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He isn’t supposed to be awake, Freddy dimly noted.
The mechanics had come in several hours ago for their weekly maintenance check, putting all of the animatronics into sleep mode. Freddy had woken up just 5 minutes after the mechanics were done, talking amongst themselves.
Freddy was used to being the first person awake, his motors kicking into action the moment the mechanics were done with their check-up and staying still for several hours until the workers came in.
(He doesn’t know why his circuits agree on waking up the moment everything was done, it wasn’t really a good idea to dwell amongst his thoughts for several hours at a time like this.)
Today was not a good day.
(He struggles to say bad, when he supposedly doesn’t know what a good or a bad day is.)
It wasn’t the children that were worse than usual. No no, the children were amazing today, all sweet smiles and sticky fingers that tried to reach out and touch him, happily pulling him into their festivities.
Today was a good day, but something just felt wrong.
(Maybe because it was their anniversary today, maybe because the sweet smile of the picture in Bonnie Bowl was more painful than it should have been.
Maybe because one of the older teens who came with their sibling showed him a picture of all four of them, singing and dancing like the grand opening of Freddy’s Fun And Games had only opened a week ago.)
Freddy sits there for an hour, maybe more, and drowns in his own thoughts until it becomes too hard to keep his mouth shut.
“I don’t know if I should be angry or not.” Freddy spoke to the empty air. No one was awake, but maybe it was better that way, where no one could hear his personal thoughts and remain thinking of him as some happy-go-lucky bear.
“I don’t know if I am angry, honestly.” They were asleep. It doesn’t hurt if he just spoke to no one, right?
“I feel like all three of you took everything from me.” Freddy said quietly “Well, maybe not. But what does it mean when I’m the mascot and I’m not even happy?”
A mascot. The mascot since the beginning of this entire company. “Freddy Fazbear, the one animatronic that’s ever existed. Yet I can’t find myself to be happy. Do I know what happiness even feels like?”
You do , his mind supplied, Remember when they made you a cake for your birthday?
“They meant everything to me, you know?” Freddy decided on “Foxy and Bonnie, I mean. Chica too, once upon a time.”
“They used to make me birthday cakes, when all the workers had left for the day. On the same day, every year, they’d all gather into the kitchen and attempt to make a birthday cake. It always ended up underbaked, the frosting was too thick or too liquidy, but it was always the best cake I could ever have, because they made it for me.”
(The memory comes to him all at once. Foxy, Bonnie, Chica, smiling at him sheepishly as they showed him his cake. He doesn’t know how long they spent baking it because it seemed to have caved in on itself, the little candles had never looked so small, nearly falling into the liquid frosting pit at the center of the cake.
“This is our worst one yet, ain’t it Fred?” Foxy chuckled sheepishly, waving his book around.
“How do we always get the cake wrong?!” Chica whined, a pout rising as she crossed her arms.
“We really need to learn how timers work, we always take it out too often!” Bonnie laughed.
Freddy smiled, “Please do not fret.” He said “We will enjoy this cake all the same.”
And they did, the batter at the center was still raw, the candles were fully melted into the too-sweet frosting, but Freddy thought the cake was delicious.)
He wonders if it’s just nostalgia, inflicted upon him because of the anniversary.
“I don’t think anyone remembers them anymore, especially not Foxy. No one remembers, except me.” Freddy looked at the ceiling of the maintenance room “Maybe Roxy did. But I doubt it.”
“Foxy was, in my eyes, a bright, bright flame. He used to be a pirate, when pirates were popular. I thought he was like those bulldozers you sometimes heard about.” Freddy laughed slightly. “He was a rather.. blunt man, not too popular because he was-” how did they describe him again? “Rough around the edges, but I relied on him to tell me what he always thought, no matter how harsh it sounded, I always knew it came from a place of love, that he never meant all of what he said.”
“He loved sea shanties, it wasn’t even because they coded him to love them, he genuinely loved shanties with all his might, sang them at all opportunities. If you were resting, 9 times out of 10 you’d wake up and hear his ‘Dum de dum dum’. It used to annoy Bon to no end.” Freddy chuckled.
It wasn’t even a lie, Bonnie used to be annoyed whenever he woke up because of Foxy’s singing, complaining some days that he sang too loud and Bonnie couldn’t sleep well. But if Foxy even stopped for more than 5 hours, it was Bonnie who shuffled to Foxy, asking if he was okay and asking him to sing the bunny to sleep.
And then sea shanties became a sore spot in all of them, to the point where none of them could sing his song after the fox malfunctioned.
“And then he…” Something got stuck in his voice box, he waited until it left before he thought of speaking “Roxy has his eyes, it was a little different, yes, but his eyes all the same.”
Speaking of Roxy, she was slumped next to him, her eyes were wide open, those gleaming yellow eyes staring into nothing. There had been upgrades to her again this time, now she could see movements through the walls.
(Foxy would have loved that upgrade, he’d have ran around, bragging for all of them to hear about how cool he was now.)
“Bonnie…” Freddy struggles, something tries to leave his eyes, but he has nothing that can be called tears.
“I loved him, I think.” He said, a quiet confession that rang loud in his ears “Larger than life itself, he told me that we could be anything we wanted, the workers couldn’t stop us if we tried hard enough.”
That was a lie, Freddy knows. But Bonnie made it so easy to believe, when all they had was each other, when Chica was a shell, Roxy was making it big and Monty was angry at the world. Them, the rabbit and the bear, two animatronics against a world that became bleaker by the day.
(“Do you think that if we tried hard enough, we could run away?” Bonnie whispered. They were sitting on a stool, talking to each other after hours. Freddy’s cake was on the table, smaller than ever, this time overcooked with thick frosting.
It was a conversation they had thousands of times by now. Well, not really, Bonnie had only brought it up 200 times, 201 now.
“I don’t know, there’d be a lot we’d have to bring.” Freddy replied, he couldn’t help but entertain his bunny’s thoughts every time he brought it up.
“Maybe, but imagine, we could run off into the woods, live our lives as freely as we wanted, nothing to stop us from just moving to another continent entirely!” Bonnie said, looking at him with glimmering eyes.
Freddy softened at how hopeful he was “I don’t know, Bon, there’s a lot stopping us, you’d just run off to all the humans around us and scare them.” He couldn’t help but tease.
Truthfully, there were a million things they would have to worry about if they ever stepped foot outside. Their parts breaking, the humans, potentially running from police, not to mention that they don’t have a geographical map built into them to know where they would go.
But seeing Bonnie so excited by the thought of exploring, Freddy kept those thoughts to himself.
“Hey!” Bonnie huffed, glaring at Freddy lightly “I’ll have you know that I would never scare the humans! They’d find me adorable and I can never scare them!” His rabbit ears flopped to the side dramatically.
“Don’t know, Bon Bon” Freddy smiled “We’re quite tall.”
“Hey, Boo Bear!” Bonnie huffed “You’d be taller than I am if it weren’t for the ears!”
Freddy leaned close to the rabbit, if he had a heart it would have swelled with how comforting this felt “I know.”
They sat in silence for a long time.
“...If I ever did want to leave, would you join me?” Bonnie said quietly.
Freddy stayed silent for a long time, their sales were rising with each passing day, every child that graced the Pizzaplex knew of the bear and bunny duo, how close they were to each other. They’d probably make national news if they ever left but…
“I would.” Freddy said, he was never able to lie to the rabbit. “I’d carry all the parts and we’ll leave, put everything into a van and run away where no one could find us.”
Just them, a bunny, a bear and the remains of their family against the world. It’s a nice thought to entertain , Freddy thought to himself as Bonnie silently leaned into him.
Their dreams never came true in the end, and the cakes he ate per request never tasted so sweet again.
If Freddy tried hard enough, he could trick himself into thinking Bonnie was running in a meadow somewhere, happy and free from the Pizzaplex instead of in the trash under the Pizzaplex.)
“He used to call me Fred, and when we were alone he called me Boo Bear.” His head brought memories of a time long gone. “When it was my birthday, he’d spend time making a cake for me, on rare occasions it was a perfect cake. Most times it was either undercooked or overcooked.”
“We had no one but each other, by the time Monty came into the picture, Bonnie was more than what everyone said he was, he made me feel like we were more than what people say.”
The adults thought they were scary, the thought of how robots could develop close bonds with each other and act so incredibly human while children didn’t know better, just thrilled that the large bear and bunny were so friendly and nice.
(Freddy once heard staff gossip, telling each other they saw posts about how realistic Freddy and Bonnie were, how close they acted to each other and how realistic they were.
“How scary, to think these guys might be able to develop emotions.” They said, it hurt.)
“I don’t know how to feel about you all now.” Freddy decided to say after a long moment of silence.
There were a thousand words he could say, a million things he thought of, how much pain he felt when he looked at them, his own feelings of separation from the people he had the choice to call friends.
But he’s tired, he’s angry, he misses his friends , so he says:
“I think I hate all of you. I don’t think I’ll ever stop hating you.”
And that was the crux of it all, wasn’t it? A hatred built up from decades of difficulty, of inner turmoil and words he can’t reply to. Hatred, a gift given by the world, the only thing that separates him and his friends.
No matter how much he denies it, no matter his profesional feelings and his denial. He truly hates the people around him. No Bonnie to rely on when nights are difficult, no Foxy to release his thoughts on, no Chica to cheer him up. There’s only him, in a world that robbed everyone he loved.
“I hate Roxy for replacing Foxy, I hate Monty for destroying the one person I could rely on just for something as simple as fame, I hate the person Chica became, I hate everyone for… many things.” Freddy stared at the floor, at his feet and his batteries.
“I wonder if I could tell you I hate you, without trying to justify how I feel.”
Only for Roxy and Chica, he thought. Because it wasn’t Roxy’s fault she was born to replace a man no one remembers, it wasn’t Chica's fault grief changed her.
But it was Monty’s fault for destroying Bonnie for something like fame.
(It wasn’t just decades of hatred built up, it was grief and sadness that came along with iy, building up inside him without a way to leave.)
He heard the quiet sounds of the front gates opening and started powering into sleep mode.
“I wish I could just be a robot.” Freddy said quietly “Maybe then, I won’t have t…o…feel…this.”
He shuts off.
(When they turn him on again, Freddy acts like he didn’t just vent to no one. It was nice to admit things to himself, anyway.
And life goes on.)