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From the moment he opened his eyes, Evan Afton knew he was dead.
There was no big moment where that fact clicked, but rather a deep sinking feeling within his gut that told him all he needed to know. It swirled around, leaving Evan’s body shaking with weight he’d never felt before. It was crushing.
His head was splitting. Probably literally. Evan couldn’t see it, the blood on his hand being his confirmation as he went up to touch it.
He was in an inky black darkness. There was no sound, nor anything tangible in sight. He wasn’t even sure if the ground he sat on was real.
He didn’t know where he was. All he knew was he was dead and he was scared.
Was this all death was? Would he be doomed to float in the nothingness for the rest of all eternity? Or was this hell? Had Evan been bad enough to end up in hell?
He felt tears build up in his eyes as soon as the thought passed. He was crying again. He’d been crying when he died. When the bear’s jaw shut and-
He let out an ugly sob.
He was dead, stuck in the dark, probably forever, with nothing but his thoughts and his stupid, stupid tears.
His mind wandered. He thought back on his sister. Is this where she ended up too? Evan felt a lot more guilty about crying if that was the case. He shouldn’t be crying if this was something that happened to everyone.
Still, the tears persisted. Like they always did.
He thought about the horrors that plagued him at night. They couldn’t hurt him here, could they?
He thought about his father. His cold eyes, piercing into him, like he was nothing more than an itch he couldn’t quite scratch.
He thought about his birthday. Was it still his birthday? Had time passed since then? It didn’t exactly matter now that his death fell on the same day.
He thought about Michael.
He thought about his brother, lifting him up to the bear's open mouth with the help of his friends, laughing as he did, as Evan screamed in protest. He remembers the last thing he ever saw.
A quick glance of Michael’s face, shifting from amusement to abject horror as the bear's head clicked into place.
His brother had done this to him.
Evan wanted to be mad. He wanted to break out of this place just so he could scream at his brother one last time, demanding to know why he’d done this to him. Why had he killed him?
At least, that’s what he wanted to feel. All Evan truly felt was numb.
What was the point in being mad at Michael? It wouldn’t accomplish anything. His brother hadn’t meant to kill him.
Had he…?
Evan shook away the thought.
There was nothing to be done. Nothing to be done but sit in the darkness feeling nothing or everything at once. There was nothing-
Something caught his eyes.
A light growing brighter in the distance. Evan didn’t know if it had always been there or if it was just now appearing, but it didn’t matter. He desperately reached towards it.
And then he was in a room.
It took him a second to recognize the place, but as soon as he did, panic set in.
The animatronic storage room. Michael had locked him in here as a prank a few days ago. Said it’d help him get over his fear. It hadn’t worked, only leaving Evan more frightened.
But here he was, back in the room.
He couldn’t move.
No matter how much he tried, only his eyes seemed to have any semblance of movement. They dashed around as Evan desperately tried to find something that could explain him being back here. He was dead after all.
It took him an embarrassingly long time to spot it.
The glassy metal of the wall in front of him was polished just enough to double as a mirror. He could finally see himself in full.
If he’d had any air in his lungs, it would all have been knocked out at that moment.
Because the sight that greeted him wasn’t of himself. The eyes he was looking through weren't his own.
Rather, they were the eyes of Fredbear, sitting limp against the metal floor, blood coating his entire mouth.
***
As it turned out, there wasn’t much to do in Fredbear. After getting over his initial shock (that had lasted several days) he finally tried to see if he could do anything of substance while in the bear.
He still couldn’t move, the most he’d been able to accomplish being the occasional finger twitch, but other than that he mostly just drifted. He could return to the inky black void at will, jumping between being in control of the bear and floating around there, mostly to have some sort of variety. Sometimes he could even see through Fredbear’s eyes while still being in the void.
People didn’t really come into the room, but when they did, Evan tried whatever he could to get their attention, whether it was rolling his eyes around like a mad man or twitching his fingers as much as he could.
Most people didn’t notice him, going about their business and leaving without as much as a glance. Those who did usually just chalked it up to a mechanical error.
He was soon moved to another building.
Evan had felt a twinge of excitement when that first happened, maybe they realized he was stuck in here and were working on setting his soul free?
His hopes were crushed when they arrived, and he was simply dumped into another storage room.
There were other animatronics in there. The ones he knew his dad and Uncle Henry had been working on before his death. They looked even scarier in person, but at this point, Evan couldn’t bring himself to cry over it.
He mostly cried about real things nowadays, like being dead. He didn’t cry about scary monsters in the closet anymore.
He sometimes saw his dad or uncle Henry come into the room. He knew by now it was futile to try anything, so he just watched them.
Despite his death, his father seemed exactly the same. He’d actually caught him smiling to himself a few times. Such a sight was rare enough to make Evan uneasy.
He didn’t know how long it had been. Months? No, years. Nothing changed. He simply sat all alone with nothing but his thoughts, letting his mind tap in and out of awareness.
Everything changed in the summer of 1985.
Evan had been drifting as usual. Everything had been as usual. Nothing had tipped him away to what was about to happen.
His father had entered the room, decked out in his Springbonnie suit, five excitable children trailing behind, all with smiles on their faces.
By the end of it, the room was coated in crimson red.
Evan couldn’t do anything but watch as his father murdered them one by one. They were screaming, begging for their lives, but to no avail. A stab in the chest, a slash across the neck, none of them were safe from his fathers blade as the man he grew up with laughed at their attempt to escape.
Evan couldn’t think. He just watched, unable to tear his eyes away. The horror in his stomach would have made him hurl had he still been alive.
Yet, there was no surprise mixed in. He already knew his father was capable of this brutality, despite never having witnessed it before.
It wasn’t long until there was only one kid left. An Asian girl with black hair propped up in pigtails, wearing blue overalls and a yellow shirt. As the other kids ran around in terror, she had been the only one to attempt to fight back in whatever way she could.
Even now, as she lay on the bloodied floor, William kept her pinned with his leg propped up against her chest, a nasty gash across her leg, she glared at him with terrifying eyes, her gaze swirling with more hate than Evan had ever witnessed in his life, even more than William bore when he looked at Michael.
However, his father didn’t seem intimidated in the slightest, simply flashing her a manic smile as he twirled the knife around in his hands like a schoolgirl playing with the strands of her hair, before plunging it deep in her gut and twisting.
She let out a blood curdling scream, thrashing around in his hold to no avail as William removed the knife, and plunging again. And again. And again. All the while the girl screamed.
“ I hate you! ” She roared “ I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I HATE YOU! ”
Her words soon died down, leaving nothing but a corpse.
His father then went onto propping the five bodies up against the wall, before he casually cleaned up the bloodstains around the room, whistling to himself as he did. When he was done, he looked over the bodies.
He then picked them up one by one and stuffed them into the animatronic suits. Evan still watched, his own body having long since frozen up. His mind was so out of it that he barely registered it when his father walked over, holding the dead girl.
Something in Evan shifted as soon as her body touched the suit.
She was crudely pushed inside, the corpse sustaining obvious damage, but Evan wasn’t able to see it because of the overwhelming feeling of another presence within the suit.
Then William left, just like that, leaving nothing behind of the scene. The only indication of the tragedy that had occurred was the still bloodied Springbonnie suit he’d stuffed inside a closet in the back.
That and, for Evan, the figure of the shaking girl that now lay in the darkness with him.
***
She didn’t speak at first. Evan had worried that she’d lost the ability to. The wound on her stomach was still visible, though it wasn’t actively bleeding, confirming Evan’s suspicions about his own wound.
She didn’t even acknowledge him. He’d tried talking with her to no avail. Her eyes just stared on ahead into the dark, intense and wild, like she was seeing something Evan wasn’t.
It took her a few days to first speak.
“Where are we?”
The question caught Evan totally off guard. No one had spoken a word to him in almost two years at this point. The feeling was surreal.
But the girl's voice almost sounded meek, a stark contrast to her earlier cries of outrage. Despite her vigor, she was clearly scared.
“Fredbear.” Evan answered honestly. His voice should have been strained from lack of use, and yet he sounded totally clear.
The girl looked at him, her eyes dull.
“Fredbear?”
“Inside him.” Evan clarified, “I think I’m possessing him. Or- We’re possessing him.”
“Possession.” The girl deadpanned, “Right. And can Fredbear be moved?”
Evan shook his head, ”I tried. I could only move a finger.”
The girl just stared at him.
“And could I learn to move him more?”
Evan hesitated, looking down in consideration.
“I don’t know. Probably.”
The girl nodded, looking away from him, back into the void, her gaze darkening as she gritted her teeth.
She didn’t speak again for the rest of the day.
***
Her name was Cassidy.
When she had finally broken out of her quiet trance, she was actually very talkative. They’d exchanged names and Evan told her he’d been here for a lot longer than she had.
She asked him if William had killed him too. He just shook his head.
Neither of them gave a last name though, and Evan would soon find that to be a wise decision, because Cassidy was angry. Never before had he witnessed such pure hatred than he did when Cassidy spoke of his father. And she spoke of his father a lot.
“William Afton.” She’d mutter, venom in her voice, “I’m going to make him pay. I’m going to make him suffer for what he did to us.”
They’d both quickly come to the conclusion that the other kids must be possessing the other animatronics, though no matter what they tried, they couldn’t find any way to communicate.
So Evan was the only one to hear her ravenous speeches of hatred. She described all the ways she wanted his father to feel her pain and ten times more, sometimes using words and describing things Evan didn’t understand. And even if Evan understood, her words did nothing but scare him.
Cassidy didn’t know William was his dad. What if she found out and would take her anger out on him? He didn’t know the limitations of this place, and so far, neither of them had tried to hurt the other. Would she be able to hurt him?
Evan didn’t want to know. Despite his worries, he was selfishly relieved she was here at all.
He wasn't alone now. There wasn't just him and his thoughts on the cold floor of the storage room, but Cassidy was here too.
Somehow, he suspected she didn’t share his relief.
She hadn’t been alone. She didn’t understand the true weight of the crushing loneliness when there is no one but you for such a long time.
That’s not to say that Cassidy wasn’t lonely.
She never spoke of family, but she talked about missing her friends. A notion that was even more frustrating as they were technically right there .
Evan couldn’t relate. He didn’t have friends. And he wasn’t even sure if he could call Cassidy one.
And Cassidy only really seemed interested in him due to the circumstances they found themselves in.
In many ways, She reminded Evan of Michael.
They shared a temper, and not to mention the pure hatred for his father. They both seemed to only hang around Evan out of convenience, and many of their words made Evan want to curl up into a ball and cry.
But Evan also sensed an aura of protectiveness from Cassidy, not dissimilar to Michael's own. She’d taken one look at his bloody form and decided he was worth protecting, at least to an extent.
He’d seen it during the massacre. How Cassidy hadn’t been afraid to put herself between his father and the other kids, daring to growl at him.
But the aggression could turn towards him in an instant. He could easily tell.
She once spoke of wanting to hurt everyone close to William just to get at him. Evan hadn’t been able to hold back his tears that time around. She hadn’t questioned it.
***
“How did you die?”
She knew he’d been watching as she got killed. There was no reason to recount that. And yet, it took her so long to ask Evan.
“...It was just supposed to be a prank.” Evan mumbled a reply, “It was my brother.”
Cassidy’s eyes went wide.
“Your brother killed you!?”
Evan nodded though he quickly clarified himself.
“He didn’t mean to.”
Cassidy just stared at him blankly for a while.
“What did he do?”
Evan breathed and averted his gaze. He didn’t exactly want to talk about the bite. The mere thought of it still managing to make him shudder and tense up. The bone-deep terror he’d felt as his head made contact with the bear's jaw. Michael and his friends laughing at the pathetic sight of him. The sound of the bear’s jaw, before it bit down.
He’d never seen his brother's face so shocked. He would have thought it funny, hadn’t it been for the circumstances.
“He had just wanted to scare me…” Evan said, “Not kill me.”
Cassidy huffed, “Good job for him then. I’m guessing he succeeded.”
Evan nodded, his eyes trailing to the light, catching a glimpse of the dark storage room.
“I was so scared.” He admitted, “He knew I was scared of animatronics. He said he was just trying to make me get over it…” he pursed his lips in consideration.
“I mean I guess it… sort of worked… I’m not scared of them anymore.”
Worked in a sense that he was now trapped in one, and the fear of never getting out outweighed any fear he’d had for the robots. Besided, his night terrors were fully gone. Seems those had only been confined within the walls of his room.
Cassidy looked at him like he was crazy, she shifted her position, leaning towards him with crossed arms.
“I’m sorry, are you defending him? He killed you!”
“I’m not defending him…” Evan said, eyes glued to the floor, not wanting to meet Cassidy’s intense stare, “Honestly, I don’t know how to feel about him…”
“He killed you. You should hate him.” Cassidy stared blankly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“I want to hate him.” Evan admitted, “But I don’t think I can. He was still Michael… he wasn’t always like… that…”
“That how?”
“Cruel.”
Her gaze turned distant for a second, like she was recalling a memory of her own, before she spoke again.
“Okay then, I’ll bite.” She sat down, legs crossed, “What was he like before?”
Copying her moves, Evan sat in front of her.
“He was more of a dad than dad was.” He admitted, “I of course only thought of him as my brother, but there were a lot of things he did that I know dad was supposed to do.”
“Such as?”
“He taught me how to read. He always made dinner. He picked me up from school- Well, my sister used to also do that, but she’s not…” he trailed off. Cassidy’s eyes narrowed.
“And so?” She asked, “He just one day decided you weren’t worth his time anymore and killed you?”
Evan shook his head again. He wanted to tell Cassidy that her words were hurting him, but he got the sense that she wouldn’t care. No one ever cared.
“I don’t know what changed.” Evan admitted, “But it was so quick. Maybe it’s just because he was getting older? He started wearing this scary Foxy mask around and jumping out to scare me all the time. It was around the same time I started getting nightmares.”
“Nightmares?”
Evan curled in on himself a little further, “They were so scary. I was in my room and there were animatronics all around me and I couldn't do anything and sometimes they would attack me.” His voice cracked as he spoke, “I tried to tell Michael but he wouldn’t believe me. Sometimes I even woke up hurt after it. Sometimes I think they might have been real.”
Cassidy stayed quiet, observing him. She didn’t seem to know what to say. She was a tough girl after all. He was sure something ridiculous like monsters in his mind wouldn’t scare her like it did him.
“Damn.” Was all she said, “You still get those?”
Evan shook his head.
“They stopped after I died. And it’s not like we can sleep here anyways…”
Besides, he likes to think that even if he did, he would have gotten over them by now. The things that he’s seen and had happened to him were way scarier anyway.
Cassidy hummed, “True. Don’t know why I asked.”
Silence befell them. It wasn’t awkward- Evan doubted they were capable of having awkward silences- but rather the two of them simply did not have more to say.
Cassidy’s eyes were glued to the dark ground, looking deep in thought, while Evan stared at her. Neither of them minded when they did that, as they were arguably the most interesting thing around anyway.
He thought back on her words, mulling them over in his head and feeling his gut twist up as he did.
Had Michael wanted to get rid of him? Was that really it? Evan always tried not to be too much trouble for his brother, but he could see how he had been failing at that task in the days before his death.
Was that really it?
No, the horrified expression on Michael’s face before the world faded to black couldn’t have been a lie- it just couldn’t!
He’d refuse to believe it. At least until he saw Michael again.
If he ever saw Michael again.
Would father kill him too? Evan knew their dad wasn’t exactly fond of the eldest and at the display of cruelty he’d shown while slaughtering Cassidy and her friends, he wouldn’t be surprised if he did.
…he didn’t want to think anymore.
He kept his eyes firmly on Cassidy, blocking out any new thoughts that may come his way.
He saw her mouth form a considerate pout, seeming confused for a second, before her brows furrowed deeply.
Her eyes flashed with recognition.
“You didn’t actually tell me.” She said hesitantly, “You just said you died in a prank. But how did you die?”
“Oh.” Evan breathed. He’d hoped that Cassidy would just ignore that little detail, but it seems she was curious enough to ask anyway. But the way she was looking at him couldn’t help but make Evan shudder.
He ignored it, instead taking a deep breath of nothing before speaking.
“It was my birthday party…” he began, “Dad wanted it to be at Fredbear’s, even though I didn’t want it. Michael was there with a few of his friends.” He nervously fiddled with his thumbs, trying to distract his mind from the words he was actually speaking. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant memory.
“In the middle of the party, Michael and his friends put on these animatronic masks- Michael was wearing the foxy one- and started saying a bunch of mean things to me-” Cassidy let out a huff, but her expression remained stagnant, “-and then they picked me up and put my head inside Fredbear. And it…” he trailed off for a second, his shoulders tensing.
“It bit down on my skull. I died. And now I’m here.”
Quick and to the point. He hoped the subject would be dropped now.
Though even if it was, he suspected they’d probably circle back to the topic at some point, as there wasn’t exactly much to talk about most days.
Unfortunately, he didn’t get his wish.
Cassidy’s expression was unreadable as her eyes bore into Evan, her glare piercing, like she was looking right through his eyes and into his brain. She opened her mouth and spoke.
“You’re Evan Afton.”
His blood went cold.
Her tone was flat, carrying little to no emotion, and yet, Evan could tell what she was feeling.
She didn’t need vocal confirmation. His silence was telling enough.
She breathed a laugh.
“You are, right? I mean, who else could you be?”
There was a new glint slowly emerging in her eyes as she stared Evan down, not dissimilar to what Evan saw when she spoke of William.
Despite knowing it was too late, he still tried to backtrack.
“N-No!” He stammered, wincing at just how guilty he sounded, “I don’t even know who that is!”
Cassidy scoffed.
“Don’t give me that shit, everyone knows what happened!” She breathed a manic laugh, “How didn’t I realize it sooner! Of course you're him! Poor Evan Afton, taken from us too soon. Willam Afton’s dead little son. It’s all people talked about the whole summer!”
Evan felt like he’d forgotten how to breathe (ironic, consider he wasn't even sure if he needed to breathe) as terror made its way through his body. Cassidy looked like she’d double down in a heap of angry laughs any minute as her gaze stayed firmly on Evan’s now cowering form.
He was the son of her killer after all. And he’d hid it from her.
She must understand why he did it, right?
No, Evan was sure that even if she did, she wouldn’t care.
William Afton and her hatred of the man was like Cassidy’s lifeline. It was all she seemed to be capable of focusing on no matter what other options were presented in her wake.
In her mind, Evan had officially become an enemy.
“ I don't like him! ” Evan quickly clarified, all secrecy thrown out the window, “I promise, I never wanted him to hurt anyone-”
“And so he’s done this before?”
“What?”
“You knew he was capable of what he did?” Her voice was as cold as ice, “And you didn’t do anything?”
“I-” Evan said shakily, trying to quell down his panic. Cassidy almost seemed ready to attack him, barely keeping herself back. What was she seeing? Now that she knew Evan’s father, had she convinced herself that he was in turn a part of that?
“What was I supposed to do!” He cried in return,
“Kill him!” Cassidy yelled back, teeth clenched like the answer should have been immediately obvious, “You should have killed him!”
Evan shook his head in shock, “I couldn't have- I didn’t know- You couldn’t even fight him! Cassidy please, I-”
Evan, in an act of desperation, tried pushing himself towards her, desperate to make her listen to him. He wasn’t his father, and he needed her to know that! He’d never agree to anything his father had done!
Unfortunately, his attempt only made her whole body recoil in appall as she yelled.
“ Get away from me! Don’t you dare touch me! GET AWAY! ”
Evan scrambled back. Cassidy’s form looked so wild with emotion that she seemed ready to pounce and tear his throat out any second.
He put as much distance between the two as he could, before she seemed to relax just a little. With one last snarl, she turned her back to him, looking on into the vast nothing.
***
Cassidy was quiet again.
It was different this time around.
It was clear that last time it had been out of pure shock rather than anything else. She was taking the time to truly process the situation and her untimely death before she was physically able to acknowledge Evan.
This time, her intentions were quite clear.
She just sat as far away from Evan as the void allowed, and stared, her muscles tense, occasionally shaking from barely contained emotion.
Her distance was on purpose. If she gave into her emotions, she would surely attack him.
Evan was fully lost on what to do. They were stuck together, so there was no way to truly get away from her and give her the solitude she so desperately craved. Evan didn’t even want to imagine how she was feeling.
Despite the situation being so painfully far out of his control, he felt like he’d messed this all up. The fact he was his father’s son being somehow a fault of his own, and something he should have been able to control.
“You should have killed him!” That’s what she’d said.
How could he have? Father was big and Evan was small. His aura dominated whatever room he occupied and one look at his cold, dead eyes and you knew you were in danger. Evan lived with danger every day of his life. He understood it better than Cassidy ever could.
And yet, she hated William more than he did.
William never particularly cared for him. Evan knew that quite well. On William’s clear hierarchy of his children, Evan fell smack-dab in the middle.
Overlooked. That's what he was. His father never seemed sure of what to make of him, and therefore, he was ignored.
So instead of living in a house with his father and siblings, he lived with his siblings and a man that he knew was capable of hurting them and he could do nothing about it.
How could Cassidy ever expect him to stand up to someone like that, let alone kill him?
Evan wasn’t even capable of fighting back against bullies.
So he waited. Waited for Cassidy to say something. More mean and nasty words were preferable to the air of suspense that lingered over them.
Evan wasn’t even sure how long he’d been waiting for her to speak.
He sometimes let himself see through Fredbear’s eyes while waiting. His eyes would drift over to the other animatronics in the room, noting how long it had been since they had been taken out to perform.
Maybe they had found the bodies? Evan found it unlikely as he could feel the presence of Cassidy’s decaying corpse still in the suit and if the police had checked the other animatronics, there was no reason for them not to check this one too.
He moved the fingers around now and then, still being unable to do more. Cassidy had tried, clearly determined to get the suit to move around and perhaps hunt down his father.
She’d failed, of course. The suit had no skeleton. It couldn’t stand.
So there was nothing the two of them could possibly do but linger in their solitude.
‘At least they had each other.’ Evan had thought. He wasn’t even sure if he could hold onto that as a source of comfort anymore.
It had been days (maybe even weeks? Time in the suit was weird.) since she’d found out about his name, that Evan finally noticed something.
He’d been letting himself float, attempting and failing to mentally tap out when soft noises emerged from the other side of the darkness.
Trailing his eyes over to the source of the sound, he was once more met with Cassidy’s hunched form. She was shaking again, nothing new, but there was a clear difference this time around.
It took Evan only a second to realize those were sobs.
Eyes widening, his feet firmly on the not-ground again. He knew Cassidy wanted to be left alone, but so far she hadn't cried. She’d make occasional noises of frustration, sure, but never cried.
Evan knew crying. He’d spent half his time alive shedding tears. She was clearly distressed.
Evan didn’t know how to react to her like this. Cassidy had been good at not letting many things faze her like this. She got angry easily, but not sad.
And yet, each sob she broke was filled with more misery than Evan had ever heard before.
He wasn’t exactly sure what he was thinking, but his feet moved on their own.
If Cassidy heard him approaching, she didn’t show. Lost in her own world of misery, Evan stopped right behind her, keeping his hands to himself, lost on what his next move was to be.
He was the reason she was crying, right? It’s because she was stuck in here with the son of her killer.
Still, he felt like he’d let this go on for far enough. The suspense was gearing to be even worse than the actual confrontation anyway.
Might as well break it. For Cassidy’s sake more than his.
“Hey-” he started, cutting himself off as he noticed Cassidy’s flinch at his words.
She didn’t immediately yell at him to go away though. Maybe she was too tired to? Evan wouldn’t know, so he decided not to question it.
Slowly, he took a seat next to her, properly looking at her face for the first time in days.
Her eyes -as expected- were red and puffy from tears, with some unwiped snot hanging from her nose. She looked like a mess, which was even more impressive considering she already walked around with a gaping stomach wound all day.
She looked over to him when he was seated, face immediately scrunching up in anger before breaking eye contact quickly and looking down at her feet.
What could Evan even say? Asking her what was wrong felt counterproductive. He already knew what was wrong. What was wrong was sitting right next to her..
And also, they were dead. That was enough reason to cry.
“I hate this.”
Her voice was below a whisper. Barely even a breath. Yet it trembled, emotion dripping from every syllable.
Evan just hummed in agreement.
“I don’t forgive you.”
Evan hummed again. “That’s okay.” He wasn’t even sure what she was referring to. The fact he was his father’s son or that he didn’t tell her. Either way, he decided not to push it.
For some reason, that seemed to be the wrong thing to say as Cassidy snarled, her form hunching even more. With gritted teeth, she turned to face him again.
“What’s wrong with you?” She demanded, though it sounded a lot more pathetic than she probably intended. “Why are you acting like this?!”
Her accusation caught Evan completely off guard. He thought he had been approaching the situation correctly, but none of Cassidy’s reactions made sense to him. He’d tried to make it clear she was the one with power in this situation, and yet she was still unhappy with something.
“I’m sorry…”
“Don’t apologize!”
“I-” Evan was left thoroughly speechless. Maybe there was just no way to remedy this? So he stayed quiet.
Cassidy angrily wiped away the snot from her face, attempting the same with her tears with less success.
“I don’t get you…” she said, “Why do you have to be nice? You're supposed to be evil.”
“I am..?”
“Yeah!” she exclaimed, jabbing a thumb in his chest, “You're his son! You have to be evil!”
That was one request Evan knew he couldn’t fulfill. He wasn’t a malicious person. The most evil thing he'd ever done was yell at someone who, in his opinion, had deserved it.
But her words seemed to make something click into place in his head.
Just as he wanted to hate Michael, Cassidy wanted to hate him.
And yet, like him, she couldn’t.
She wanted him to be bad so she could hate him. He was the closest thing to William she had and he was sure she would love nothing more than to have a smaller version of his father to torment until she went for the real thing.
But Evan wasn’t like his father. He was a scaredy-cat and a crybaby. He wasn’t intimidating, or manic in any way. He was just Evan Afton, the boy who died tragically at Fredbear’s in the summer of 1983.
“Oh…” he breathed, and it was clear that Cassidy understood.
She sniffled again, pouting, “Do something bad.” she weakly demanded, “Hit me or something.”
Evan shook his head. She just scoffed weakly.
“I hate that you're nice. I hate it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing!” She snapped, uncurling herself and putting her hands on the ground behind her to not fall over, “I’m being unfair! You should be angry at me! Ugh-” she shook her head in frustration, “I know you didn’t choose to be his son. He probably tortured you or something and I’m getting mad!”
Evan weakly shrugged, “He didn’t torture me…”
“Not the point!” She moved to sit on her knees, directly facing Evan, “I’m going to refuse to apologize until you get mad at me!”
Uncomfortable with the declaration, Evan frowned.
“I don’t want to get mad with you though…”
His words seemed to make something snap within Cassidy. She let out a scream as she buried her head in her hands, the tremors from and sobs from before returning with full force. She cried into her hands, like Evan’s refusal to be mad with her- to do something, anything, that might link him back to his father was a personal betrayal.
At a loss, and unable to bring himself to just sit in silence as Cassidy cried herself out, he put out his hands, offering a hug. What he didn’t expect was for the girl to all but fling herself into his hold, wrapping her arms around him and gripping onto his back like a lifeline, as she buried her face in his shoulder.
“ I don’t want to be dead! ” she cried, “ I want to be alive! I hate this! ”
Evan didn’t make any sounds besides the occasional hums of acknowledgement. After a while, she started to calm down, if just a little. Her breath was still ragged, and she didn’t seem to have any intention of letting go of Evan any time soon.
“...was he a bad dad?” she whispered.
He was. But saying it out loud still felt overwhelming. He’d never actually done that before.
“He wasn’t a good one.” Evan settled on. That seemed to satisfy Cassidy though, as she let out a wet chuckle.
“Good. Then we can both hate him together right?”
Involuntarily, Evan gripped her a little tighter.
He knew what Cassidy wanted, but he’s not sure if he could give it to her.
Cassidy wanted his father dead, but more than anything, she wanted William hurt. The raw determination Cassidy had for that goal could not be overstated. It was clear that her seething hatred was all that kept her going. If she didn’t have that, she would break.
Evan didn’t want her to be hurt, but either option seemed to lead her towards a bad destination. Cling onto her hatred of William and let herself get consumed by it or give up and let herself fall into misery.
Evan swallowed as he supplied his answer.
“Yeah… we can.”
“Good…” Cassidy breathed quietly, “Good…”
She untangled herself from Evan’s hold, but kept one of her hands atop his shoulder as she used the other one to wipe away what little remained of her tears.
“I can trust you to be with me then, right Evan?” she asked, “We're in this together now. We’ll make your father- my killer- pay.” she chuckled, “Heck, maybe we could even give your brother what’s coming to him too!”
Evan shook his head, “Let’s not with Michael. But…” he swallowed. Truly, all he wanted was to pass on. Get out of this broken suit and find his way into whatever afterlife might await him.
But that wasn’t an option as long as the two of them were still together like this. So with no conviction and a tremble in his voice, he answered.
“Yeah. You can trust me.”
Cassidy smiled.
“I promise you Evan. We’ll kill him. We’ll hunt him down and we’ll kill him. And then we’ll find a way to bring him back and kill him again.”
Evan dully nodded as Cassidy removed her hand and stood up. All her earlier woes seemed all but gone, with nothing but pure determination and resolve replacing it. Evan knew she’d be the one calling the shots now. She would make that suit move no matter what. Even if it destroyed both of them.
Better to just go along with it. It’s not like his father didn’t deserve it.
She put out her hand to help Evan up.
He took it, letting her strong grip hoist him to his feet, before turning to the light in the void, ready to try and fail once more to get the suit moving and find her killer.
She would succeed one day. They both knew that. But for now, they could only try and wait.