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* IT'S ME IT'S ME
The phrase echoed so loudly in Evan's head that he shoved his hands over his ears in a desperate attempt to get it to stop.
"I don't know who you are!" He cried, tears spilling from his eyes as he clenched them shut. It hurt so much and nothing he had done was helping. The lights in the room flickered on and off, the lone animatronic in the room over looking the stage with empty black eyes. "Just tell me!"
The word 'sorry' whispered in a thousand different little voices mimicked back at him. Faintly, he could hear Charlie and Lizzie pounding on the other side of the door.
Evan took a steely breath.
"Tell me your name." He stated, loud despite the quiver in his voice. Evan would be brave, for his sister, his cousin, his brother. He stood tall, straightening out his back. "Tell me your name!"
"it's me it's me! evan it's me!" He hadn't heard that voice in over a decade.
"... Michael?"
The voice didn't reply.
"Mike?" He squeaked out, almost hesitant.
The animatronic on stage strung to life, empty eyes and mechanic.
"Wel--wel--welcome to the show! Come give Fredbear a huuuuuuuuug----?"
The lights flickered like a strobe, that childish music that haunted Evan's nightmares blaring out through the tinny speakers above the curtains and below the stage as Fredbear's voice ground to a halt.
"Mike, is that you? Is---did dad... leave you here---?"
"DON'T SAY HIS NAME!" The voices screamed, and Evan covered his ears with a shout. There was a stabbing pain in his gut, and for a second he wondered if someone had shot him, but when he looked down, there was nothing but phantom pain.
Evan gasped wetly, and looked back up, blinking tears out of his eyes.
"Mike, please,"
The word 'hurts' echoed around him like some sort of sick plead, like the wounded cry of an animal.
"Mike, let Charlie and Lizzie in , we can help you." He pleaded, trying to will away the foreign pain in his gut.
"no one can help me," A ghastly figure slowly faded to at the feet of Fredbear, hiding just behind his leg. That stupid Foxy mask still covered the side of his face, dark eyes staring him down from his spot on the stage.
Mike was smaller than he remembered, but then again, the last time he'd seen him he'd been eight years old and constantly scared out of his mind.
He was tall, for a sixteen year old, but that was about it. He was sixteen, a kid. Evan remembered being sixteen, and getting older, becoming more. Michael remembered being sixteen and dying. Nothing more. He didn't even have his license before he fucking died. He didn't get to grow up, and it's one thing to say it, it's another thing to see it.
"Hi Mikey,"
Michael crept back a little further into Fredbear's shadow, only the muzzle of Foxy's head visible in the light. Lizzie and Charlie were still pounding at the door, calling for him to answer, but on this side of the steel door, the room was quiet.
"you're taller than i remember," It was just Michael's voice this time, not the choir of children's angry voices echoing his words, of somebody else's words entirely. This was his brother. (He'd finally found him.)
"You're shorter." Evan smiled gently, but didn't approach, he didn't want to scare him away.
"i can't hold Cassidy off for long," Michael replied, looking back into the shadows for a moment before stepping completely into the light. "if it's really even you at all, but... but i just wanted to try, just in case it really is you."
He was beaten to hell, big splotches of bruises covering his arms and legs, peeking out from beneath the collar of his AC-DC shirt, two unmistakably hand shaped bruises wrapped around his neck, a wound hidden by his hairline bleeding freely down the side of his face. His clothes were all ripped up, and he was even missing a shoe. (This is what Michael looked like in his final moments, scared and alone and knowing no one was coming to rescue him, the thought made Evan's stomach clench nauseatingly.)
"It's me, I promise Mikey,"
Those five words were the final straw, Michael broke out into tears. "i missed you guys for so long. you made it, you escaped him, i'm---i'm so glad," He blubbered, fat, pearly tears dripping down the sides of his face. "the old man wouldn't tell me, i was so worried!"
"Mikey don't cry!" He rushed, unsure of what to do. his older brother was shaking as he cried. "Everything's alright!"
"you're okay---!"
Michael sniffled, but didn't bother to try and brush away the tears. "i thought the next time i'd see you, you be trapped like the rest of us... what about lizzie? and charlie?"
"I'm okay," Evan soothed, it was strange being on this end of the conversation, for so long he had always been the youngest, the most teary-eyed, the most sensitive, but time had taken its' toll on Evan, and he was too old to cry about every little thing. Michael on the other hand, was not. "They're both fine, we're all okay. We missed you Mikey."
Michael choked back another sob, and took a step forward. "i missed you too,"
"Can I... Can I come give you a hug?" Evan asked hesitantly, he'd been able to interact physically with the other ghosts so far, and he couldn't see any reason why Michael's would be any different. (He hadn't given Michael a hug that day, he and Lizzie had had a big fight with him, because they wanted to go visit dad at Fredy's with him, but Michael wouldn't let them go. Instead, he'd locked them in his room (the only room in the house with a lock on the outside of the door rather than on the inside, just another way father had tortured him without anyone ever suspecting a thing), left, and never came back. He had yelled at them, to just be quiet for once in their lives, and to hide if anyone besides him tried to get into the room. The two of them had screamed and screamed and screamed at him through the door.) Michael never came home, and Evan didn't speak for a long time afterwards. (He had wondered, for a long time before they knew father had killed him, that if he and Lizzie had just listened to him, that he would have come home that night instead of disappearing.)
Michael nodded wordlessly, and Evan stepped forward, and up onto the stage. Mike's skinny little arms wrapped themselves around his neck, so tight that it was almost as if he were afraid that if he let go, even the slightest bit, that Evan would disappear, forever. Evan held him back a little tighter, a little more desperately, supporting his head with one hand, and wrapping the other around his waist, holding him up as his older brother slumped on top of him, leaning back on his feet as he sat on his knees.
"you're so big now," He blubbered. Evan laughed.
"And you're so not,"
It was, perhaps, not the most tasteful thing he could've said, but it was the first thing that came to mind and Michael giggled wetly.
"i guess that's true."
Michael's face was still covered by that raggedy old Foxy mask he'd insisted on wearing when they were kids. Most of Evan's earliest memories of Mikey involved that stupid mask, and when he'd gone missing, the first thing piece of evidence Hurricane's shitty little police department had present their father with was that ugly mask. It had been broken in two pieces, muddied from rain and the forest floor where it had (presumably) been found. A few of the plastic teeth here missing, white paint chipping off of the few that had stayed, one of the ears was bent off and snapped at the base while the other was twisted in a weird way, stretch marks left on the plastic like a heavy force had been place on it for a moment or two, just short enough to keep it from snapping off like its' twin. The black elastic band on the back had been spared, stretched out the same way it had always been with Michael's name etched onto the back with a silver sharpie, still misspelled in the sloppy handwriting of a ten year old from when mother had first given it to him all those years ago.
Evan had recognized the mask then, and he recognized it now, it looked a little better than the last time he'd seen it at least, a crack lanced through the empty socket of the side without the eye patch, and the teeth were still missing but it still held itself together, preserved in Michael's moment of death the same way the rest of his brother's body was. (It meant that even after Michael had died, father had not stopped his assault, had only continued the brutal beatdown of his own flesh and blood, had William even realized he'd killed him? Or was it only after the fit of passion had past that father knew he was dead. Both answers made Evan nauseatingly sick to his stomach and he tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. How long did it take for someone to become a ghost? Had Michael been forced to watch the desecration of his corpse?)
"what are you doing here ev? how did you even find me?" Michael's voice startled him out of his thoughts, and Evan looked down.
"We've been looking for you, ever---ever since Liz found out what dad did. He told us you'd run away, of course we never believed it----" He rushed to say. Fidgeting with the edge of his shirt. There was a little tear from where Evan always ended up picking at it when he was nervous (which was a lot). "----Liz ---I ---we both knew you'd never leave us, not on purpose. Not unless you were forced to."
It was a clunky response to a genuine question, as if Michael had never even considered that he and Elizabeth would have missed his presence in their house, noticed his absence in their lives. It would have been insulting if not for the fact that Michael was a dead sixteen-year-old and Evan was twenty-eight-years-old. That Michael had only made it to sixteen while Evan had lived well past that age, was almost double it in fact.
"you... you looked for me?" He asked, hesitantly. Almost as if he couldn't believe it was true.
"Of course, Mikey," Evan reassured. God how he wanted to see his brother's face. He missed those pale blue eyes and the freckles that dotted his cheeks, too much of their childhood with him spent outside looking for cool bugs and playing pretend out in mother's garden. "We never stopped."
Michael let out another little sob and clutched at Evan's ratty shirt, the faded logo of some obscure 90s rock band on the front not dissimilar to Michael's own clothes. "i'm sorry i'm such a mess right now. i just---i didn't think i'd ever get to see you again. to think i used to call you the crybaby."
Evan laughed, it was wet. "I still am, Liz tells me I'm too old to cry now, but I just can't help it."
"i think we all deserve a little cry every once in a while," Michael said, wiping a stray tear from his eye. His older brother stared at the stump where the very animatronic that stood behind them on the stage had taken his arm. "you never got a new prosthetic? i thought you were so excited..."
Evan coughed, feeling more than a little sheepish. (Michael had missed twenty years of his life, he only knew the Evan that had existed before he'd died. And there really was a big distinction between those two times, the Afton twin's lives had been split very cleanly down the middle, the Before, and the After, and the After Evan was much different from the Before Evan.) "I have one, it's too clunky, gets in the way. I only really wear it when I'm out in public and I don't want to freak people out."
He remembered the conversation Michael was referring too, he hadn't thought of it in years but right now, it was crystal clear in his mind. After the 'incident' at Fredbear's Family Diner, Evan had woken up in a hospital with no idea how he'd gotten there, and what had happened to his fucking arm. It was just, gone, and along with it, any chance he'd ever had at an even remotely normal life, oh how he'd cried. After a few weeks in the hospital (he'd always been a sickly child, and the sudden loss of a limb hadn't helped his already decaying state of health), Michael had been helping him through a particularly hard chapter book when he'd asked him if he wanted a prosthetic. Of course at the time Evan had no idea what a prosthetic was, he had only been six after all and despite how smart he was, he hadn't exactly lived a very worldly life yet. Michael however, had been fourteen and (as Evan had later learned from Liz) been reading up on amputations, on how to help someone after going through something as traumatic as what happened to Evan (nevermind that it had to have been traumatic for Michael too, after all, his older brother was the one to pull Evan's head out of the golden animatronic bear, and if watching your brother's arm get chopped off by your father machine, then he didn't know what was.) Evan had declared that he wanted to have the coolest arm in the world. Of course at the time he'd suspected father would build him one, after all, he'd looked so incredibly guilty any time he looked at Evan, but they'd ended up buying a boring one from the hospital a few months after he had been cleared to leave and the stitches had been all healed up. He, Michael, Liz, and Charlie had ended up decorating it with a plethora of stickers from the dollar bin at their local shopping mall and it had stayed that way until he'd grown out of it after Michael's disappearance. He'd stopped wearing it after that, had stopped doing basically anything after that and by the time he'd come back to himself, Evan had found that he didn't really want to spend the money on a new one. They were expensive and clunky and all they'd ever done for him was get in the way.
"Mikey? Can I--- Can you take the mask off?" He asked hesitantly. Evan wasn't exactly sure how ghosts worked, despite how many he had ended up encountering in his days as an animatronic hunter? Reckless idiot? Exhausted son? But none of the other children he'd encountered had ever been wearing anything that covered their faces. (Did Michael even have a face anymore? Or was the apparition before him just a reflection of his outer shell upon death, and his face was now welded to the mask. Or maybe his face didn't exist at all anymore, it was just a black void of eyes and teeth. Now wasn't that a frightening thought.)
"hm? oh yeah," Michael's face grinned beneath the ruddy muzzle, left canine still missing from where it had gotten knocked out in a fight a few weeks before his disappearance. Father hadn't been able to get an appointment with the dentist for the next two months and had been pissed at Michael for getting it knocked out in the first place, after all, a missing tooth ruined the carefully crafted image father had presented to the public of his children. Mikey hadn't cared, just laughed with a bloody mouth the night he'd come home with it missing. (He'd won that fight too, Evan remembers him crowing, he'd broken that other kid's nose and probably a finger or two.) "i... i don't know if this'll work but gimmie a sec,"
He fidgeted with the elastic strap for a moment. Pulling.
"ah ha!"
And Michael disappeared the second the mask was off, fizzling out beneath Evan's fingertips.
Whatever Evan had been about to say died in his throat.
"Mikey?"
The name bounced around the empty warehouse in the uninvited silence. Evan's skin crawled, oh god, he'd just killed his brother.
"MICHAEL?" Generally, he found himself to be very prone to fits of random hysteria, this however, felt like a valid moment to start freaking out. "Mike! This isn't funny!"
Evan frantically looked around the room, whipping his head from side to side and the second he saw something hanging off the edge of Fredbear's shoulder, he jumped back about a foot in the air. "Jesus fuck! Don't scare me like that!" Then slapped a hand over his mouth when it was evidently clear that whatever was on Fredbear's shoulder was not, in fact, Evan's dead older brother.
"YOU!" The figure cried, perched on Fredbear's shoulder, nothing visible but the glowing eyes, and the long tear tracks that trailed down their face. The solid shadow wore a pleated skirt, and pigtails, only about as big as a sixth-grader.
This must have been Cassidy. "STAY AWAY FROM MY CHARGE!"
Evan raised his hand placatingly, taking a few steps back. "I'm not here to hurt you."
The figured hissed, growling "ADULTS ARE NOT TO BE TRUSTED, ESPECIALLY NOT VERMIN OF THE LIKES OF YOU,"
"I see you've... you've met my father," He grumbled, of course, even thousands of miles away William Afton still managed to ruin everything.
"I AM THE ONE HE SHOULD NOT HAVE KILLED, I WAS THE FIRST, I AM THE PROTECTOR OF MY KIN, AND YOU ARE BLOOD OF THE SLAUGHTERER."
"Listen, I'm nothing like my father," Evan pleaded, taking another step back. He did not like the look on her face. "I came here to find my brother."
"I FIND THAT HARD TO BELIEVE, YOU AFTONS COME WITH NOTHING BUT TROUBLE."
"If you were the first---" He stumbled, rushing over his words at the agitated ringing that flooded his ears. Evan hissed, and covered them with his hands. "---Then ----then you saw what happened to Michael. You saw what my father did to him. How could you say that we're all like him, all the same, if you knew what he did to his own son?"
"THE PURPLE MAN IS A TWISTED SOUL. HE WOULD NOT HAVE KEPT YOU ALIVE IF YOU WERE NOT LIKE HIM."
Beneath her, the animatronic of Evan's nightmares snarled and snapped, looking a lot more nightmarish than it had before. Cassidy grinned, and it was all sharp teeth. "I WILL TAKE GREAT PLEASURE IN KILLING YOU."
She dissolved back into the shadows as Evan took another few more stumbling steps backwards as Fredbear lumbered towards him, growling out something awful. The monster's feet fell heavy from the small stage he'd been placed on, and it shook the steel walls of the warehouse's storage room, each an impossibly loud thunk, thunk, thunk against the concrete floor.
"Fuck, fuck fuck." He whispered under his breath. He hadn't brought any weapons with him, just the torch that had been discarded on the floor where he'd dropped it in fright the second it's low beam had shown on Fredbear's forever smiling face (it's teeth were still red with Evan's blood, the moment preserved from all those years ago). Michael had shown up soon after and he'd completely forgotten about it. Liz must've heard his shriek of terror since the banging against the stuck door multiplied by tenfold, she was shouting his name now, demanding that he open this door at once! But Evan found himself frozen in fear. He hadn't had to face that thing since it had taken his arm, and now, with it sluggishly dragging itself towards him, a sort of primal fear had been unlocked.
(Evan had hunted plenty of monsters before, none of them had ever felt like this.)
So naturally, he bolted towards the door.
"Fuck! Liz! Charlie! Open the fucking door!" Now Evan had never really been one to use foul language, Michael had always scolded them when they'd mimicked his cuss words and tough language, and though Liz swore like a sailor now, Evan had never really fallen in suit. He'd always felt that most foul language was crass and unnecessary, but right now, well, right now it felt like the right time to let out a well placed fuck or two. Looking over his shoulder just in time, Evan ducked with a shriek, Fredbear's massive, bloated fist coming down right where his head had been a moment before. There was a large dent where his fist hit, the steel of the door folding inwards like plastic, and Evan scrambled towards the torch on the ground.
Liz screamed something at him again, this time Charlie joining in as well, but all Evan would hear was the increasingly heavy waves of pressure pushing down on his chest. He gasped for some sort of air, fingers scrambling for the torch, clutching the cold metal to his chest as he stumbled backwards towards the stage. All around, in every dark corner the twisted laughter of children echoed around the warehouse, taunting him as he rapidly approached his own sudden demise.
Evan blinked wetly, and tried not to sniffle, it felt like he was six-years-old again, screaming and crying and begging to be put down by those stupid bullies who hated him for no reason other than he was an easy target, seeing Michael's frantic, panic-stricken face that was just too far away for just one moment as he ran towards the stage where Evan was being placed into Fredbear's mouth. He'd been so scared then, paralyzed by fear, weeping against the blunt teeth and springlocks in the jaw, and he was so scared now, with nothing but a torch to defend himself with. He couldn't use it to blind Fredbear, the springlock suits didn't use AI the same way the Foxy and the original's models did, and the only real weapon he could use against a springlock was water and in the weather sealed, air-conditioned warehouse, Evan found it very unlikely that he would find anything at all that could damage the memorabilia stored in it. (Not that he had the time, or even wanted to go searching, who knows how many other possessed animatronics were in this thing, Evan was the weakest of their group, he was a lover, not a fighter, and if anything else showed up right now, his most likely doom would become a certain doom very, very quickly.)
He pushed as far back as he could, but it was no use. Fredbear's meaty fist grabbed Evan by the upper arm, hoisting him up into the air, his feet dangled in the air as he kicked with a shout, trying wiggle out. It was no use of course, the steely grip Fredbear had on his one working arm would be impossible to get out of, the old springlock system was practically a death grip.
Fredbear grinned sinisterly, and shrieked, face lunging for Evan head and with a cry of terror, he stuck the torch out in front of him. The dull teeth clamped down on it, one breaking the glass lens on the front of it, the light inside flickering wildly as Fredbear continued to try and chomp down on Evan's face. The torch held, much to his dismay, and the hand that had been holding him abruptly let go, flying up towards its' mouth as the animatronic tried to dislodge whatever had been caught in its' mouth.
Evan hit the floor with a resounding thud and immediately began to scramble backwards, scraping up his hand as he went. (God, father had told him about an emergency failsafe on the springlocks about a thousands years ago, if only he could remember what it was----)
That was it!
The failsafe, it was a set of two little buttons on the backside of Fredbear's neck that disabled the springlocks! Uncle Henry had had them installed after his father had gotten punctured by half-activated springlocks while he was entertaining a party as Spring Bonnie. Mother had driven them all to the hospital in a frantic rush that night when she'd gotten the call, and father had fussed and fussed at mother and Uncle Henry from his hospital bed, all wrapped up in bandages.
Evan then immediately cringed, he'd have to not only walk back up to Fredbear, who was stumbling around trying to get the torch out of its' mouth, he'd have to get on top of him, as the neck of the animatronic bear was about two feet higher than Evan's head. The stupid things were all like eight feet tall and Evan was a very short man.
The closer he crept to Fredbear, the loud Cassidy's growls and wailing seemed to be. The bear turned away from him, not even realizing he was there, hiding in the shadows, and Evan struck out. Using the stage as a sort of spring board, he launched himself at Fredbear's back, clinging haphazardly to it as it thrashed at the sudden weight on its' back, and of course, the fucking buttons were too far away for his one, singular hand to reach at the same time. So, without even thinking about hesitating, Evan slammed one down with his hand, and the other with his forehead.
Fredbear powered down immediately, pieces detaching from one another as all the springlocks were disengaged, and falling into a crumpled heap of fur and metal on the floor. Unfortunately for Evan, that also meant he fell with it.
The impact with the freezing concrete knocked the wind out of him, and Evan wheezed for a moment, trying to catch his breath in the reigning dust and silence.
"Fuck." He coughed, and rolled over, pressing his forehead to the ground as he inhale a few stuttering breaths. Beside him, Fredbear was nothing but an empty-eyed heap, held together by nothing but the costume stretched over its pieces. "Fuck."
Evan took a moment, before pulling himself up, he shakily got to his feet, leaning up against the stage as support as he looked at the dismantled animatronic before him. It looked almost peaceful, the way it laid hunched over on itself. The two spirits attached to its body were silent now, neither Michael, nor Cassidy speaking up.
"God, that sucked." He mumbled to himself, and ran a hand through his hair. Sweat dripped down the back of his neck, and Evan shivered, rubbing his stump arm as he swayed a little on his feet. The silence was deafening, only broken by the thumping and muffled shouts from the other side of the door. (It was heavy, buzzing under his fingers, a weight bloated in his chest, a niggling in his brain pulling him up up up right out of his body)
He flicked his fingers absentmindedly, gazing blankly in the direction of the bear. Michael and Cassidy were probably inside that thing his mind whispered, something painful lurching forward inside him, and Evan whimpered, curling in on himself. His ribs hurt, his head hurt, his arm hurt where it had been grabbed, his whole body was just this sort of sore that came with his sickliness. It all just felt like too much.
(He should probably check for the corpses now, the thought was exhausting.)
The door burst open like a shaken soda can, Lizzie and Charlie rushing in.
"Evan!" His sister cried, and sprinted towards where he sagged against the stage. "Are you alright?"
He sighed, and leaned gratefully against her, letting himself become a dead weight against the support of his twin. " 'M fine Liz, just tired."
"It didn't hurt you, did it? I heard you scream?" She worried, helping lower him to the ground, scanning him from top to bottom for any sort of injuries. Evan waved her off.
"I promise Liz, I'm fine. It just roughed me up a little bit."
Charlie was by the limp body, poking it with the crowbar they'd used to break into the grounds on the first place. "Ev, you killed it? With a flashlight of all things?"
"There's failsafes on the springlocks, don't you remember when dad got springlocked? Uncle Henry added them in after the incident." He explained, trying to blink the wetness of his eyes. His heart was still pounding right about out of his chest at this point, and he locked his fingers with Liz's.
Charlie nodded at his words, and began to pry the head off. "We need to dismantle this thing, because I know I personally don't want it to come back to life while we're stuck in this fucking warehouse."
"Be careful," Evan called, letting Liz fuss over him. "There's bodies in there,"
Charlie made a noise of acknowledgement. "Do you know who it was?"
Evan nodded, the relief at finding Michael flooding the adrenaline. "A little girl named Cassidy. And... Mikey,"
She stopped in her movements, so did Liz.
"You're serious?"
Evan swallowed, throat feeling dry. "Yeah. Had a whole conversation with him."
Charlie set down her crowbar, and walked over to the twins, kneeling beside them. She wrapped them both up in her arms in a gently hug.
He choked on something that was sort of a sob, sort of a laugh. "Is it wrong that I'm happy? That--- That I'm relieved? I mean, there had always been a chance that he really had just run away... Does that make me a bad person?"
"Of course not," Charlie murmured back, rubbing his back, there were tears in her eyes as well, she'd always felt responsible for what happened, they all had, and some closure was better than no closure at all.
"Should we call the police?" Liz asked, staring at the limp animatronic that surely held the corpse of their older brother. "This is just the kind of thing we were hoping for, evidence to put dad away,"
Despite the string of disappearances in Hurricane during the eighties, nothing had ever been traced back to one William Afton. It was impossibly crazy that the man had gotten away with so much, but he was cunning, intelligent, and such a smooth talker. No one would ever suspect widowed William Afton, left alone to run a massive company by the sudden death of his business partner, and disappearance of his eldest child, he was too busy taking care of his twins, one who was an invalid, and his goddaughter. The people of their little town had sung his praises then, and they still did, and as William Afton became a household name in the field of advanced robotics and technology, so did the power weld.
Evan's father was a powerful man, he had so many important people under his fist that it was near impossible to find any evidence of his homicidal tendencies. He'd buried his past so completely, so thoroughly, that unless you had been there, it was practically impossible to find any evidence that anything had even happened in the first place. Hell, father had even aided in the searches for the missing kids, had lended out funds for search parties, hired private investigators for families, he'd even helped pay for funerals with empty caskets. It was sick, it made Evan sick to his stomach, the way those families had laid in suspense, the way he had laid in suspense in the wake of his brother's disappearance.
The three of them were lucky to know the truth of what had happened to all those kids, everyone else was not so lucky.
(They been looking for their brother for twenty fucking years, been trying to expose their father for just as long, god it was just horrible.) Evan just tried to hold back another sob.
"I think we'd just be busted for breaking and entering to be honest," He said and Liz laughed wetly beside him. "Dad's got this place locked down, there's no way any police would be able to get on the property before the everything here was removed from the premise, not to mention that he's definitely got some cops in town on his payroll."
Charlie hummed in response. "I'll open it up."
"Char, you don't have to," Liz began, but Charlie cut her off.
"It's okay Liz, I'm not gonna make either of you unearth the corpse of your dead brother, okay?"
"He was your friend too," She replied, and Charlie sighed.
"Yeah. He was my friend, and I let this happen to him. I couldn't protect him then, but the least I could do is help him now."
She stood up, and brushed off her jeans, grabbing the crowbar off the ground.
Evan watched blankly as she got to work, prying away pieces of the animatronic bear, wrenching the torso open.
Charlie was silent for a moment.
"They're here."
And inside the chest cavity was two bodies, a little girl with black pigtails, and Michael.
Evan broke out in a tearful grin.
They'd finally found him.
Michael was coming home.
Charlie discarded her crowbar, and took a deep, slow breath in.
Gently, she reached in and began to pull something up, a mop of dark hair covered in bruises and torn clothes, and Evan shakily got to his feet, dragging himself and Liz over to the bodies.
"Mikey?" She breathed next to him, and Evan smiled wetly, looking at his face. A dash of freckles across his cheeks, a crooked nose from getting into so many fights that never healed quite right, a cut over his eyebrow was still scabbed over, never getting the chance to heal.
He looked just like the day he disappeared.
(Just like the day he died.)
Evan cradled the body close to his chest, it looked like father had embalmed him before stuffing him into the suit, body preserved so perfectly, that it almost looked like Michael was just sleeping. Like he'd wake up at any moment and tease them for being such worrywarts.
"We found him." He was all he could say. It felt almost like an out of body experience, and it probably would have been, if not for the weight of the body pressing against his skin. This was Michael, this was all that was left of him.
Lizzie fell to her knees beside him. She wept into his shoulder, hands hovering over the body, unsure of where to put them, as if she were afraid he'd crumble to dust beneath her hands if she disturbed him.
Charlie knelt down beside Fredbear's open chest cavity, and began pulling out the other body.
"Meet Cassidy," He said. "Father's first victim."
Charlie frowned, and stroked what was left of the girl's hair. "I'm sorry it ended this way," She said to it, as if Cassidy could hear her. (And maybe she could, Evan didn't know the first thing about being a vengeful spirit after all.)
"What are we going to do with them?" Liz asked, she'd grabbed Michael's hand and held it close to her chest, stroking it with her thumb. "I don't want to bury Michael in the backyard."
They hadn't encountered too many bodies in their years of animatronic damage control, most of them had been recent disappearances, and those corpses had been dropped off at the cornoner's office or police department in the dead of night when no one was around to see the unintentional dirty work they ended up doing for their father.
"Take them home I guess?" Charlie responded, lying Cassidy's body out on the floor beside them. She looked like she was sleeping. "We're obviously not leaving Mike and I don't want to leave our girl Cass here to continue to haunt Fredbear." She kicked the thing of Evan's nightmares and spat on the ground. "We have a house now, and not just that shitty apartment. Our backyard can take a few corpses I think. And hey, if they start haunting the house, at least we'll have someone to take care of things when we're out killing robots."
Her words were spoken so crassly, but Evan could hear the true intent behind them. There really wasn't anywhere they could take the bodies, they were perfectly preserved and about twenty years old. Just dropping them off at a place where they normally would would draw too much attention, and even if it opened the cases up, they would just become dead ends again. At the same time, it'd give Cassidy's family closure on what had happened to their daughter.
"We can decide on the way home," He said softly, after all, they'd finally found their brother. Now, it was time to take him home.