failed.
Marionette sank their head into their hands. “I don’t know,” they said. “I don’t know. I don’t remember- I barely remember anything before I was-” they gave up.
“Can you please just call me Marionette?”
Cassidy considered them for a moment. “Ok,” she answered carefully. “So now what?”
Marionette sighed, and sank into their box. “I think I just want to rest for now.”
“Well if you’re gonna do that, could you at least not leave me on the floor?”
They bolted back up. “Sorry, sorry,” they scooped up the plush again. “Do you want to be in the box with me?”
Cassidy considered the offer for a moment. “Not really.”
Marionette looked around. There were a few more large gift boxes a couple feet away from them. They stretched out, and managed to place Cassidy on the closest one.
“Just call if you need anything, ok?”
The plush only gave a soft hum in response. She already seemed to be losing herself in thought. Marionette sank back into their box, and pulled the lid over them.
They needed to do some thinking themselves.