Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You doing okay back there, Mike?”

At the sound of his name, Mike blinked out of his daze, dull blue eyes turning to look towards the front row of the car where Al had turned his head halfway to stare at him.

Around him, the chatter continued, no one either noticing or caring about the conversation spanning the entire length of the van.

It took a second for him to register that he had to reply, and even then he could only bring himself to give out a half-hearted grunt and a nod.

Fortunately, the older man seemed to take it for what it was, only pausing for a moment to blink before turning back to face the highway they had been traveling along for a short while.

Mike turned his gaze back to the window, ignoring Seth next to him and letting the trees lining the highway catch his gaze and drag it backwards endlessly, unable to keep up with the speed of the car as he tried to keep his mind off of their destination.

He couldn’t help his leg bouncing up and down or the clammy feeling of his hands clasped together between his knees, working off the churning feeling in his stomach as each minute they came closer and closer to Freddy’s.

Of course their mechanic company would be chosen. Of course Al would agree to do it for the extra money- he knew how much his employees needed more. Al was a cool guy, beneath that mean mug and stiff facial expressions.

A little blood and guts for an additional few thousand was a steal, really.

God, Liz was gonna be so pissed at him when he got home, and that’s only if he survived the first day without giving himself some kind of heart attack or some shit.

He clenched his hands together tighter, letting his fingers creak from the pressure.

No, that was stupid. He can’t even joke about that, not even in his head. If Mike died, what would happen to Liz?

Plus, the idea that he’d somehow die just because he was spending a week or two in a Freddy’s he had never even set foot in before was pretty stupid. Nothing in there was going to actively kill him, as long as he wasn’t being an idiot.

Like he had bee-

Mike gritted his teeth as he glared out at the trees, leg finally stopping in its bouncing as his nervous energy converted to the familiar sensation of frustration gripping his throat and clouding his chest.

It would be fine. He just had to keep his head down like always and do his work. The money would help. Liz needed more stuff now that she was in middle school.

The thought reassured him very little as he felt the large van slow, getting ready to turn off into the parking lot. It was on the opposite side of where Mike had been looking, and so with some trepidation, he let his head swing along with the car to catch his first look at the place.

This Freddy Fazbear’s was… different than he was expecting.

The sign on top of the building was an entirely different font, and Freddy looked different. Instead of the whole menagerie, it was just him. The rest had instead been relegated to being painted on the large windows of the place, through which Mike could already see kids messing around the main playroom while parents sat around with food and drinks at the tables.

The characters on the windows looked different too. Foxy was… pink, and the rest of the usual crew were all more slender and cheerful, with red cheeks to match. There were two more unknowns, some kind of black and white character who looked like a very revamped version of something Mike could barely remember and a little boy holding a sign and balloon.

It was all so familiar, yet incredibly different. They looked pretty childish to Mike’s eyes, way more so than the original four had looked. Thankfully, it didn’t look like they had tried to bring back either of the golden duo, though Mike wasn’t sure how they could possibly have spun that.

No amount of social bleach could get those bloodstains out.

The rest of the building was standard fare for a pizzeria, on the larger side, but an odd shape overall. The huge windows had mostly been for the entrance and a party room, making it harder to see what was in the rest of the building from the outside.

Not that it would be much of an issue soon, as within minutes they were all piling out of the van and grabbing their rolling tool chest and boxes from the free space around Mike’s legs and the back.

A feeling of nausea rose into his throat as he stepped closer with the group, staying near the back in his reluctance. It felt like if he swallowed too hard, or stopped making eye contact with this new, toy-like Freddy, he wouldn’t be able to hold in the bile.

The drawing’s blue eyes stared deeply into Mike’s own until he physically couldn’t hold it anymore, passing through the held-open door and letting it shut behind him with a sort of loud finality that made him jump.

Looking around, no one else seemed to have even noticed, so he forced himself to shake his hands out and run his fingers over some of the tools in his own box.

Wrench, screwdrivers, pry bar, ratchet set, allen wrench set, flashlight…

The familiar feeling of each tool as he identified them by touch alone gave reprieve to his anxious mind, and he found himself becoming less focused on how they still had the exact same carpeting in this location as all the others.

He could only see the children they passed by their legs, but it was enough to elicit an almost out of body experience. He could almost see their faces if he looked up from the carpet, recognize some of the regulars or kids he had once known as intimately as the skin that stretched over his own body.

It felt like walking down a row of graves, each stone too weathered to completely make out the words written, but recognizable enough as English.

Mike couldn’t help but wish he was at home right now, sitting in front of the TV with a snack in hand and ready for some mindless time to unwind. But instead he was walking through another Freddy Fazbear’s.

His life was a fucking negative feedback loop.

Eventually, they moved through the halls of the building until the group stopped near the turn of one, causing Mike to unslouch from his usual posture to see over the heads of his shorter coworkers.

Al at the head of the pack had stopped before a man in that same old day guard uniform, both bending over a piece of paper. The day guard, face still hidden by the hat, pointed to one of the doors to the left. Al nodded his thanks, and the guard pushed past the group to get back to the main showroom.

Unfortunately, the guard ran directly into Mike, colliding with his shoulder and causing him to jerk his toolbox backwards, dislodging his wrench and causing it to fall to the ground with a loud clang!

“Shit, sorry dude,” Mike forced himself to mumble, despite his annoyance at the guy hitting him. He threw a glance at the man who had paused to look at him as he bent towards the ground, finally getting a glimpse of his piercing silver-blue eyes as he did so.

A jolt of familiar guilt and terror struck his heart like a bolt of lightning, and he whipped around again to get another look at the man’s face.

The man had turned around and was heading back to the showroom, pace unhurried and hand waving off Mike with a dismissive snap of the wrist, leaving Mike half bent over his wrench with a racing heart and stupidly shocked expression on his face.

After a second, he forced himself to pick up the wrench, putting it back into his toolbox with trembling fingers.

He had been imagining things. Father was banned from FE premises, all of the Aftons were. There was no way he could be hired as a day guard there, it made no logical sense.

The reasoning didn’t stop Mike’s heart from beating in triple time, attempting to burst out of his chest. The feelings that he had once lived with every day would not dissipate as quickly as they had shot through him.

It was fine, everything was fine, he wasn’t a pathetic fucking kid anymore, cowering while he was screamed at. He was safe from him, at least at a Freddy’s.

…Wasn’t that the weirdest thing to think?

Looking ahead, he saw that everyone had already moved into the room, and he quickly went to follow. He made sure to slip into the room as quietly as he could to not add embarrassment to the barrage of emotions still whirling around in the maelstrom of his mind.

Yeah, that couldn’t have been Father. He didn’t even look like him.

From just the glimpse he’d gotten, the day guard had been a much older man. Way older than he’d ever seen William, and with wrinkles on his face and a salt and pepper beard obscuring half of it. The father he knew would have rather died than ever let his face retain a single whisker. The man had also been smaller than William, perhaps even shorter than Mike when he stood up straight, and his body was so… thin.

It must have been the pizzeria. Being somewhere so hauntingly familiar was making Mike hallucinate, which was really just what he needed right now.

He forced himself to tune in to what seemed to be a greeting from the local manager they had been hired by, some older guy Mike hadn’t caught the name of. He was wearing a more formal version of the usual normal Freddy’s uniform and holding a matching clipboard with his compatriot.

“-you for working together with Fazbear Entertainment to help keep the smiles on kids’ faces. Here at Freddy Fazbear’s, we value using our resources wisely, and so for that purpose we have, uh, hired you all to work on restoring some very important characters for future use by the company.”

The guy giving the speech droned on in a half-assed tone, obviously barely believing in the friendly schtick he was delivering through rote memory alone. His friend next to him, probably the regional manager based on the checkered suit he had the luxury of getting to wear over the tacky store uniform, silently read along with him on their clipboards.

Mike let his attention gloss over them, taking in the words and men but letting it only linger in his mind for a few seconds before it faded back out of his attention. Instead, he focused on the song that had been stuck in his head since he heard it on his radio clock this morning.

It hadn’t really been what Mike usually listens to, and Liz had mocked him for how melodramatic the lyrics were when he brought the clock into the kitchen for them to hear together, but something about the way the singer had laid out the verses had really resonated with him and he wanted to rotate it through his head a bit until he figured it out. If it helped him calm down a bit faster, then all the better really.

It was as the rambling guy was giving the company’s now-familiar glossed over explanation of what had happened to the animatronics that Reese nudged Mike in the shoulder, making him glare over at her.

“Look at that guy,” She unsubtly pointed to the regional manager with a joking grin, “He’s got bigger eye bags than you do, Mikey.”

He looked back at the older gentleman, squinting to get a better look at his face from across the room and half wondering if what he needed was glasses or more sleep.

Speaking of, the man was wearing a pair of glasses in a thin, round frame, magnifying his eyes and making the bags underneath look comically huge. Reese snickered next to him as he noticed, and he let a half smile form on his lips before it fell just as quickly with a growing sense of dread.

Because other than the thicker prescription, that face, hair, and warm brown eyes very clearly 100% belonged to Henry goddamn Emily, the one person in all of Hurricane, Utah that Mike would pay any amount to never be in the same room with.

He was standing right there, and he clearly hadn’t seen Mike yet, gaze still fixed on his clipboard.

Mike desperately gripped his toolbox in a punishing grip and slipped slightly behind Reese, trying to slouch further without making it look like he was crouching behind her like a creep.

She gave him a questioning glance, but quickly rolled her eyes and muttered something about easily frightened bunnies before turning back forward and stepping more solidly in front of Mike. He tapped her shoulder as thanks and she flipped him off behind her back.

He never should have come here. Two heart attacks in two minutes, and he didn’t think he could convince himself out of this one. After a minute, he peeked through her frizzy hair to see if he had been imagining things again, but the image of the man remained unchanged and true to his memory.

Henry began to look up, making Mike squat back behind Reese before he could be spotted.

“As my associate just explained, this is both a cleanup and a repair job,” Henry said, using the exact same voice and tone he’d always used when he was in work mode. Mike mouthed a curse, using his free fist to lightly smack himself in the head a few times.

It would have to be fine. Henry was literally the owner of the whole franchise- the man had no reason to be hanging around this specific location every day. He probably was just here to greet them, make them sign some NDAs, and then screw off for greener pastures.

As long as Mike kept himself hidden and made sure to sign his fake last name correctly this time, there’d be no reason for the two of them to be within two feet of each other, reducing the chance of recognition significantly.

He could do this.

Mike took a few deep breaths and tuned back into the speech, which seemed to have finally shifted into role management.

“It would probably be best if you have at least three to four teams and three different methods,” Henry was explaining, causing Mike to instinctively roll his eyes. Every corpo guy always thought he could direct them better than Mike’s actual boss, as if they weren’t hired for knowing how to do the job in the first place.

It felt weird to think that Henry was one of those people. Best not to dwell on it too much.

“Perhaps if you all on the left could focus on Freddy, who is our highest priority, and those on the right could see what is salvageable with Bonnie?”

As he pointed to each group, the mechanics shifted out of the way and moved slightly towards one of the decayed animatronics laying on the floor in the back of the room, thinning out the group they had been huddled in but not yet dedicating to the walk all the way to the animatronics.

Mike could feel sweat pooling beneath where his palm continued to keep a chokehold on the toolbox as he could hear Henry coming closer, not wanting to risk glancing over Reese’s shoulder.

“If you all could look at Chica, that would be for the best. Foxy is our lowest priority at the moment, and seems to have retained most of his features from his time in storage,” Henry’s voice rumbled.

Reese began to shuffle off to the side, leaving Mike to scramble to follow her as he looked up at where Henry’s voice had come from.

He was just to the right of where they had been standing, and Mike watched in slow motion as Henry turned his head to glance at the odd movement of Mike’s dash to follow Reese. After what felt like an eternity, brown met blue, and Mike felt as though his body was flash frozen upon eye contact.

A thousand different scenes flashed before Mike’s eyes, each containing those eyes staring at him through blinds, a smaller pair of glasses, squinted suspicious eyes, a raised eyebrow.

That same pair of eyes widened, and Mike swallowed painfully and reminded himself that he needed to be doing anything other than standing here slowly losing his ability to breathe. He forced himself to take a lungful of air and continued scrambling behind Reese, who sent him an odd look and Henry a raised eyebrow.

Henry remained frozen mid-word, clipboard held limply in one hand as the other slowly fell to his side.

Mike watched him, but he didn’t do anything other than stare.

The weight of his eyes bore into Mike like the accusing stare of thousands, a million questions and more clearly hanging behind them. He turned his gaze down to his toolbox after a few more moments of stunned silence from the older man, focusing on keeping his breathing and hands steady.

What a nightmare. Typical Michael luck.

Everyone in the room jumped as the sound of a throat clearing broke their attention off of the weird one-man standoff Henry was holding,

Al sent Henry one last sour look as he clapped his hands together. “Y’all heard the man. Focus on those three and take ‘em apart today. If anything needs more than a wipe down, bring it outside and we’ll get the powerwasher out from the second van when it gets here. If you find anything bigger than a tooth, come get me or Scott here and we’ll figure out where to go next. Make sure to wear your gloves.”

Despite the commands, everyone remained silent, and Mike could see people glancing back and forth between him and Henry while Mike refused to look back in that direction. Henry’s gaze was still a heavy weight on his shoulders, never having moved even after Al’s interruption.

“Move it!” Al’s shout woke up the room, and everyone moved more definitively to their assigned animatronic.

Mike followed Reese as quickly as he could justify, throwing on his black work gloves through sweaty fingers and finally placing his toolbox in the open space around the fallen animatronic.

The other three assigned to Chica stayed silent, thankfully not asking Mike any questions even as he kept slipping due to his shaking hands. He still noticed Reese throwing him looks, but he successfully kept his head down and focused on separating Chica’s arm padding from its endoskeleton.

It took until Mike had slipped off enough of Chica’s felt padding to be able to detach its arm for him to hear the unmistakable sounds of someone approaching, knowing the feeling of that gaze he was sure had never left his back coming closer.

His heart beat faster with every step, and his fingers itched with the urge to do something, anything to escape.

As he heard the beginnings of his name, he burst into movement, standing up with the arm and paddings in hand and a desperate smile thrown on, still refusing to look at the man now in front of him.

“Hey Al, I think this one’s pretty dirty, can I go put it outside?” He shouted across the room a little too loudly.

He didn’t wait for a response before rushing past where Henry stood, somehow managing to dodge the hand that reached for his shoulder without properly seeing it. The smile on his face stretched awkwardly as he forced it harder in Al’s direction, getting a gruff nod in response.

“Michael, please-”

“I’ll be right back!”

Mike turned to the exit of the room and walked out, heading back through the pizzeria with the parts in tow and sans a middle-aged man.

He made it all the way to the front room before he slowed his pace, finally convinced Henry wasn’t following him out of the room and taking in the showroom at a slower speed.

Now that he was looking, he could see the… toy-looking animatronics wandering around the space, interacting with kids in jerky movements and occasionally turning to scan the area. He hunched over Chica’s arm as Toy Bonnie looked over at him, nervous to have that gaze on him when he’s still technically banned from the pizzeria. Thankfully, it passed harmlessly, continuing to search the area before turning back to the kid in front of it.

What the hell was it looking for, anyway?

Mike, feeling comfortably anonymous with the amount of people in the room, took a second to actually look at the Chica arm in his hands, shuffling the large yellow pads to one hand.

Yeesh. That’s a lot of rust. Or, well, that’s what he hoped it was. It seemed like the animatronics might all need a wash today before any real work could be done.

Which meant a lot more reasons for Mike to be in and out of the room. Score. Maybe things really would work out for the best?

If Mike kept ignoring Henry in such an obvious way, he’d have to catch the hint eventually. In the past it had taken longer, but Henry was an adult. He could learn lessons. Who said that old dogs can’t learn new tricks?

Shit. He really might be boned. Goddamnit Michael, why do you always fuck up?

No, no, it’s okay. He just had to take things one step at a time. Keep avoiding Henry today, think of ways to do it better tomorrow. If the guy was even there tomorrow, which he might not even be.

Giving a last look around the play area, Mike noticed with a bit of confusion the lack of the day guard whom he’d run into earlier. Normally one was supposed to be in the main room at all times, or that’s what Mike remembered being the rules anyway, but there was no employee in the room. Not even at the prize counter, actually.

Well, maybe they were bumming it out in the back or the employee lounge. It's not like the kids or parents seemed to have noticed, and both of the managers were busy making Mike’s life difficult.

The day guard guy looked like he needed it anyway. Guy looked worse than Mike after an all-nighter nightmare buffet.

Once again calmed by his own reasoning and smiling at his own joke, Mike headed outside to put his gathered parts in the pile to be carefully stripped of wires and power washed.

Fortunately, Mike’s plan to avoid Henry for the day worked well. While Henry had tried to approach Mike multiple times whenever he was in the building or seemed to be alone, Mike was able to come up with a reason to vacate the area or join a group of his coworkers in what they were doing. He hadn’t had this much zest for work since he first started his job.

He occasionally got a quiet question or look from his coworkers to brush off, but they surprisingly played along. It probably helped that Mike had always been kind of a pathetic kid to them.

Seth had once complained that he manipulated everyone into activating their parental instincts, so it was about time that paid off for him instead of restricting his access to alcohol.

The five hours passed quickly, and Mike had never been so thankful for the stinginess of Fazbear Entertainment for wanting their team to only work during the less profitable evening time slot. It meant shorter shifts, which now meant a shorter amount of time walking around waiting for a surprise Henry to run away from.

After about three hours Henry had stopped, to be fair, but Mike could see him hovering around the play area and watching him every time he passed through. Considering he never saw the day guard again, he guessed Henry had sent him home for the day and ‘taken over’ his job.

Asshole. Whatever.

It was while Mike was on the shit job of sorting the collected screws into broken and reusable when he felt a presence come up behind him, causing him to jerk straight with the box and shout, “Guess I need Claudio’s help with some of these, I think he’s outside!”

“Mike.”

“Oh.” Mike instantly relaxed, turning to face that taciturn voice. Al stared back at him with a raised eyebrow, causing him to duck his head in embarrassment.

He knew his actions today were ridiculous, but he didn’t like being confronted about it. Let him stew in his self-hatred alone.

It only took a second for him to hear Al sigh, causing him to look back up at him. His face was still stern, but something in his dark eyes had softened a bit as they looked up at Mike.

“Are you really feeling up for this?” he asked, looking uncomfortably into Mike’s soul and making him glance away at his chin.

“…Yeah, yeah I am, I promise. I can do it.”

They fell silent for a bit, Mike fiddling with a screw in one hand.

He hated the feeling of disappointing someone. It made him feel sick to his stomach, causing the nausea he hadn’t noticed leaving to return like a stone in his throat, difficult to swallow around.

It took a few more seconds for Al to continue, though Mike’s empty hand remained clenched in a fist, nails blunted by the gloves he was still wearing.

“Well, I have a proposition for you.” Mike glanced up, unsure when his gaze had fallen to the ground. Al was still looking at him, face generally impassive but eyes more stoney than before. “I haven’t decided if you’ll like it or not, but consider it before we finish packing up.”

Ugh, that wasn’t that much time. Even now, he could see people collecting their tools and putting the finishing touches on reassembling the dripping wet animatronics. What a hardass. Mike could already sense this was something he really wasn’t going to like.

But it wasn’t really his choice, was it?

“Fine, what is it?”

Al’s mouth thinned. “Before today, the idea was being thrown around that someone would stay the night to work on some of the animatronics. Make the job go faster for some overtime pay. I had been considering offering it to you, considering your monetary needs, but now I’m not so sure.”

He swallowed, raising a hand to scratch the side of his neck.

When Mike had first gotten this job, he hadn’t really gotten away with the fake name for long. A day, really. Al was way more attentive to that kind of thing than Mike thought, and as he had been questioned it only took a few pointed sentences for Mike to realize that Al knew of Mike’s… history, too.

There had been a lot of arguing and accusations, but Mike needed this job. It paid enough to get what they needed without forcing Mike to apply for another one or leave Liz to raise herself.

After a few hours, Al had conceded, but with the stipulation that Mike be put on a trial period. If he tried any funny business, hurt someone, or stole anything, he would be fired and reported to the police.

That was two years ago, and somehow he was still in that trial period.

It was scary in the beginning, and every job they did made Mike wonder when he’d be accused, feeling the ever-present suspicion on his back like a painfully familiar cloak.

After a while though, he’d… forgotten about it.

Yeah, Al would remind Mike of it whenever he asked him to do an extra job no one else wanted to do, or when he gave him another task with the promise of extra pay, or when he occasionally gave Mike a homemade lunch for some reason, but it was kind of easy to let it fade into the background like banter.

This wasn’t banter. Mike had been acting shifty, and now he was on thin ice. The only reason he was still being offered the extra pay was because Al was still a really nice person, which hurt to think about.

He’d gotten complacent like an idiot. Fuck.

If he didn’t agree, Mike would probably lose his job. After all this time together, he was sure Al wouldn’t make up some kind of crime to call the police on him, but he didn’t have the time to look for a similar mechanic job and hope the hiring process went as well as it had this time.

Given the choice, Mike would never have agreed. Spend a whole night at Freddy’s? Maybe even a week? On top of that, working on the animatronics alone?

The only reason he’d let himself get near the things was by seeing them turned off and being bolstered by the presence of a dozen other people in the room. Mike wasn’t so sure where his courage would come from once the sun finished setting and the building emptied.

But he didn’t have a choice.

He put the screw back into the junk box, resisting the urge to chew on the inside of his cheek.

This is just the consequences of your actions, Afton. You need to get used to it already.

“The job’ll go faster, right?” If Mike could get anything out of this, it would be less time in Freddy’s.

Something flashed in Al’s eyes, too quick for Mike to identify, not that he was particularly good at reading people anyway. “Yeah, it would, if you do it well. Is that a yes?”

He was gonna regret this, he knows it. “Yeah it is.”

For a second, Al raised his eyebrows like he was surprised, confusing Mike. He must have read his face wrong. What was so surprising?

Al let out a sigh and put his hands on his hips. “Alright, I’ll put you down for it. You'll need to walk to the bus stop to get home tomorrow morning at 6 am, so you should see if you can get your own transportation for our time here. The walk to the bus stop is killer and I can’t make the drive to help you out.”

Mike huffed in the safety of his own mind, wishing he could cross his arms in annoyance without it possibly setting off Al and making him think his answer had turned into a no.

Despite everything, Mike liked traveling in the van with everyone else. It was like he was working himself up to being awake enough to do his job. The constant jeers and conversations didn’t really let him stew in his own mind for too long, today being the exception.

He didn’t have a car of his own either, which meant he would be biking the whole way. That was over half an hour of biking one way. He better get some buff legs out of all of this.

Plus, Mike didn’t have the money to take the bus every day. He would have to count the change he has on hand to make sure he doesn’t have to walk home today, actually.

“Fine. That works.”

Al nodded, watching Mike for another second. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he dropped his gaze anyway, unwilling to spend too long looking Al in the eyes. After a moment, he walked away, leaving Mike to turn back to his screws.

He couldn’t tell Liz about this.

First of all, he didn’t have a way to contact her by phone and really didn’t want to tell anyone other than Al where he lived, just in case they somehow remembered the exact address from the news.

Secondly, Liz probably wouldn’t care. She woke up for school consistently late, so he’d be able to get back and even take a short nap before she got up. He would probably still tell her about the job at Freddy’s, if only to explain where the extra money came from, but she would barely even notice his added nightly absence from the house considering he’d already told her she would be making her own dinners for the next week or so.

Maybe the time alone would do him some good. Mike couldn’t really remember the last time he did busy work alone, it was always chores that pissed him off or homework (when he’d had it) that pissed him off more.

The easy anger wasn’t as present these days, but it didn’t mean he had shifted to enjoying doing any of it.

Actually, if he brought his old discman with him, he could have a lot of time to listen to his music that he hadn’t had as of late. Or his radio clock, probably, though he didn’t know a lot of night time radio stations.

Okay, maybe it wouldn’t all be terrible. And finishing everything early reduced possible Henry time, which was always a bonus.

He could probably do this.

Mike ran a gloved hand over his assortment of broken screws, taking a deep breath.

Now if he could stop feeling like Henry was watching him from across the pizzeria, that’d be nice.

Chapter Text

Hours passed, and the restaurant first emptied of his coworkers, then the customers, and finally the few employees Mike had seen walking around.

Henry never took advantage of this fact, to Mike’s confusion. Despite having been left without anyone to hide behind, Henry never re-entered the backroom, and he didn’t find the man anywhere in the restaurant when he finally wandered out to see if he could bum a piece of pizza off of one of the workers.

The idea that Mike was making the whole thing a bigger deal than Henry had been was not a welcome one, so Mike made sure to violently ignore the thought whenever it came up.

Instead, he turned to work on his actual job. During the day they had mostly focused on cleaning the animatronics from the neck down. The heads themselves were more complex and had smaller parts, so they were going to get a special focus later on.

Each animatronic had their parts systematically removed and then returned to exactly how they were. Unfortunately for the animatronics, it was a serious state of disarray. Chica, who Mike had decided to focus on for the night, had completely lost its hands. Its ‘jaw’ and arms were stuck in certain positions, giving it a genuinely interesting sense of being larger than it was meant to be, like an animal puffing up its fur to look scarier. When Mike put it in those terms, it was less frightening to look at, anyway.

He had gotten its arms unstuck from their outstretched pose, but the unhinged jaw was giving him some trouble. He would use a crowbar or something, but he wasn’t willing to accidentally break it and pay whatever fee FE or Henry would come up with, so he was taking a slower approach with a shit ton of spray WD-40 to lubricate the jaw while he worked.

Frustration was already building in Mike at the task. It just wouldn’t fucking budge, and he’d used an entire can on it already.

He couldn’t help but wish he could put on his tunes, but when he’d asked the worker who gave him some food if they had a radio, she had told him that the only music allowed in the restaurant was whatever they’d loaded into the showroom sound system.

Mike would rather kill himself than sit there and listen to Freddy sing the best of the 70s for over 6 hours.

No, no death jokes Michael. Especially not in a Freddy’s.

Maybe he just needed a break. It was already pretty late. Mike took a second to note the clock on the wall, which showed it was a little over half an hour before midnight. He still had the entire night to go, and one walk wouldn’t get him fired or questioned. Hopefully.

He stretched his arms out as he entered the hallway, feeling a crick in his back from an entire day bent over animatronics. This week was really going to batter his entire body. He should probably get into yoga or some shit.

Hahaha no. Yoga is for nosy soccer moms, not 18 year old men.

He should still buy some ice packs, though.

As Mike turned down the hallway, he froze as he registered a figure at the other end of it, flinching slightly. The man jolted, swinging a flashlight into Mike’s eyes and making him curse while trying to block it.

“What the fuck?” He grumbled, squinting through the light to see the other guy was wearing a purple shirt. Right, night guard. He’d completely forgotten they did that.

“Who the hell’re you?” A deeper voice grumbled, and the light finally moved out of Mike’s eyes and let him get a good look at the guard he’d probably have to deal with for the next week or so.

He was a bit shorter than Mike, with pale skin and longish brown hair to his chin. At a guess, Mike would put him under 40, though he wasn’t sure how much the unshaved stubble was adding to that estimate. From the look in his eyes and smell of it, he 100% smoked dope religiously.

“Um,” He straightened up to his full height and scratched his neck awkwardly, “I’m one of the mechanics? They hired us to clean and fix the old cast…”

The man raised an eyebrow for a second before Mike could see the comprehension on his face.

“Ohh, I remember now. Wow, they really made you stay the night? That’s rough, kid.” He turned off his flashlight and pocketed it as he spoke, walking up to Mike to raise a hand for a handshake. “I’m Jeremy. It’s actually my first week doing nights, so I was a little nervous to find someone already here.”

He shook his hand, trying not to look weirded out at how sweaty the guy’s hand was. He wasn’t kidding about being nervous. “Mike. I’ve been here since 5.”

Jeremy whistled and eyed Mike with a raised brow. “I hope they’re paying you more than me. Damn, wait, I only work weekdays. They have this locked door policy for the weekends so they don’t use night guards then. Are you working on the weekend too?”

Mike blinked. That was new. Back when he was still legally hanging around Fazbear locations, they had guards for every night.

He ended up shrugging. “I don’t know, I didn’t exactly get a rundown of what’s going on. I guess I’ll ask tomorrow.”

Jeremy nodded along, and the conversation died as the two stood there awkwardly.

Dammit Mike. Way to ruin it. Or well, maybe it was a good thing. Jeremy had clearly smoked a bit before he entered, and the intense skunky smell was not doing the crappy reheated pizza in Mike’s stomach any favors.

Mike pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. “Well, I’m in the ‘safe room’ working on Chica. Call me if you need anything.”

Jeremy nodded and Mike turned back the way he came. Though he refused to look back at Jeremy, he could still feel the man’s eyes on his back, and slipped into the safe room as quickly as he could justify.

The final thing the employee had explained to him was the existence of the safe room, and he’d gotten a flippant go ahead to work on the animatronics in there instead of the back room they were normally located in. The separate space helped him focus better, less like Henry could walk in at any moment and more like he could actually finish this job early like planned. The method applied to Jeremy as well, thankfully, living up to its title as a safe room.

He had no idea what the name actually meant, since the place itself was more of a storage room with a large table and two chairs instead of an employee lounge. Mike hadn’t gotten the chance to ask either, as she had left to finish closing before he could come back and question her.

Though in the end, Mike was pretty sure it was because it didn’t have any cameras in it. Sure there physically was one, but when he’d stood on a chair to check it, the little red light had been off. A peek in the security office when no one was around also didn’t show any sign of a working camera from that end.

He might still ask Jeremy if Mike got too antsy or bored again. Maybe another day, though.

Mike returned to the table where Chica laid in an awkward position from where he’d struggled to shove the robot onto it, moving around the table to reach its head and the can of WD-40 next to it.

Taking a second to actually sit down and look at it, he couldn’t help the slight frown from emerging on his face. To be frank, Chica looked like utter shit. The entire old crew did, actually.

Despite the powerwashing, there was this layer of grime that was probably closer to mold than dirt or blood coating the faux fur, dulling the yellow color and giving it an unsettling green undertone. There were entire sections on each limb where the padding had completely rotted off, or potentially been eaten by storage room rats. From what he’d seen today, this trait in particular was shared with all of the others.

It wasn’t their job to cosmetically fix the animatronics, but it was unsettling to see how they looked now. Not even the robots had stood the test of time. It was all so… disgustingly relatable.

He decided right then and there that he would go for the crowbar if the jaw still hadn’t moved in an hour and pretend that it was already like that if something bent. Maybe see if he could blame it on Jeremy to Al if he asked.

It was probably twenty minutes into frustratedly shoving at the top half of Chica’s head every few sprays when Mike was suddenly hit in the chin, violently jerking his head back with a starburst of pain and making him bite down on his tongue hard enough to taste iron.

“Fuck!” He stumbled back, holding his rapidly filling mouth and blinking ahead at what could have hit him. The can of WD-40 tumbled to the ground behind him, momentarily forgotten.

It took a moment to register the twitches and jerks from the animatronic still laying on the table. It ran up and down its body, including the head that had hit Mike moments before.

It was almost like the twitching of a beetle recently slammed into the ground, limbs curling and spasming in sudden, random movements as it tried to register the pain in its death throes.

Mike took a second to spit out the blood in his mouth, wiping his chin. “What the hell?”

Was it some kind of start-up sequence he’d accidentally turned on? Springlocks activating? No, these models weren’t springlocks, he’d seen that earlier today. All that lay under that thick padding was rock hard metal, giving it some nice heft to headbutt the fuck out of Mike’s chin.

But with that twitching… Maybe he’d short circuited Chica.

However, instead of going through the last of its stored energy and falling still again, the twitches only became more powerful, and Mike could physically feel the apprehension in his chest rising with the tension in the room, making it difficult to breathe.

With a loud crack!, Chica’s head violently twisted at an impossible angle to stare Mike down.

Her eyes, which had been a bright fuschia for all his life, were somehow now completely black with white pinpricks in the middle that stared into his soul, asking him something he couldn’t decipher but could identify on a level he didn’t understand.

And of course, they found him wanting.

With an oddly jerking movement, Chica was off of the table within the span of a blink, making Mike back away into a chair that gave off a protesting screech! for him to flinch at.

It hadn’t made a single sound yet. No, that wasn’t true. He could hear some kind of quiet, guttural noises as its head jerked and glitched around in impossible movements.

It was almost as if it was gasping for air or groaning in pain, adding to the bug metaphor to an unsettling degree.

What the fuck. What the fuck. This had to be a new nightmare, Mike must have fallen asleep or something. Any second now he would be woken up by Jeremy or even fucking Henry asking why he was still there, and he could go home and bother Liz and pretend he could sleep normally.

The blood still filling his mouth and flickering lights in the room didn’t agree with him.

Chica kept jumping through the space between them, almost looking as if it were glitching through reality, coming closer and closer.

He needed to move.

It raised one wire-laden arm, less than a foot from his face, towering over him with its unhinged jaw showing rows of teeth inhuman but strong enough to crush his head.

Now!

With a shaking gasp, Mike backed away, somehow prompting Chica to impossibly speed up. No fucking shot he was faster than whatever eldritch shit was going on, but the fear coursing through his veins and the cold air in his lungs was more real than anything he’d felt for a while.

Mike dashed around the table, unable to stop watching as those white dots followed his every movement, and made for the door, breath too caught in his throat to even think of calling for help.

It followed, of course, and he could almost feel the breathy groans whispering accusations in his ears, causing him to whimper with fear.

He threw the door open as fast as he could and raced into the hallway, slamming into the opposite wall with hands outstretched to catch himself and turning his head to keep an eye on the abomination’s progress following him.

Within another blink, it went from the table to the doorway, and Mike tried not to waste his breath on a scream as he threw himself off of the wall and lunged further down the hall towards the turn to the showroom.

He made it all the way to the corner before he dared to look back again, only to find an empty hallway behind him.

Still gasping in quick, shallow breaths, he glanced around the building, heart beating painfully hard in his chest as he tried not to blink in case it suddenly appeared right beside him in the time it took to close his eyelids.

The hallway remained empty, and after a few seconds he realized the groaning noises had stopped too. He couldn’t even feel the eyes on him anymore.

He stood there, breathing heavily as he wiped his lips of blood and spit, still glancing around.

Where did it go? Did it give up on him?

The hall was a long one, but it only opened up in the direction he had run. The other direction was a dead end with no animatronic in sight. When he took a second to look at the other doors, they were all still firmly closed. As this was the administrative wing, Mike had watched the employees lock half of the rooms around him for security.

There was no sign any of them had been opened, but since that freak could apparently fucking teleport, that didn’t really mean anything.

Mike took another minute to breathe at the end of the hallway, but it became apparent that Chica was at least nowhere near him.

Should he look for it, or should he just bail for the night?

Mike was leaning towards bailing, but now that he had the time to think about it, he began to realize how ridiculous the situation really was. If Mike left, what the hell was he going to tell Al? That Chica had come alive and scared the shit out of him so he abandoned his job?

Yeah, that was gonna go over well. He could practically see the pink slip just thinking about it.

Maybe he had hallucinated the whole thing. Or it was something temporary. Or the fucking thing had left. That would be the worst case scenario, since it would be on Mike’s head if it was mysteriously missing.

He grit his teeth and tasted the blood still on them with a grimace, taking a second to check that he hadn’t entirely chewed through his tongue earlier.

If he looked for it, at least he’d know where it is. Know thy enemy or whatever.

Was it an enemy if Mike had literally no idea what is going on or how to stop it? Sounded more like a predator or alien. Nonetheless, not something Mike was equipped to deal with.

He took a second to rub his eyes, trying to draw up some of that famous courage he had shown off so stupidly when he was a young idiot running around doing whatever he liked.

C’mon. Just take a look around. You ran away once, you can do it again.

Just in case though…

He felt for his pockets, thankfully finding the mini-crowbar he’d shoved in there earlier when he’d resolved to eventually try it out on Chica’s jaw. It wouldn’t be enough to do damage, but he could probably push away any more reaching hands with more ease than his bare hands.

With a calming inhale, Mike creeped back down the hallway, keeping a cautious eye on every door he passed and gripping his crowbar to his chest for safe keeping. Nothing came from them, to his relief. He made sure to squeeze the crowbar hard enough to feel the cold metal dig into his hands through the cloth gloves he still had on, its presence giving him reassurance.

He slowly reached the safe room again. The moment he was in sight of the open doorway, he flinched back as he heard the groans return at full force in his head, images of writhing, dying bugs returning with a vengeance.

After waiting a second without seeing anything jump out to grab him, he continued to shuffle forward. Greenish-yellow began to appear, and as the rest of the doorway opened up, he could see Chica standing in it silently, head still following his motions as he entered its sight line.

Mike swallowed tightly, moving to stand across from the animatronic, legs tense as he readied to run, trying not to blink.

Their staring contest lasted for a minute or two, but it was hard to win against a machine, and Mike was forced to rest his drying eyes.

In that second, he actually saw Chica shift forward and bounce back, as if it had collided with an invisible wall. He accidentally blinked in confusion and watched as it happened again, the animatronic still staring Mike down with those creepy black holes.

Was it… stuck?

Wait a second… safe room. A fucking safe room from the animatronics. They couldn’t cross through the door!

But that meant that the employee he had talked to earlier today knew about this and hadn’t said a single word to Mike about being violently attacked by an animatronic. If he hadn’t been fast enough or noticed Chica acting weird too late, he could have been… Electrocuted, or whatever the thing wanted to do to him.

That was really fucked if she hadn’t bothered to warn him about it. Really messed up of Jeremy to do it too, ‘cause if this was a thing then he had to know about it, right?

So then… did they know? You’d think if they hired Mike to stay overnight they would know that secret would come out somehow, and he really didn’t think this was some kind of murder attempt on a random commissioned mechanic.

Even if they didn't, the fact was that something was making Chica not be able to go outside of the room. That couldn’t be an accident, it had to be programmed in.

…Henry.

This had to have something to do with him, there was no way it didn’t. He had been the one to build the old crew, and unless someone had fucked with his precious creations since, he would have been the one to program them too.

Mike’s head spun as he tried to make sense of what was going on and who to blame. He clenched a fist as he forced himself out of it.

Now wasn’t the time to lose your head, Afton.

Looking back up at Chica, he paused as he realized that its eyes had gone back to existing in general. Though they were still trained on him, the air of aggression seemed to have… Disappeared?

It was all kind of vague and irritating, but he had no other words to describe it. He was still being watched, but it was like it was done having a freak out, or like it had realized that it wasn’t able to continue its attack and had calmed down.

The twitching was gone, and once he was looking for it, so were the groans. The only signs of remaining weirdness was the fact that when he shifted side to side, its pink eyes were still following him.

He inched closer, hands tightening again on the crowbar after having relaxed a bit in relief. As he got closer, it became more obvious that its eyes were no longer piercing into Mike’s own, but instead trained just below his head.

Looking down, all he saw was his grey coveralls, though he’d unzipped the top about halfway to show his white undershirt when working up a sweat over Chica’s jaw. There was barely even any staining from today, since the workload had been pretty light.

Still, when he looked up, that was what its eyes were focused on.

Tentatively, he reached out a finger towards the doorway, before pausing and switching to his crowbar before he did something stupider than usual.

The metal passed the threshold harmlessly, but other than staring at his shirt as he got close enough to stretch out his arm, the animatronic didn’t budge.

Feeling braver, he pushed forward, quickly tapping the animatronic’s torso and then scrambling backwards.

Nada.

Did it… Wear itself out?

Mike walked closer and timidly rested his free hand on the animatronic. It continued to do nothing.

For some reason, he half expected to feel a heartbeat under his hand, or the movement of a chest as lungs filled. Nothing but the patchy clumped fabric greeted his gloved palm. He curled his fingers into a fist, disquieted.

Alright then.

He went to enter the room, being forced to hug the door and wall to get some space between him and the robot. Mike tensed as he actually crossed through the doorframe, but other than turning to keep facing him, Chica didn’t respond.

Taking a second to breathe in deeply, Mike nodded to himself. This was fine. Everything was fine.

Whatever had happened, it had… passed. He should go back to work. Fix Chica’s jaw. Maybe work on some of the wirings.

Not- not the ones in its head. Or arms. Whatever was out of biting or grabbing range.

Everything was fine.

Mike tried not to flinch as the animatronic loudly stomped behind him, following him back to the table in normal movements instead of the ghost stuff from before and even taking a seat on the edge without him doing more than shrink back in terror. His breathing betrayed his calm pretense, reducing to quick gasps again as he watched it settle down and stare back at him.

What the fuck was his life?

He slowly bent towards where he had dropped the WD-40, keeping his eyes locked with Chica’s, and then straightened up.

Mike raised the can. “I’m… I’m gonna keep working. Is that… okay with you?”

The can shook in the air as he waited for a response, feeling stupid and distantly delirious. The animatronic remained silent even as he gave up and approached, keeping the crowbar in his dominant hand just in case.

He raised the can to its mouth and sprayed the joints again while keeping his hand as far from its open maw as he could.

Before he could sit and think of a way to shove on the head without potentially getting murdered, there was a loud creaking noise as he watched Chica try to shut the jaw itself. It budged a quarter of an inch, but remained stuck open.

Ah. How helpful. What a… Kind helper.

Mike raised the can to continue, and Chica continued pushing down on its jaw as he sprayed it.

He couldn’t tell how much time passed as the back and forth continued, and Mike did eventually have to retrieve another can from the chair he’d piled his tools on to the side, but the process went on for what felt like an eternity.

Eventually, with a sudden clang! the jaw fell shut all at once, making Mike jump.

Chica, meanwhile, almost… thoughtfully opened and closed it again, clearly testing its new ability to move it. It stuck once or twice, but was moving.

Mike smiled incredulously, still feeling slightly hysterical about the situation. “We did it. Great. Good job team.”

There was a slight crackle in response, before a high-pitched voice loudly pierced through the quiet room.

“When we all work together, any song sounds like a beautiful melody, Freddy!”

Mike couldn’t help but scream, jumping back and holding the crowbar out defensively towards the animatronic.

What the hell? Did it just speak?

He waited for it to stand up again or continue, but it went back to silence, watching Mike’s shaking form from where it sat calmly on the table.

It took a second for him to lower the crowbar, and then another to convince his feet to return to where he was, frowning up at the animatronic.

“...You can talk?”

The silent treatment again. Mike frowned harder.

“I heard you. You can talk.”

But still, it refused to answer. Or maybe it couldn’t?

What were the rules? What was it determined by? Was this still some A.I. shit Henry had done, or was it something else?

For some reason, the idea of actually being able to talk with Chica brought Mike down from his tense hysterics, and he could feel himself relaxing again as he put the can down on the empty chair and tapped the crowbar against his head with a thoughtful hum.

Maybe he really had just scared the A.I. in Chica? He would’ve preferred a warning from someone about the robots being this advanced and potentially violent, but maybe this was some fucked up version of hazing… Even though he wasn’t an employee here.

But why had he scared it? What had turned it on? And how did it do that thing with its eyes?

Mike took a sweeping look around the room, then the animatronic itself, but nothing stood out to him as an obvious reason and he was still reluctant to turn his back on Chica in spite of the new calm.

At least, in the end, it seemed like it could understand Mike. He could work with that.

He backed up slightly and reached for his toolbox, slowly putting down the crowbar now that it seemed like he really didn’t need it. Picking up the spool of wiring and cutters he’d been given, he raised them in the air so the robot could look at it.

“Can I keep working on you? I’m going to see if I can fix up your legs now.” The legs, of course, being the furthest from both the open-wiring arms and lethal mouth. It still opened him up to being kicked, but he’d take it at the moment.

Chica stared back at him blankly, those plastic eyeballs obviously not showing anything it was… Thinking. Feeling? Mike wasn’t an expert in words, conversation with robots or otherwise.

He would pay FE if they got it to stop staring at him, though.

Well, now wasn’t the time to be focusing on that. Mike only had about three hours left until he could reasonably leave without getting questioned or fired, and he was already exhausted and sweaty from the whirlwind of emotions he’d cycled through tonight.

Mike stepped closer, tugging the chair beside him for easier access to his tools, and sat in the empty one.

There was no response to him grabbing Chica’s foot, though he couldn’t help but keep glancing at where it watched him take off the padding and poke around at the wiring.

It was almost calming, getting back into work mode. There was something about mechanical work that had stood out to Mike in a way nothing else really had.

When it came to machines, everything had some form of sense to it. Cause and effect. If it did something you didn’t want it to, it was because you fucked up somehow. As long as you did what you had to, everything just clicked into place in a way that Mike couldn’t figure out with people.

There was nothing to figure out the meaning of, no words to dance around or feelings to decipher on both sides. A broken microwave didn’t give a shit if Mike had a bad day, it just wanted to be fixed.

And he could do it. He could fix it.

It had started as just a job he could make a lot of money from with minimal prior experience, but Mike’s artistic dreams had long since faded into the twisting of bolts and feeling of sweat running down his back.

He could handle the paranormal if it was a robot. At least a robot was just gears and wires. Chica’s stare was just an add-on to what Mike could cut and twist into control, restoring better functionality to what had been falling apart hours before.

Mike wiped his forehead, getting some of the old rubber that had flaked off of the wiring on it. He had taken off his gloves when they kept getting caught on the uncovered wires. Cloth wasn’t insulating anyway, so it was more of a hindrance than any help when it came to electrical work.

He grabbed the leg he was working on, flexing it to test its weight. It squeaked, making him grumble and grab the WD-40.

Weird how it hadn’t squeaked when Chica was gunning for his throat.

No, he wasn’t thinking about that right now. He was thinking about the bubbles that foamed from the knee joint, the excess liquid dripping down the side of the rusted endoskeleton leg.

He returned the WD-40 and went to check the leg again, jumping a foot in the air when he was interrupted by a voice and more creaking as Chica leaned down towards him.

“I think I want to eat pizza for dinner more than seven days a week. Maybe eight days!” It crowed, staring at Mike’s face once again, though its eyes remained pink.

Regardless he backed away quickly, wiping his hands on his coveralls as he calmed his racing heart easier than before.

“Um,” He cleared his throat, “Pizza? Yo-you want pizza? Is that it?”

Mike tried his best to keep eye contact, so he was able to see when its eyes flicked over to the leg he had been working on, then back to him.

“Your leg wants pizza?”

It didn’t respond, which he was thankful for. Mike crouched down to squint at the leg, glancing up to see it still staring at him. He tried not to shudder in discomfort.

When he turned back to the leg again, it was just in time to see the excess WD-40 hit some of the faded cut wiring he hadn’t made his way to yet, connecting with the hot and neutral simultaneously and making a bright spark flash out which Mike quickly backed away from.

Shit. He’d forgotten that the legs were technically turned on at the moment, since he couldn’t exactly… Deactivate Chica. Mike had been too messy with the WD-40 and didn’t have rubber gloves to save himself from becoming a conductor with the exposed wires. The rubber coating on them having been flaked or chewed off was really fucking him over in more than just requiring a shower now.

Pulling his sleeve over his hand, he quickly wiped what he could of the liquid without touching any live wires.

That could’ve been pretty dangerous. Henry’s animatronics were way higher voltage than normal ones. Mike would’ve gotten more than a small burn and cool story at breakfast if he hadn’t noticed in time.

Hm.

He looked back up at Chica, but it had leaned back and was watching him in a more tranquil way than when it had spoken.

“Thanks,” He mumbled.

It didn’t respond, causing Mike to scratch his neck awkwardly. “You’re very helpful?”

It blinked down at him, and he took it for an acknowledgement of his comment.

Yeah, this was gonna work out. He could make it through these last few hours without losing his mind again.

Mike continued to go up and down Chica’s legs, avoiding what he could tell was live and replacing what wires he could without plugging them into the batteries at the base of the torso just yet. He also trashed any plan of working on the arms even if he had wanted, since every single wire was exposed and too dangerous to deal with right now.

Occasionally, Chica would chime in, making Mike less and less jumpy as the night went on. It was less actual comments and more the ending of that weird pizza line or the occasional quote he struggled to decipher.

“Eight days!” It had shortened, pointing its wrist at where he had forgotten its right knee pad when replacing them from where he’d begun to clean up his work, only having half an hour left in his shift.

He blinked away some of the sleepiness that had impossibly set in, rubbing his eye and yawning as he grabbed it. “Shit, sorry.”

Mike slid it on the leg and finished securing the rest of the padding, moving to stand and crack his back painfully. You would think he had more time before his body started failing him, but the ache in his back had settled in hours ago and made him take a few moments to try to unsuccessfully stretch it away.

Damn, he was so ready to pass out and pretend that this had been one really long dream. In a perfect world it would be, really.

He bent back down with a small groan and gathered up the mess of tools he’d put in a semi-circle around his chair. Quickly returning them to their proper places, he noted the lack of broom with a quick sweep of the room and shrugged it off tiredly.

Tomorrow night he’d remember to bring one. And rubber gloves.

Those fucking workers could clean it up when they came in for their shift if they really did know about the Chica thing.

Yawning again and allowing his arms to fully stretch out, Mike wiped a rough hand down his face and turned back to where Chica was watching him. By this point, he had let the heavy, anxious feeling of its constant gaze fall to the back of his mind.

He rubbed his chin with a hum, noting the ache still present in his tongue. “What exactly does eight days mean? It’s nothing close to my name or my job.”

They looked at each other for a moment, Mike taking the second to revel in the heavy exhaustion blanketing his mind in familiar comfort, before Chica raised a wrist and pointed it to itself. “And I’m Chica the Chicken! Bawk!”

Mike could only blink slowly, having disengaged from working for long enough that his brain was beginning to shut down and accept the sweeping arms of sleep.

“...I don’t get it.”

It pointed at Mike. “Eight days!”

He furrowed his brow and went to bite his nails, spitting it out and scratching his tongue in disgust when he got rubber flakes in his mouth. The action only caused him to aggravate the scabs that had grown over his bite, making him close his eyes in irritated misery.

He couldn’t do this right now.

“I’m sorry, I still don’t get it.” He bit out, barely maintaining a more polite tone than he’d normally give Liz on a morning like this.

He opened his eyes just in time to see Chica glance away, returning its arm to its sides almost sadly. “Haha, sorry Bonnie! I’ll make sure not to step on your tail again.”

That one, at least, he’d figured out. It was the closest it could seem to get to apologizing, though why it didn’t cut up this line like the other one he didn’t know.

Feeling slightly guilty, he picked at the rubber caught under his nails and turned away from the robot to focus back on his tools. “Don’t worry about it.”

If only it could write what it wanted to say, communication would be so much easier. Unfortunately, it literally didn’t have hands, and definitely didn’t have the dexterity to use its mouth or feet even if he could figure out a way to keep a pencil stuck to it.

Also, if it used less canned responses and more actual sentences, Mike might feel a little bit less like he’s still being fucked with, even if it seemed way less likely than earlier in the night.

While he was gathering the empty WD-40 cans to throw out, something pinged in the edge of his hearing, causing him to pause and try to make it out. A distant noise, almost like a voice, but too indistinct to tell what it was saying. It sounded like yelling.

He glanced over at Chica, seeing it stare back at him calmly. A robot probably has better ears than a human, right?

Mike bit his lip. “Do you hear that?”

Chica blinked at him, then turned to the open doorway. For a moment, the two of them stared out of it. The distant yelling hadn’t moved closer or changed, dying out periodically then starting back up.

He sighed when it turned back to him, turning to grab a flashlight and his crowbar again. “I’m gonna go check that out. Don’t…”

He trailed off. There wasn’t exactly anything he could tell the animatronic to do, and it couldn’t leave the room even when it wanted to. Chica seemed to understand regardless, as for the first time that night it fully turned its constant gaze to look out of the doorway and stayed in that position.

The yelling started up again, meaning it was time to get a move on. Mike jogged out the door, finally heading back into the main party room.

In the early hours of the morning, the sun had barely even begun to peak over the horizon. It failed to bring light through the large windows in the front of the room, but gave a slight monochromatic glow to the parking lot outside in contrast to the pitch dark within the building. Mike waved his flashlight around the room as he jogged through it, pausing suddenly as he almost collided with a yellow figure standing in front of him.

He leaned over with his flashlight to see the toy version of Chica standing there, staring at him with her huge blue eyes. Like earlier in the day with Toy Bonnie, it scanned over him for a second, before turning back to where it was staring ahead as if discarding him.

Weird… They were also active at night. Though they were less aggressive than Chica had been, it seemed. Maybe it was a programming thing that all animatronics had, and he hadn’t known? It would have been helpful for someone to let him know, but the whole night time job was slapdash anyway.

It didn’t explain Chica’s aggression, or any of the weird shit that had come out of it.

Mike shook his head, turning to keep moving towards the security office, where he was sure the sounds were coming from. The theory was confirmed as the panicked shouting for help became louder, causing him to speed up.

When he was finally in sight of the office, he frowned slightly.

Through the darkness of the main hallway, the bright lights in the room were almost blinding. If he squinted, though, he could see Jeremy unsuccessfully crouching behind his desk as Toy Freddy stood in front of it with its back to where Mike stood.

Within seconds he had reached the office, and like all the others, Toy Freddy turned its face to scan over Mike’s. Once it finished, it silently turned back forward.

Jeremy meanwhile, had crawled around the side of the desk, letting Mike see that he was now wearing a familiar older Freddy mask. Mike shuddered in discomfort, holding back a grimace.

The older man crawled towards Mike’s legs, grabbing them and staring up through the mask with desperate eyes. “Mike, kid, kid, you gotta help me!”

Mike, who had raised his arms in alarm when the grown man had climbed on him, frowned. “What? What’s going on? I heard you screaming across the pizzeria.”

Jeremy threw an accusing finger at Toy Freddy, who had turned to watch him now that he had moved from behind the desk. “They’re trying to kill me!”

Mike looked back at Toy Freddy, eyes wide. Was this like with Chica?

He stared carefully. Toy Freddy didn’t twitch, nor did it start phasing in and out of reality. Its eyes were still blue, and when he took a second to listen, the only sound out of place was some kind of quiet little music box tune. Fresh shiny plastic coated its limbs, and its red cheeks were shined to clean perfection. Nothing was out of place, other than the odd stare that the other animatronics had shared.

Still, Chica had returned to normal after she calmed down. Maybe Mike had walked in after that point and Jeremy hadn’t figured that out yet?

Mike reached over, ignoring Jeremy’s whispered warning, to poke it with his mini-crowbar. It didn’t react.

“Did it do anything else? Chase you?”

“N-no!” At Mike’s confused look, Jeremy continued, voice shaking. “They kept coming in here, ‘cause they run around an-and they said I have to wear the mask, and if I don’t- Shit, the Puppet!”

He suddenly lunged off of Mike’s legs to his control board, pressing down on a button there and squinting at the screen. After a long second, he deflated in relief. His Freddy mask fell forward slightly, covering his eyes.

Toy Freddy’s head had followed him back to the desk, and tilted in some facsimile of confusion when the mask moved. The quiet shifting of the pistons as it did caused Jeremy to perk back up, raising a hand to readjust the mask and leaning as far back from the table he could without letting go of the button he was still pressing down.

What the fuck was happening?

Mike cleared his throat, regaining Jeremy’s attention. “What was it about the mask?”

In lieu of replying, Jeremy grabbed his flashlight, quickly shining it in the gigantic open vents on either side of the room. Both of them were empty. He turned it on Toy Freddy, who didn’t react to the light shining in its eyes.

Once finished with his strange actions, and having finally let go of the button, he turned to Mike. Through the eyeholes of the mask, he could see the blown out pupils of the man’s eyes, looking larger than earlier in the night.

“They said,” He gestured to the phone on the desk for some reason, “If you wear a mask, they won’t attack you.”

Mike looked over at Toy Freddy, who still didn’t bother to return the look, then back at Jeremy, where he had returned to his flashlight ritual.

“Then… why didn’t it attack me?”

It seemed only at this moment had Jeremy realized Mike’s lack of mask, and he turned a more critical gaze on Mike, scanning up and down his body. When he turned back to see Toy Freddy remaining in its spot, he shook his head in confusion. “What? But I don’t… Why…?”

Mike inhaled slowly, willing himself not to snap at the older man. He had been taking him seriously, but it was obvious he was greening out or something. Even with Chica actively attacking him, Mike hadn’t needed any kind of mask to get her to stop freaking out, just time for her to relax.

The roaming part was probably true, since he’d seen Toy Chica earlier, but the mask thing was clearly bullshit, and the new animatronics didn’t seem hostile in the slightest.

Jeremy obviously seemed freaked out, so Mike didn’t think he was trying to fuck with him. But he had been high before he even came to work, and on a slow, empty night he could see the temptation to keep going.

He rubbed his eyes sleepily, wishing it were 6 A.M. already, and thought of how to form the words without upsetting the clearly unstable man.

“Look man, maybe you shouldn’t… work the night shift if you’re that easily scared.”

He gave him a look as he spoke, hoping to convey the meaning without having to say the words. Jeremy stared back silently, wide pupils having only slightly contracted since he’d walked into the room.

“Wha- You-!” Jeremy stuttered out, glancing between him and Toy Freddy and gesturing his arms between them. “You can’t think these things running around needing to be fended off with flashlights is normal!”

Mike raised an eyebrow and flashed his own light at Toy Freddy, who continued to not react.

Jeremy threw his arms into the air. “They’re faking it because you showed up or something!”

He did not have the patience for this right now.

“Have fun with your flashlight game, I’m almost done in the back.” Mike rolled his eyes, turning to leave and ignoring the frustrated cries behind him.

The darkness of the hallway greeted him, but he turned his flashlight back on and continued down his path. Just in case, because Mike liked to think he wasn’t that terrible of a person anymore, he listened to see if Jeremy’s angry complaints turned back into panic.

By the time he returned to the showroom, they had not, and he let himself frown in annoyance as he looked out over the empty room.

Toy Chica had wandered off since he ran into her, and when he swept his flashlight over the stage, he noted that Toy Bonnie had run off as well. Wherever the other three animatronics were wasn’t really his business. Jeremy was fine and would continue to be fine, especially with his little imaginary safety nets.

After a moment of silence, Mike turned off his flashlight and shoved both it and his crowbar in his pockets, giving himself a second to adjust to the slowly brightening room in the light of early dawn.

The sun had barely moved positions since he had last passed through the room, but it was enough to allow the grey filter over the world to seep into the pizzeria like wet paint.

It coated everything in a fine layer, casting what he knew were bright party hats and colorful streamers into a dulled tone and making it difficult to see where furniture ended and the floor began. The swirling patterns he had recognized earlier in the day danced with the shapeless dots of darkness, twisting into something confusing and unfamiliar.

It was uncomfortable and quiet.

Mike sighed, taking a second to close his eyes and lay his hands over them. The pressure caused bright white shapes to form behind his eyelids, reminiscent of the floor pattern, and he frowned deeper as he forced his eyes back open.

Another thing to ask about tomorrow. Another odd mystery in this stupid franchise. Another set of rules he couldn’t figure out. Machines were supposed to be easy.

Fuck all of this. Mike just wanted to go home.

He turned back on his flashlight, letting his surroundings darken back into shadows, and walked swiftly back to the lit hallway of the administrative wing. Within seconds he was back through the open door of the safe room.

“Eight days!” Chica greeted him, and he nodded his head at it as he beelined towards the cans he had dropped back onto the floor earlier.

He gathered a few in his free hand and chucked them into the empty can in the corner of the room without a word. When he turned back to get the rest, however, he paused for a moment, looking up at where the animatronic sat.

It had returned to staring at his work, clearly having dismissed the earlier yelling as soon as he returned, and Mike could feel the weight of its eyes on his face. He forced himself to discard his discomfort and consider the robot again.

In comparison to the other two he had seen tonight, it still seemed extremely different. Other than scanning him, which had to be part of some kind of program since Toy Bonnie had done it during the day to him too, the Toy animatronics did not have the same weight of thought behind them that he could now clearly identify in Chica.

Where before he wondered if he was imagining the sentience in it, he could now see as it switched from looking at his face to his shirt, or remember how it had noticed potential danger and warned Mike about it.

The other animatronics Mike had seen didn’t seem capable of that level of thought. There was no shifting other than a tilt of the head, or blinking in acknowledgement of anything, and none of them had spoken like Chica had.

Perhaps he should have asked Jeremy if any of them had spoken, but he had a feeling that they hadn’t.

He was almost pissed he had taken Jeremy so seriously at first. Though he was now convinced the guy hadn’t known about the animatronics coming alive at night, he couldn’t help but be a bit bitter that he was left with the dangerously alive one and Jeremy got to have a stupid mask and instructions about flashlights.

There was a sort of vindication in that it seemed like neither worked anyway, though that just irritated Mike further into thinking about how much Jeremy seemed to be overreacting.

Whatever, he should just add the Toys to the list of things he had to ask someone about tomorrow. Definitely not Henry, but maybe he’d see if that woman who had pointed Mike over to the safe room was still working tomorrow.

Either she had been helping him out by telling him to go to that room, or she had been in on deciding to fuck with him.

There was a spike of pain in his side, and Mike was reminded that he was still half bent over to pick up the rest of the cans. He threw his flashlight back into his pocket to grab the rest in one go and throw them out. He rubbed where it ached when he stood back up, cursing the position he had decided to zone out in.

A quick look at his tools concluded that Mike had done all he could to clean up the room, meaning all that was left was to shove Chica onto the push cart dolly to bring it back to the regular back room with the other animatronics.

He rubbed his face, turning back to where Chica sat, and pointed to the dolly. “Could you… Go sit on that?”

Thankfully for his arm muscles, it got off of the table with less creaking than before and trotted over to the dolly, plopping onto it with loud, teeth-clenching metal crashing sounds as it shifted its body onto the dolly as much as it could fit. The end result looked like a little kid hugging their knees, and the comparison briefly made Mike’s heart leap in his throat.

Mike forced a smile, reaching for the handle of the dolly to try to start pushing it and opening his mouth to help shove his thoughts to the back of his mind like the rest of the night. “So, what we were talking about earlier, can you try again?”

Chica, who had been blessedly forced to stare ahead since it couldn’t move its body without falling off of the small platform, answered the same as before. “Eight days! And I’m Chica the Chicken!”

He frowned, trying to force his tired mind to work as he finally got the dolly to begin moving. “So… You’re calling me eight days? I think I already figured that out, but why?”

He could see it twist its wrist to try to point at itself again. “The three of us-”

It cut itself off, turning its head just enough that Mike could make out that fuschia eye staring at him.

Pausing his rolling to rub at his forehead, Mike thought about it. “There aren't three people here… Unless you’re implyin-”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence before there was a loud chiming sound, and Chica began to shake and shudder in an unfortunately familiar way that caused Mike to immediately let go of the dolly and back up multiple steps.

It only lasted for a second before the animatronic slumped down entirely, the chiming continuing to ring throughout the room.

After a second of looking, Mike found the source of the noise in the clock on the wall, which had finally turned to six in the morning. The last chime faded into quiet, and he turned back to where Chica remained still.

Mike grabbed the mini-crowbar from his pocket again and approached slowly, but no groaning noises filled his head this time. When he neared the animatronic, it looked just as it had during the day; Lifeless. Not even an eyelid twitched from where they fell half-lidded.

Goddammit. Of course it was on a time limit. Probably something like midnight to the end of the night shift.

Just as he was getting answers.

He resisted the urge to chuck the crowbar at the animatronic, shoving it angrily in his pocket instead and going to push Chica back into the back rooms.

The ride was uneventful outside of his half-formed angry thoughts, too tired to even articulate the frustration that had been built up in his body like a heat flash. When he was forced to go through the showroom for the third time that morning, the Toy animatronics were back on stage in a similar state of stillness as Chica.

At least they were consistent.

He slid Chica off of the dolly to where he remembered it sitting in the backroom, only marginally wincing at the clanging noise as it fell to the ground gracelessly. Mike tried to see if any of the other original animatronics had been active during the night, but he hadn’t exactly been keeping track of how they had sat when he was last in here. He would just have to assume they did, since the rest had all been running around too.

Which probably meant he had to deal with this bullshit every single night.

With a clenched jaw, he stomped back to grab his stuff from the safe room, zipping up his coveralls in preparation for the early November air he was about to walk through for another half hour.

What a perfect end to an absolutely tranquil night.

And of course, Jeremy met him at the front, racing from where he had been shifting the chairs around the party tables to the door to unlock it.

In the few minutes between when Mike had last been in here, the sun had risen enough that the showroom was lit by the morning sun, long chasing away the twisted shadows that had replaced the childish decorations around the room.

He tuned into Jeremy’s rambling a bit late, but was still able to get the gist of it.

“-And I’m sure the previous guy knew this and that old man didn’t say anything to me! I don’t deal with spooky shit, I’m too old to survive in a horror movie.”

Mike huffed, barely waiting for Jeremy to finish unlocking the door before pushing past him and walking out into the biting frost in the air. At least it wasn’t windy. Jeremy’s complaints were cut off by the door closing just as quickly behind Mike, leaving him in blessed peace and quiet.

He wished he did drugs. Maybe his life would make a little more sense if he did. Though if he could afford to have that on his record, he probably wouldn’t be working at Freddy Fazbear’s again.

Fuck this place.

Mike turned and walked towards where he vaguely remembered the bus stop being, ignoring the cold fingers of ice in the air reaching through him to pierce his heart without success.

Chapter Text

He was burning the mac and cheese again.

The acrid, smokey smell permeated the room just as effectively as the quickly darkening smoke coming from the dish in front of them. It shouldn’t be this burnt though-

Michael looked down to check the knob, only to see it had been turned all the way to high heat. When he threw a look to his side, Liz was still focused on the dish, squishy face scrunched dramatically as she stuck out a tongue.

“That’s so gross!”

He quickly turned the knob off entirely, throwing the pan to the side and ignoring the black smoke as it filled the kitchen. Once he finished, he turned to Liz with a wave of irritation, eyes burning from the smoke and tears and rage.

“You- stop messing with the stove when I cook! You made me burn it and now I’ll have to throw it out!” He growled, pointing an angry finger at the 7 year old.

She just groaned back, throwing her arms up into the air as she did so. “You were taking too long! I haven’t eaten for days and now you’re going so slow!”

Guilt churned his stomach, separate from the anger that was still controlling his actions in an oddly distant way. Like it was someone else who was feeling one of the two, but he couldn’t figure out which was his emotions and which wasn’t.

Michael opened his mouth to shout back, when a loud banging noise caused them both to freeze. It echoed through the house, silencing all background noise and growing louder with each bang.

They were here.

Without a word, the two of them dashed into the living room, ducking to avoid being seen through the windows. Shadows were outside each when Michael dared to look, but he couldn’t tell who they were. There were only spots of white light where their eyes were supposed to be, and though they shouldn’t be able to see the two kids from the angle of the windows, he felt the weight of their gaze on his back just the same.

Still, he continued without a word to Liz, the two of them arriving and hiding in the crook of the L-shaped couch where Michael could still see the front door through the black smoke if he leaned over the side and squinted. On top of that, it had the benefit of being out of view of the windows.

The door was shaking in its frame, physically buckling with every loud pound on it. Liz grabbed onto Michael’s arm, and he used his other hand to hold over her mouth without looking.

She was shaking. The door shook in tandem with her shakes.

“William! Answer the door! William Afton! You fucker!”

The voice shouting was louder than the pounding of the door, almost sounding as if Henry were yelling directly in Michael’s ears.

He didn’t have any free hands to cover them.

The banging paused, and he could feel Liz relax in his arms. He only tightened his grasp in response.

Sure enough, after a second, a louder, stronger bang! caused the both of them to flinch violently. When Michael snuck a peek, the kick had caused the door itself to crack, though it still held strong somehow.

“William! Stop hiding! Answer the fucking door!”

Henry began repeating himself, and Michael quickly hid back away. He took his shaking sister fully into his arms, turning his quieting hand into a hug as she curled into his chest in a way she never had before the visits started.

The black smoke was getting thicker as Henry’s voice looped through angry expletives, and though the thuds on the door continued, there were no other splintering sounds. It burnt his throat and eyes as he took sharp breaths, trying not to cough and give an indication of their presence in the house. It felt like he was drowning on dry land.

Then there were more thuds, and the sound of glass cracking. He flinched, curling over Liz as each of the windows on the ground floor of the house gained a new member of the furious orchestra outside.

More voices began to speak, more indistinct and different genders but each just as loud as Henry’s.

“Murderer!”

Bang.

“Get out here and face us!”

Bang.

“Burn in hell Afton!”

Crack.

“I’ll kill you!”

The voices surrounded them completely. There was no escape from them. They overlapped each other, always with the same furious tone, screeching out insults and threats.

Liz shook. Michael felt numbly terrified and distant.

His mac and cheese had burnt. They should have just eaten it anyway.

“Why won’t you die!”

Crack.

“You psychopath! You won’t get away with this!”

Bang.

“Answer me William!”

Bang.

The volume reached louder and louder, the voices and words becoming a garbled mess of loud, angry static, conducted into an unending crescendo. Regardless, he knew each word by heart.

He had to protect Liz. He had to protect Liz. He couldn’t kill another one of his siblings. He had to protect Liz.

The smoke had entirely filled the house and his lungs, only the shapes of the general objects around him still visible. It hurt. He couldn’t tell if the tears in his eyes were from the smoke or the fear.

Even still, it felt distant. Like he was gasping for air when he already had enough, performing for an audience of thousands of white pinprick eyes still watching from the windows.

There was a loud shattering sound as something was thrown through the glass, a rock hitting the wall across from Michael and leaving a large dent in it.

Liz shrieked at the noise, causing Michael to bite hard on his lip and shove her face harder into his chest.

However, with the admittance of guilt, the yelling abruptly stopped, plunging the house into a hungry silence. Michael could feel it gnawing on him, asking him again and again, but couldn’t answer the question. He didn’t know. Please.

There was a knock on the door.

Michael stood up and walked over to the abused door. He unlocked the small turn button lock, flicking it to the side and pulling open the door. The smoke flowed out endlessly, touching the outside world and dissolving immediately as though unable to contaminate it as well.

Two police officers stood outside. He couldn’t see their faces behind the brim of their hats.

The tall one on the left stared him down, white dots glowing out beyond the shade of their hat. “Michael Afton?”

He nodded.

The shorter one stared up at him. “The murderer?”

He nodded again.

“Where is William Afton?”

Michael swallowed. It was useless. Please.

But still, his mouth opened to answer. He had to. “I don’t know.”

“Where is William Afton?”

Please. “I don’t know.”

The officers stepped forward. Michael stepped back into the darkness of the house.

They grew larger, and he could physically feel their anger on him, choking the words that had dared to exit his mouth.

“Where is William Afton?”

They advanced on him until all three had entered the house, leaving the only way Michael could see them through the smoke to be those accusing white eyes that cut through it effortlessly. Even the sight of the open doorway had succumbed to the darkness, no light at the end of the tunnel.

He couldn’t help the pathetic whimper, no longer able to answer due to the smoke and anger wrapped around his throat, fingers digging deep enough he could feel them almost touch through his esophagus.

Still, he tried to answer. Only a gurgle came out.

“Where is your father?”

Mike leapt up from his pillow, grabbing his throat and gasping for air. Tears came to his eyes as he grit his teeth, desperately trying to get the precious oxygen in his lungs.

Something was tangling his legs. He kicked it off frantically, hands too preoccupied with his throat, and rolled off the couch to the floor.

The hardwood smacked into his cheek and knees painfully, but was cold enough to knock Mike’s brain back into action. Within seconds he had blinked away the image of four white dots, though the feeling of accusing eyes wasn’t as easily shaken.

He carefully swallowed, taking a deep breath. The air in the room was musty. He hadn’t dusted it in ages.

Fuck.

Mike rested his forehead on the floor again, letting the coolness work its magic as he focused on returning his breathing to normal. He could still feel his heartbeat in his head, but tried to ignore the fake pounding sensation with minor success.

Once he had stopped gasping, he took a second to run a finger over his throat. Nothing stung or bruised.

He coughed experimentally, but felt nothing come up from his lungs. The dust in the room wasn’t enough to even conjure a phantom sensation of smoke particles.

For a long moment, he breathed in and out.

Then, he took the same hand he checked for bruises with and clenched it down hard on his own throat, feeling the muscles underneath seize unbidden and an aching pain where his fingers dug into his flesh.

Before he could reflexively attempt a cough, he let go. His throat throbbed as it remembered the phantom sensation of fingers around his throat, now realized.

As he focused on his head, he once again registered the vague aching in his tongue and chin from the night before.

Mike bit his lip harshly and clenched his eyes closed.

He hated sleeping in his father’s office.

Within half an hour, Mike had already chugged a cup of coffee and was shoving some bread into the toaster.

Orange marmalade was retrieved from the fridge, the damn thing already mostly empty. He skillfully extracted the last bits he could and spread it thinly on the two slices of toast until it mostly covered them.

If he had bananas, he could make up for it. However, Liz had already eaten the ones from his last shopping trip.

Freezing them was supposed to be helpful and keep them edible, but Mike didn’t have the money to stockpile food for later like that at the moment.

After the job he would.

Fuck, just another reason he couldn’t quit.

Still, toast with barely any marmalade wasn’t enough…

He poured out a glass of milk and tapped a finger on the egg carton left in his desolate fridge. 4 left. If he only used one every other day until the likely end of the job, he would still run out early.

But tomorrow she could have cereal with the last of the milk. Which would still leave him without any milk. Liz hated eating cereal with water, though.

No matter what, he needed to get groceries before the job payout.

Still, Mike pulled out the pan, cracking open one of the eggs to scramble it and make it look like more food than it was.

Over the sound of the egg slowly coming to a sizzle, he finally heard footsteps coming down the stairs. He quickly turned and placed the glass of milk on the table, glancing at a dressed and ready Liz for a moment before turning back to the stove.

She was allowed to use it nowadays, but he preferred her to stick to the microwave or oven. Especially right now, when he couldn’t waste any food on impatience.

Behind him, he heard the sound of the chair being moved, though he didn’t bother to see her sit down and grimace at the milk as she did most mornings. There was routine, and then there was repetition. Regardless, she would still drink it.

“You didn’t come home last night.” Her voice rang out behind him, quiet yet accusing just as loudly as those in his dream had been.

He paused where he was breaking the yolk with his spatula, before continuing to scramble the egg in the now-hot pan. He took a slow breath before he answered.

“I didn’t think you would notice. I came back this morning.”

“Just now?”

The scrambled egg solidified, and he poured it onto her plate. He turned off the stove, watching the flame fight for life for one more moment before puttering out with a quiet huff. Grabbing a fork from the cutlery drawer, he finally turned around.

Liz was wearing a slightly faded striped sweater, thankfully pink and purple, with a white undershirt poking out from the neckline. He was sure her matching light pink jeans were hidden underneath the table. The 11 year old had long graduated from wearing her hair down with a bow to now trying to curl it, though the classic blown out curls didn’t quite work without the many different hair products that were meant to help keep it in place.

They really racked up an expense overall, and he hated that she refused to just cut her hair into a bob and brush it normally like she had initially promised.

At least she only insisted on brightly colored eyeshadow in her new quest to enter the world of makeup, today being yellow. It almost looked like a fading double black eye bruise. It did successfully highlight her bright green eyes, clearly giving him the same once-over he was currently doing to her.

At that thought, he remembered to answer her question, dropping the plate in front of her and handing her the fork as he spoke. “No. About an hour or two ago.”

Liz watched him sit down and glanced at the empty space on the table in front of him for a moment. Her gaze flicked back to her plate, mouth twitching. He tried not to be offended at her clear distaste for the selection this morning.

She picked up a piece of toast, ripping it and eating the pieces instead of biting into it like Mike preferred to do. “You didn’t come upstairs. What were you doing?”

Annoyingly, despite consistently sleeping in so late, Liz was a light sleeper. She would have known the moment he had walked upstairs, so he hadn’t even gone to the bathroom yet.

Mike traced a line in the wood of the table instead of looking at her, letting the familiar feeling of her sharp gaze rest on his head instead of his face.

“I napped on the couch in the office. Had a nightmare, you would’ve loved listening to it.”

He glanced up just in time to see her roll her eyes, successfully getting her to focus back on her food. His fingers twitched with the want to refill her milk, but they needed it for tomorrow. Plus, Liz hated when he fussed after her during meals.

After a few more moments of blessed silence, she spoke back up. “So why did you come home so late?”

It seemed like there was no dodging the question, though Mike decided to try to drag it out as long as he could in the faint hope that she would get annoyed early on and stop asking.

“Got some extra hours for extra pay.” He continued to rub at the lines embedded into the wood of the table, enjoying the texture more than the conversation. “It’s really good, worth it I promise.”

He didn’t bother to look back up at her at this point, but could practically feel her eye roll at his tacked on comment.

“Who’s the rich idiot who would pay you extra to do stuff?”

Mike tried not to tense, mind immediately harking back to the memory of Henry staring at him for almost his entire shift.

She didn’t need to know.

“Just some old guy.”

“An old guy who punched you in the face for messing up?”

His hand flew to his chin at the same time as his eyes finally rose from the table. Shit, he hadn’t thought she would see it. That was probably why she was staring him down earlier.

Even now, her gaze held a glint of cold victory as she drank the last of her milk, only lightly poking at the egg that remained of her breakfast.

“No. That’s- no one did that, it was an accident. I fell.”

It had actually happened often enough in that line of work that it wasn’t all that weird. She had only been pointing it out to criticize him being dodgy and they both knew it.

The fact that his bruises didn’t come from a fall or someone else was between him and Chica the Chicken.

Liz scowled. “Then who’s the old guy?”

“No one you’d know,” He tried to return the scowl, though he could feel the lack of energy behind it. “Why are you interrogating me?”

Suddenly, Liz slammed her unused fork onto the table, glaring up at Mike. Neither of them moved even as she spat out the words. “Don’t lie to me Mikey. I hate it when you lie to me. Stop being a major selfish asshole and just tell me even if I don’t know.”

Familiar guilt churned in his stomach, evaporating the traces of frustration the conversation had begun to ignite.

It wasn’t really protecting her if she was going to be upset anyway. They both knew how much worse leaving something unknown was, and Mike wasn’t going to start down that road because he felt like lying today.

Things like this tended to come out eventually anyway. Mike was never that good at keeping things a secret.

“Henry.”

“…Is it Fazbear’s.”

Liz’s voice was flat, the question more of a monotone statement than any accusation or incredulity. Her brightened green eyes bore into his, molten with something similar to fury.

He licked his lips, wishing he’d grabbed a glass of water before sitting down.

“Yes.”

The confirmation somehow broke her vow of apathy, as she began gesturing wildly at him and raised her voice.

“How could you?! You broke the promise, you said we’d never go back there! We’re not even allowed there!”

Mike sank in his chair, feeling like he was being yelled at for misbehaving in school. The guilt had reached his throat and mixed with the ache there, feeling like the urge to vomit. He swallowed it with practiced ease and failed to make eye contact with anything other than the worn tiled walls of the kitchen.

“I had no choice.” There was a short pause as he thought, mind racing through the explanations that had come more easily before the night had started. “…They’re a corporation now, they pay really good. And I have a fake name and no one recognized me.”

“Yeah?” She snarled, “Then why’d you bring that up? Who the fuck recognized you Mikey?”

He bit his lip, anger spiking again and eyes flicking back towards Liz. “Don’t fucking curse.”

She threw her hands in the air. “Don’t tell me not to curse if you’re not going to stop doing it either!”

Mike sat up in the seat, using his height to look down at the pink-clad child. “I’m the adult and you’re the kid.”

Liz scoffed. “Yeah, some adult you are. Stop dodging the question.”

He stared down at her for a few more moments, willing her to just drop the line of questioning already. He was tired. Didn’t that mean anything to anyone?

But her eyes didn’t falter, accusing and damning him in the same breath. Just the thought of it drained him more, and he slumped back down to his more comfortable slouch in the chair.

He tried to hold on to the frustration for a minute longer.

“You’re such a little brat.”

“Answer.”

Fucking brat. Whatever. It didn’t matter what she knew or didn’t know, the result would be the same in the end.

“…Uncle Henry.”

The kitchen fell back into silence, and when Mike chanced a look back in her direction, he found Liz staring down at her vaguely disturbed eggs with a look he found hard to interpret.

She breathed in deeply and slowly, eyes flicking back and forth. Mike couldn’t help but frown, unsure what was going on in her mind. She could be infuriated at Mike’s fuck up, or she could be calculating what it could mean if they were getting into some kind of contact with Henry again.

Frankly, Mike wasn’t sure what exactly she remembered about the man. They hadn’t really spoken his name out loud in years, and they hadn’t technically seen him for almost half a decade.

Did she remember his kind smile and stern voice? His obsession with giving kids stuffed animals but habit of cheaping out on Christmas gifts? Did she even know that Evan’s complete stock of stuffed Fazbear plushies originated from that contradiction?

No, she probably didn’t know that last part. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her show interest in going into that room.

Mike wasn’t sure why he was thinking about that either. Somehow Henry was ruining his mood without even doing anything beyond having existed at one point. That was almost as impressive as Mike’s own track record.

Movement brought him out of the spiral his thoughts had led down, and Mike turned to watch Liz reach the sink. She left the plate and fork on the counter with a forceful clink! and a heated glance back at him, eggs still untouched.

He tried not to look frustrated about it and feed into it.

As normal, she rinsed her cup and drank a full glass of tap water to wash it all down, placing it in the sink once finished and turning back to her spot at the table. Never did she look up at Mike during this process, instead grabbing the backpack he had failed to notice sitting next to her chair and slinging it over her back.

“I hate you. I’m going to school.”

She didn’t look at him, but he continued to watch as she walked through the living room area to the front door.

It was only when she reached it that he scrounged up the courage to open his mouth.

“Don’t die.”

Liz paused, but never turned back to him, exiting the house without another word and leaving Mike to sit in the remnants of the sour atmosphere left behind.

The will to stand up refused to come and Mike sat there for a long moment, staring at the door.

There was a latch on it nowadays, though he hadn’t really been using it lately.

If he squinted, he could imagine the fractured, buckling wood from his dream, jutting out from the door like jagged teeth looking to sink into something juicy.

They were out of juice.

Mike heaved a sigh, turning his head to glance at the eggs left on the counter. Maybe he needed to make it in a different way so she’ll eat it. If only he had cheese.

Maybe it just needed salt and pepper.

His ruminations on flavor did nothing to deter the tang left in his mouth, and he smacked his lips to rid the taste as he tried to kickstart his brain into moving into action. If he waited too long, something was going to give, and he couldn’t afford not sleeping or keeping up with the house when Liz was relying on it.

He glanced at the eggs again, trying to drum up the annoyance from the earlier argument, but it refused to flicker back to life.

He’d clean it up later when he woke up in the afternoon.

With a small groan, he forced himself out of his seat, reminding himself that he would get to sleep in his real actual bed and go to the bathroom if he just kept moving now.

His tongue stung from the constant movement, the memory of iron briefly coming to mind.

…After he filled the ice cube tray. Then he’d get to sleep.

By the time he got to work hours later, his watch warned him that he was late. The traffic on the highway when he was trying to bike down the side of it was killer when in combination with so many left turns, but apparently it couldn’t be helped. He would just have to remember to leave earlier tomorrow.

Al took the explanation of his lateness with a wave of the hand and brief warning not to push his luck, though Mike quickly dashed off before Al gave him a job in favor of finding that female worker from the day before.

They had survived without him for twenty minutes, so he would get some answers and rest his weary leg muscles before he crouched down in the same position for the next few hours. The fact that Mike was late was also doing wonders for his anxiety of being in a Fazbear’s today, needing to push it to the side to rush through what he wanted to do before he began slaving away.

Thankfully, rainbow colored hair was a rare color, and he located her within the first few rooms he checked. She was walking out of what he knew was a storage closet, paper plates in hand and a deeply bored expression on her face typical of any Fazbear employee.

Mike waved his arm widely to catch her attention as he ran up to her. “Nessa! Do you have some time for me to ask you some questions?”

She turned to him as he approached, blinking at him with tired eyes for a slow moment before he could visibly see the recognition in her face.

“Oh. Mike, right? Did something go wrong last night?”

Mike held back the urge to scowl, hurt and fury from the night before rising back up to the surface now that it was finally time to actually address what had happened. This anger was what hastened his tongue, causing him to jump right into the matter instead of the build up to it he was initially going to go for.

“Did you know?”

She blinked at him. “Know what?”

“About the animatronics.” At her continued look of confusion, he let some of the scowl come out. “Look, I don’t know if it was some kind of hazing or freak accident, but the robots were super aggressive and crazy last night and I never heard a word about it.”

Nessa squinted at him for a moment, then at Toy Freddy passing by, who only stopped to scan the both of them before continuing on its way.

The reaction distinctly reminded him of himself the night before with Jeremy, causing him to cross his arms self consciously.

It had made more sense when he was the one doing it. He rushed to clarify.

“Aggressive towards the night guard. The poor guy was shitting his pants and calling for help the whole night, and I know you have to know something because someone gave him a Freddy mask to help him out.”

It was this explanation that finally brought clarity to her expression as it brightened in recognition. It only caused Mike to clench his fingers into fists in annoyance. He hadn’t yet gotten the chance to bring up the safe room, which she specifically had to have known about to some degree.

Nessa nodded slightly, moving the stack of plates in her hand under her armpit as she began to gesticulate towards Mike, making him back up slightly at the sudden interest she hadn’t deigned to give him before this moment. “I kind of knew? Actually, I didn’t think it was real. Only Dave ever said he had that problem, switched to day because of it, but that was something Scott was supposed to deal with. I didn’t think they were actively attacking people. Is Jeremy okay?”

It sounded reasonable enough. Mike wasn’t sure if he would have believed it either if he only heard about it second hand, and he definitely hadn’t really believed Jeremy last night when he hadn’t directly witnessed it.

Still, it wasn’t giving much insight into what was going on here, and Mike was not in the mood to try to explain his own series of events from last night. If this conversation kept going down a more positive route he’d try to work up to it.

“Yeah, he was fine. Just freaked out. It was… weird.”

She hummed, finally exiting his personal bubble to glance around the hallway. “We could probably talk to Dave about it. Scott’s a bootlicker, you won’t get anything out of him.”

Now that she was mentioning it, Mike seemed to recall Scott being the name of the manager of the restaurant. He probably would have to see if he could talk to him anyway, even if she was right about him refusing to say anything.

Regardless, he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Any information would be better than nothing right now. “Is he working today?”

Nessa nodded. “Yeah! He’s kind of a weird loner old guy, keeps to himself. He hasn’t really been working here that long, and on the day shift for shorter, but at least he actually shows up for the whole shift. I’ll take you to him.”

Mike forced a half smile, it coming easier than he thought it would. “Thanks.”

The plates were quickly placed on a random party table before they began to wander the pizzeria. They began with the main room, where she led him like a duckling towards the stage and then paused and frowned.

Then she led him towards the administrative wing, heading for the safe room he’d spent the night inside of in what felt like weeks ago. It didn’t look much different in the light of day, minus the worker or two lounging around in the chairs with a drink and a book.

Nessa scanned their faces with a frown and Mike followed suit, not recognizing anyone present but not expecting to.

“Huh. Hey Jace, have you seen Dave around?”

The dark skinned man looked up from his book, not even glancing at Mike slouching awkwardly behind Nessa. “Not since before I went on break. I’m blind until they start paying me again.”

She rolled her eyes. “And how long has ‘break’ been?”

“Forty minutes.”

“Huh. Have fun.”

He waved them off, and Mike could see the odd expression on her face as she turned around to usher him out of the room and close the door behind them.

Once it was shut, she turned around to give him the full force of her confused frown.

“Well, I don’t know where he went. Maybe he drove off for an early dinner or had an emergency and left. It’s not really like him to skip out for no reason.”

Mike frowned, unsure how to feel about the sudden wall in his investigation. Could the disappearance of the one person who might have answers have anything to do with said answers, or was it just the usual annoying bad luck Mike had been a victim to for his entire life?

Probably the latter. He’d have to try again later.

In front of him, Nessa scratched her palms with a worried expression, before brightening and focusing back on Mike. “Oh, one of the original engineers is here today! Mr. Emily could probably answer questions for you! He’s already working with your team, isn’t he?”

He glared down at his feet.

Fuck. He didn’t want to talk to Henry if he didn’t have to. The whole goal was to freeze out Henry until the damn guy left him alone. Approaching him was the opposite of what Mike wanted.

…But he also wanted to not be responsible for another person’s death, if it came down to it.

God, he really was only motivated by guilt, huh? What an asshole. Couldn’t even give a shit out of the kindness of his own heart. Nessa was outshining him and she was just wondering where her coworker went.

“Alright, thanks.” He forced out, trying not to sound as drained as he felt. It was only day two. This was ridiculous.

Nessa just shot him a smile, already having recovered from her worries with the air of a young adult who still had a flair for life. “No prob, Bob! Let me know if something big happens tonight.”

“Right…” He was not going to do that.

She turned to leave, revealing the door to the safe room behind her as she did so. Mike jolted as he remembered his other question. Though he no longer felt like Nessa might have been malicious, it was still important. “Wait! One more thing!”

Nessa turned back with a raised brow. He could physically feel the judgment and annoyance crawling on his skin. Mike tried to diffuse it with an exaggerated hand raised to scratch at the back of his neck, turning his head slightly to the side to show how embarrassed he was.

Hopefully the receding of the angry vibes wasn’t just imaginary.

“About the safe room… Do you know why it’s called that? Does it have to do with the animatronics?”

She blinked at him in surprise. “I never made that connection. I’m pretty sure it’s called that because it’s a company friendly thing to call an employee lounge that doesn’t legally exist.”

“It doesn’t legally exist?”

Nessa nodded, glancing to the side. “Pretty sure I’m not supposed to tell you this, but apparently back when things were more… bloody at FE, they would hide the employees in there whenever some incident happened. Like if a coworker got hurt, they would drag them to bleed out in the ‘safe’ room instead of the main room.”

It was Mike’s turn to blink slowly. “Um, what? Who made that policy?”

She shrugged. “I’ve worked here for seven months. Scott might know, or Mr. Emily, but I doubt either would tell you about it.”

Mike hummed. It seemed he did have things he could ask Henry. That kind of sounded like something William would implement, but who knew. It’d be hilariously ironic if it was. Mike wasn’t sure whether or not he’d want that confirmed.

But what he did know is that being a room to bleed out in was not the main function of the safe room. Not letting the animatronics enter the room is a very specific programming decision, and William had never gotten to touch the programming part of the animatronics as far as Mike knew.

Which meant, more likely, that Henry had the answers he was looking for.

He resisted the urge to groan and checked his watch.

Shit.

“Thanks, gotta go!” He shouted, turning to sprint back to the back room where everyone was working. Al had already said he was pushing it, and questioning Henry would have to come after he dodged getting fired.

Upon reaching the back room once again, he was greeted with an annoyed cluck of the tongue and a reprimand for walking out before Al could finish. He quickly made the excuse that he had to go to the bathroom, and though Al definitely didn’t fully believe him, he thankfully let it slide.

His wiring work on Chica had already been fully connected while he was busy being late to work, so now he was being pushed to work on Bonnie instead, with the clear implication that anything not done today should be worked on tonight.

Time passed once again, faster than it had the day before when he felt the gaze of Henry upon him at every moment. This time around, even when looking for him, Mike couldn’t seem to find where the man had gone.

He would normally be tempted to believe that Henry hadn’t bothered to show up today, but Nessa had very firmly implied that she knew he was here today.

What was it with everyone he needed to ask questions of disappearing on him?

It was only nearing the end of the night when he finally caught a glimpse at Henry walking down the hallway back to the main showroom as he was exiting the backroom to go on a real bathroom break.

His back was to him. He wouldn’t notice Mike at all if he didn’t say anything.

Goddammit. He really didn’t want to do this, but he had to know.

Mike slapped his cheeks quickly to urge himself into action and forced himself to open his mouth.

“Uncle Henry?”

His call turned into a question as his will wavered halfway through the word, but the sound of his voice had been enough for Henry to turn around, a disbelieving look on his face. After he registered Mike standing there silently, clearly not about to run off or call for help like the day before, his shock turned into visible delight.

Mike cringed at the sight of it, and held back the urge to back away as Henry hurriedly walked towards him with excitement accentuating every step.

“Michael! Did- did you need something? Do you want to ask me something? Can I do anything for you?” Henry rambled out quickly, almost cornering Mike against the wall as he unthinkingly backed up into it when the approach continued.

Stay calm Mike. You can leave whenever you want to. If he screamed, everyone in the backroom behind him would show up right away.

Not that Henry was the type to physically attack someone but, well… He didn’t know anymore.

He swallowed heavily. “I wanted to ask some questions about the animatronics?”

Henry blinked, and it surprised Mike how obvious the disappointment on his face was. He felt like he remembered the man being harder to read even just yesterday, but maybe the close proximity was helping Mike out here. A bonus he felt like he earned from all the physical closeness he’d been subjected to today.

After a moment, Henry cleared his throat, leaning back away from Mike a bit.

“Right, yes. What do you need to know?”

“About last night… Is there some kind of night time protocol for the animatronics? Like a roaming feature or something?” He had to start out slow. Honestly, it was weirder to be building up to it like this than when he almost outright said it to Nessa, but he couldn’t muster up the strength to do the same thing to Henry when the man was right in front of him like a faded picture in black and white realized.

Henry raised his eyebrows in vague interest. “Yes, they do. We’ve had that since before these new models, though it should be deactivated in the original ones if you’re worried about that. They’ve been shut off for years. I’m not sure what the state of their programming would look like now with all of the physical corruption they’ve suffered through.”

His face had turned oddly sympathetic, and Mike felt a pit in his stomach at the weird phrasing and explanation.

What did last night mean, then? Was Henry lying, or was it some freakish series of events that led to the old animatronics being so crazy and turning on by themselves?

If they did have the night time protocol built in, turning on at night at least made sense. But what didn’t really fit into his explanation was the violence, or the impossible physics, or just why exactly they couldn’t enter the safe room.

In the light of day, just as he had felt when confronting Nessa, his suspicions and worries seemed stupider. Henry had readily provided some form of explanation without needing to be directly asked, and he was so earnest and eager to talk to Mike that it was freaking him out a little bit.

But the safe room and Chica... It still didn’t make sense.

Something was really wrong here, but he wasn’t sure who or what it was coming from.

He must have been silent for too long, as when he zoned back into reality, Henry was staring at him with a worried expression amplified comedically by his thick glasses.

The accusations died in his throat before he could even muster them, not sure how he would even begin to explain his thought process while staring directly into those large brown eyes.

Mike switched tracks quickly. “Last night, some of the new ones were attacking the night guard, Jeremy. Nessa told me that it’s happened before?”

Henry stared at him for a moment longer, and Mike felt like he had been caught red handed committing some sort of crime. What it was, he wasn’t sure. Thankfully, it only took a second for him to come to some kind of conclusion and decide to take in Mike’s words.

“Attacked? Were they trying to grab him, or were they doing something else?”

“Uh.” Since Mike hadn’t actually seen anything happening last night, he didn’t really have an answer for that. He could base it on his own experience with Chica, where it seemed to be reaching out for him with the stumps of its arms when it had first woken up. “Grab him.”

Henry nodded, raising a hand to scratch at his beard in thought. “Then it was probably the criminal facial recognition. The animatronics are supposed to secure or defend against anyone they recognize from the criminal database we got from the police. Jeremy had to have gone through a screening process to work here, so there’s probably been some kind of malfunction. I’ll just tell Nessa to get an engineer to put his face back into the system and he should be fine for tonight’s shift.”

Mike couldn’t help but frown. “A criminal facial recognition system?”

The older man’s eyes darted back to meet Mike’s, and he felt like he was being pinned to the wall with a knife. The look in his eyes had turned intense, and Mike had to hold back a shiver.

“Yes.” He said simply.

Mike swallowed. He didn’t want to ask but… None of the toy animatronics had attacked him a single time, and Henry hadn’t said anything about the originals having the same system. If they’d been down for years, he wouldn’t have put anything new in them.

He opened his mouth and closed it a few times, unable to meet Henry’s intense stare that burned a hole into his face, before he forced the words out. “But they didn’t attack me?”

Something changed on Henry’s face, though he could only see it out of the corner of his eye. His voice was unbearably soft when he responded.

“When I recognized you yesterday, I quickly ran and got it put through the system as a precaution. You’re no criminal, Michael. You can work here with your team in peace.”

Mike struggled to control his expression, not wanting to frown or show anything negative that would cause Henry to change his mind. “We have the same face.”

He could just barely see Henry shake his head. “No, you two look entirely different. The animatronics would have reacted when you walked in the door if you did.”

It was true. Mike could remember being scanned by one of the robots yesterday way before Henry would have had a chance to do anything about it, and nothing had happened.

Still, he couldn’t really bring himself to believe it. He even had old pictures of William left behind to prove the similarities, and had gotten enough comments about it from people in high school before he’d dropped out.

Even Henry used to comment about how similar they looked, way back when everything was brighter and ignorance was bliss.

Something was warm in Mike’s chest, but it didn’t burn like anger or churn like teary guilt.

Of course, Henry then had to open his fat mouth and ruin it. “About William… Is there any chance I could talk to him?”

Mike felt the blood draining from his body, though tried not to outwardly react. It was always the same question. Always the same thing. If Mike answered negatively, what would Henry do?

He felt distant again, like in his dreams but more heavy. It felt like a blanket had been placed over his head, and everything outside of it was more muffled. The sounds of the pizzeria faded away, and the background noise of the clinks and chatting from the room behind him fell into silence until all that was left was Mike and Henry.

His breath was loud, and his heart beats were painful. They echoed in the sudden lack of sound.

In the end, he had to answer. He always did.

“I don’t know.”

Any of the ability to read Henry’s emotions had gone out the window with this new distance, as all Mike could focus on now was himself. So when Henry paused and struggled to find a response, Mike could barely spare a thought to what Henry was doing.

“You-... Did he make you get this job? Is little Lizzie still doing well at home with him? What did he say about you coming home so early in the morning?”

The realization came with such sharpness that it almost caused Mike to bark out a laugh.

Henry thought William still lived with them. He thought they were in constant contact with his errant father. He thought that he went home every day and was greeted by a loving family of three, ready to worry about his prolonged absence and a plate of breakfast on the table for him.

Henry was just like everyone else.

He had no idea what was going on, and he wasn’t going to help Mike or Liz.

He just wanted William.

How funny. And Mike had let himself feel touched for a moment there.

The words came out on autopilot as Mike processed everything he had learned. “No. Yes. Nothing.”

The world felt distorted around them, no longer just an endless void and hallway but like the murky depths of the ocean, twisting and oozing around them. It almost looked like the smoke from his dreams, though his lungs were thankfully clear and his eyes completely dry.

Was he drowning, or had it always been like this?

“Michael? Are you-”

“Mike? Mr. Emily? What’s going on here?”

All at once, the bubble popped, and the light and sound returned to the hallway.

To their side, Al was standing there, face hard and hands on his hips.

His voice demanded explanation, so Mike hurried to give one, even as he was unable to raise his voice above a mumble. “Bathroom break.”

Al turned to Henry, who Mike didn’t bother looking towards. He could still hear the sheepish edge to his voice, and could imagine him doing the same neck scratching tactic Mike had employed what felt like years ago on Nessa.

“We were just having a conversation. Michael came to me first.”

There was a moment of silence. “Go to the bathroom, Mike.”

Mike nodded, unable to raise his eyes from the floor they had drifted down to. The weight of their combined gazes was too heavy for him to rally the energy to open his mouth again, so he turned and scurried away, leaving the two of them without another word.

If Mike spent half an hour longer than he should have realistically been in the bathroom, Al didn’t say a word about it when he came back.

Henry was nowhere to be seen. Mike could only feel relief.

Chapter Text

A few hours into the night, silence was Mike’s favorite companion.

Though he had remembered to bring his old discman with him- along with a container for stealing more pizza than he was probably legally allowed to have- with the maelstrom in his mind, he opted out of actually using it for now.

The sounds of the restaurant still in full swing had grated on Mike’s ears, making him twitchy with the thought of being stuck in a conversation. In the end, though, he only spoke to Al one more time before the place slowly emptied out, leaving Mike all alone once again.

It had been calming, and despite how nerve wracking it usually was to be in Freddy’s, Mike actually felt safe in the lonely darkness. All the dark feelings that had been stewing inside of him had been satisfied and then easily shoved back down with the isolation, and now he was feeling somewhat normal again.

Staying overnight wasn’t that bad, he supposed.

Well. Other than the murder-y robot mystery and his high pseudo-roommate, but nothing in his life had ever been perfect.

Mike had resolved to not think about Henry for at least a full twelve hours, so he turned his focus to work on Bonnie instead.

And Bonnie, to put it nicely, was looking pretty fucked up.

It was literally missing half of its head and an entire arm. The exposed wiring had been some of the most visible damage, but today they had actually done the wiring in advance at Mike’s prompting.

In the process, he had negated the need for him to bring his insulating gloves tonight. Par for the course, Mike.

He didn’t let the momentary irritation get to him, though, because the next step was normally one he wouldn’t be cleared to be performing alone.

It was welding time.

So in the hours before Jeremy showed up, while Mike was half angsting and half just enjoying the quiet, he rifled through all of the spare bits in parts and service to find and fit any extra endoskeleton parts that could just be buffed and attached to Bonnie.

It was a lot of back and forth with the way he’d already set up the animatronic all the way in the safe room, but welding would take a lot of precision and long periods of crouching after a lengthy day of already doing that and biking to work, so he was taking the precious time on his feet as slowly as he felt like.

This meant that when he was shuffling across the main party room floor with his final decision of a left hand clutched in his arms, he was in the perfect position to hear the entrance of his fellow night walker.

He shifted the heavy hand to a more secure position in his arms and gunned for the entrance, trying not to make it look like he was dashing over.

Jeremy’s back was to him as he was locking the front door behind him, and Mike rubbed his fingers on the uneven, patchy texture of the metal in his hands as he waited for the man to notice him.

He watched as he turned around, palming his flashlight, and turned it on with a quiet click! The beam swept across the room, beginning with the stage full of deactivated robots and the empty prize corner, before catching on Mike.

Jeremy jumped, and once Mike’s eyes readjusted to the light, was scowling at him.

“Jesus, kid. Are you messing with me on purpose because you don’t believe me?”

Oops. Mike shuffled in place, awkwardly accepting the chastisement instead of snarking about the ‘kid’ part. “Sorry.”

He could just make out Jeremy rolling his eyes, and as the man began to walk past him, he could see that his pupils were a more normal size tonight.

“Whatever. If I get murdered tonight, it’ll be on your hands. Remember that.”

Mike tensed, a heavy feeling from earlier that evening returning. He already knew that. Why was he being such a coward and just letting Jeremy walk away?

Before the older man could get very far, Mike called over. “Wait!”

He waited for him to turn around before he continued.

“I asked them about the animatronics today. They said it was probably the criminal facial recognition system and said they’d put your face in it to make sure they won’t attack you anymore.”

Jeremy paused, and Mike could make out the blatant surprise on his face.

Damn, was it really that surprising Mike just asked a few questions? He kind of hated everything about this conversation so far. It felt like he kept doing the wrong thing when he’d barely said a single word.

“Are you for real?”

Mike frowned, feeling weird hearing an adult man use that phrase. “Yeah.”

“Huh.” The beam of light was moved slightly away from Mike, clearing his vision more, and it struck him that Jeremy had apparently been pettily shining it in his face this whole time instead of not knowing where to aim it. “Thanks, kid. Mike, right? You’re not that bad, just a grumpy teenager.”

He deadpanned at the man, refusing to be instantly demeaned after doing him a favor. “I’m 21.”

Jeremy nodded with a slight smirk on his face. “Yeah, sure. Can I see some ID?”

Mike rolled his eyes. Why had he been so nervous to talk to this guy after yesterday? He was annoying as hell. It had to have been because his emotions were so messed up today.

He’d just ask Jeremy one more thing and go enjoy welding for the night. They could both be happy and in their corners like respectable roommates, which was how Mike was officially deciding to consider their shared nightly duties.

“Can you just tell me if the animatronics said anything to you? Like, things that sounded like pre-programmed phrases, but were actually words?”

Jeremy stared at him for a long moment, making Mike tense a bit, before a large grin grew on his face. His eyes were sparkling, and for a second Mike was convinced that he had missed the smell of weed on the man tonight.

When he spoke, his voice was slightly higher pitched and came out quickly. “What?! Did management say that could happen? What are they supposed to say? Do they say death threats? Company secrets? Nuclear launch codes?”

Mike backed up at the barrage of questions, accidentally encouraging the man to advance on him. “No! What? No one said anything!”

It was the wrong thing to say. “Wait, then did you hear them speak? Or do you believe my theory that they’re-”

By this point, Jeremy was almost upon Mike, and he pushed him back with the animatronic hand. This seemed to stop Jeremy in his tracks, and he only seemed to now realize what Mike had been holding all this time with an incredulous grin.

This guy… was kind of an excitable psycho. Mike bumped down the age estimation of him to late 20s now, refusing to believe a man in his 30s would be acting like this.

Still, he felt caught. If Jeremy went to anyone else and asked what Mike was talking about, it might get back to Henry, which was the last thing Mike needed right now. Or worse, Al.

He had a plan tonight, and he had already resolved to get answers himself or from the elusive Dave. No one else needed to get involved.

That included Jeremy.

Unfortunately, Mike was unsure how to placate the man after slightly spilling the beans, and who was still staring at him expectantly. The attention both made his skin crawl and just in general felt… wrong.

Sure the situation was weird, but not in a way Mike found… interesting. It was more unsettling, like an indicator of something really wrong. Jeremy didn’t really seem to think the same, making Mike wonder if the two sets of animatronics were as different in aura when activated as he had assumed the night before.

It was seeming more and more the case that whatever was going on with the destroyed old crew and the issues with the new crew were something entirely different.

“Well, come on! What do they say? Which one spoke to you?”

“It was… Chica.” Mike gritted out.

Jeremy’s eyes lit up. “The one you were working on or the normal one? C’mon, tell me the details!”

No way. Mike backed up again, this time to skirt around Jeremy in one quick movement and go lock himself in the administrative wing instead of dealing with this guy any longer or saying something he shouldn’t.

Behind him, Jeremy called for him to come back, so he threw something out over his shoulder. “Sorry, gotta get back to work!”

Just like with the first day, this tactic worked surprisingly well, as Mike never ended up hearing or seeing Jeremy follow him to the safe room. By the time he reached the open door, he slowed back down to a walk, and entered it like he hadn’t felt more childish in the last half hour than in the past few years.

Bonnie was still waiting for him, face missing and sitting upright on the table. Mike had begun to set up his welding stuff in front of it, but moved it aside just in case it got caught in any crossfire.

He glanced over at the clock in the corner, and winced. There was only five minutes to midnight, which was about when he figured the weird shit started. He’d spent too long letting Jeremy yabber on.

Quickly he threw the hand into the pile of parts he’d accumulated in the corner and shoved the welding tools back a little bit more. If he broke or lost one of these, it’d take a lot out of his bank account he could not afford. Maybe Al would spare him an extra can of argon gas, but they were not in the habit of keeping spare welding torches in the workshop.

Once he was satisfied, Mike grabbed one of the last things he’d brought in preparation for what might occur tonight.

A fireman’s ax.

He’d been considering different tools that would be most effective in actually defending himself against one of these animatronics, and had originally settled on a larger crowbar. But when he had been rifling through parts and service, he’d found this slightly-rusted beauty just sitting in a corner, clearly some kind of holdover before they rehauled the fire system to something more modern.

Ax in hand and tools secured to the side, Mike walked out of the safe room, settling just out of arm’s reach from the doorway, and waited.

The clock inside, which he’d angled to be visible from the doorway, struck midnight. Mike hadn’t technically gotten to see it the night before, but the sudden full body jerk of the robot reminded him of the dull ache in his chin and tongue.

After that first large twitch, like an activation sequence, the motion went throughout the animatronic’s body, visibly traveling up and down it until the whole animatronic was shaking sporadically. It still reminded him of a dying bug, only made creepier by the fact that this one didn’t really have a face yet.

And then, with a loud crack! that was definitely not good for their endoskeletons now that he was thinking about it, those white pinpricks were focused on Mike.

He had definitely taken the chance to check while he could, and the LEDs in Bonnie’s head were distinctly red. They had been red all the way up until it was staring him down, accusing him of some crime he wasn’t entirely sure he committed.

So far, nothing from last night seemed imagined. There even seemed to be an entire process for what was going on.

Within a blink, and with those uncomfortable inaudible groaning noises, Bonnie was off of the table and standing next to it. Another blink and it was nearing the door, making Mike flinch. Was it faster than Chica, or was he imagining things?

He took a step back before he let himself blink again, and the robot was at the door. Against his will, Mike’s heart beat quickly, and he tried his best to steady his breathing.

He had a weapon, and he wasn’t afraid to use it. He raised the ax and blinked again.

The animatronic bounced off of an invisible barrier.

Mike relaxed, lowering the ax. Bonnie bounced off of the barrier again, and the groaning noises got louder, but otherwise no more progress was made.

It worked. He was safe.

With the animatronic still standing there, head jerking and twitching as it kept staring down at Mike, he took the chance to examine the more… supernatural things going on with its body.

Other than the groaning, which he was studiously trying to ignore, none of the twitches made any noise. He had thought that with the state of the robots and that first crack it would be louder the more you listened, and maybe that the groans had either been a weird warping of the sound that only happened to sound like gasps of air or had the purpose of drowning it out, but he couldn’t hear anything.

It was just… convulsing. Soundlessly.

He also wasn’t sure how it had been doing the teleportation thing. He should have spread flour or something on the floor, though it would be a bitch to clean up later. Next time.

…Oh god, there’s gonna be a next time.

Mike sighed, leaning to the side so he could peek around the animatronic. His welding equipment was safely untouched, and remained off to the side. Good.

His view was obstructed by rotting purple, and he looked back up at the animatronic that was very obviously purposefully moving into his line of sight.

Its eyes were still white, and it kept occasionally bouncing off of the barrier.

Mike watched it for a few moments, then leaned to the other side. It followed him, once again trying to either obstruct his view or get in his face, both mostly stopped by its inability to get any closer.

This one was petty. Or really angry.

Hold on a moment.

He leaned again to get a glance at the clock, barely able to read the numbers before his view was obstructed again.

Ten whole minutes had passed, and still the animatronic was trying to get at him.

While he remembered the ordeal with Chica taking a bit, he was pretty sure it hadn’t taken that long. The length of the entire affair had been mostly on Mike’s end, owing to his very normal caution and confusion at what was going on.

Chica had bounced off of the invisible barrier maybe once or twice, but then just stared at him until its eyes went back to normal.

Looking at Bonnie, its eyes were still white.

What was it Chica had kept looking at again? Mike looked down at himself for a moment, before remembering.

His shirt. Chica had been really into his shirt. Instead of freaking out or acting like a monster, it had gotten really into staring at his shirt for the rest of the night. The only time it had stopped was when Mike had left to go check on Jeremy.

“Hey, look.” Mike called out to the animatronic, and proffered his shirt to it with a few tugs. It was just another white undershirt, which was basically his entire wardrobe. Mike only got creative with his long sleeved shirts nowadays.

He stared at the animatronic, but it didn’t pause in its attempt to move forward, and the pinpricks that designated its eyes didn’t change.

Why wasn’t it changing?

Mike tucked the ax under his arm and pulled his shirt out from where it was mostly tucked under his coveralls, hopefully making it more visible. Though he could feel the eyes of the animatronic on him, when he looked back up, nothing had changed.

It took a second for something to hit him.

“Oh my god. Are you fucking kidding me?”

This animatronic didn’t have any fucking eyes. It just had LEDs.

Did he just lock his expensive welding tools in a room with a blind and violent monster animatronic he couldn’t calm down?

Wait, no, Mike smacked himself in the face as he realized his own stupidity. The thing was looking at him and had beelined for him instead of stumbling around the room in confusion. It could obviously see. It was just… being a stubborn asshole.

He scowled.

“Hey, Bonnie, stop being a dickhead. Look at my shirt.”

He tugged on it again aggressively, but the robot didn’t do anything. He glared into those white eyes, any feeling of nervousness at the sight of them or his dream about them long faded into deep rooted annoyance.

If there was one thing Michael Afton could do, it was irritation.

The two had a glaring contest, though Mike obviously lost. When he blinked, though, instead of the robot just bouncing backwards, its eyes had turned red again.

Finally.

The way its face was set up he couldn’t tell when or if it had even needed to look at his shirt, but he was going to take it as a win.

Now he just… needed to get past the particularly stubborn animatronic.

Just like the night before, Mike poked it with his ax instead of putting his hand into the crossfire. Thankfully, the ax wasn’t swiped out of his hands.

He switched to a finger, then a whole hand. The animatronic was a bit warmer than Chica, probably because the wiring was all fixed instead of running on mostly demon power. It almost felt like a person’s skin, though the texture was all wrong and it was too stiff.

The feeling was weird, so he quickly retracted his hand.

“I’m walking in now, so… Chill out.”

He edged around Bonnie, but like Chica, it thankfully just turned to watch him instead of bothering to do anything else.

When he got past Bonnie, he ended up just turning around and staring back at it.

This was… so weird. So weird that it felt wrong, still.

Nothing was exciting or interesting about this.

Mike tapped the ax in his hand against his thigh for a second, before turning to put it down on a chair. Not out of reach, but physically out of his hands. The animatronic didn’t react to it, but he wasn’t really expecting it to.

Instead, he slowly turned to get his welding equipment together, keeping an eye on the animatronic who was still just standing in the doorway.

It was a long few minutes of silence before he was done.

With every minute spent under the silent gaze of Bonnie’s LEDs, irritation rose in his chest. It didn’t feel intimidating and all-knowing like it had with Chica- instead, it felt specifically pointed to be as annoying as possible, either judging Mike or deciding to be difficult.

And now he was projecting emotions on the animatronics. Very sane of him.

He might as well go all the way if Bonnie was gonna be a bitch about it.

“Come on, I need to do some welding and I’m not doing it near the doorway.” He called out to the animatronic, taking a seat in the remaining empty chair he’d put near the table and waving it over.

The robot stood there quietly, refusing to move. Mike sighed. “I just want to do my job and I know I can’t move you. Can’t you just do me a favor and come sit over here?”

Finally, there was a crackling sound, and a stuttering voice box came to life, echoing with an odd metallic quality to it. “All work and no play makes Bonnie a dull bunny!”

Well. That sounded like there was something wrong there that Mike did not have the tools to fix.

Still, Mike frowned at it. “So what, are you saying you don’t want me to work, or you don’t want to do work?”

There was a short pause. Mike wasn’t sure if it was in disbelief at their conversation, which was what he was feeling right now, or a lack of desire to explain itself.

“Do you… have something you already planned to do tonight?”

He felt the stare leveled at his head shift slightly, and felt sure that was actually what it was. Which was bizarre, to say the least. How the hell did a robot that shouldn’t even be sentient, especially before the hours of midnight, make plans in advance? Did it know what day of the week it was?

This whole conversation was so weird and awkward. Mike felt like he was just talking to an actual person- an immature and annoying one, like Liz on a bad day.

Maybe it was because of that mental connection that he kind of felt like a parent saying this. “Well it’ll have to wait ‘til tomorrow night. Tonight you’re with me.”

He could imagine Liz’s scowl on the animatronic. “Aw, not today Freddy.”

“Yes, today.”

“Aw, not today Freddy- I don’t really care, we-” It skipped between phrases, switching to one that almost sounded like it was part of or a prelude to a song.

Mike scowled. “Well, you’re not getting out of here until I say so, so it’d be best for both of us if you stopped being a brat and just came over here.”

“I don’t really care-”

“Just get over here! Do you want a fucking face or not?!”

He glared down the animatronic, knowing he would lose in a staring contest but wanting his displeasure to be known as much as possible. Who knew what the thing could see? There was only two things he needed it to know- where the fucking table was, and how pissed Mike was getting.

It took a few more moments before loud stomping and pistons firing filled the room as Bonnie visibly marched over to the table, sitting down normally but in a way Mike could sense was with a huff.

He was going crazy. Really. This place was driving him absolutely nuts.

Just to prove his point, and in case Bonnie decided to be difficult later, he turned and scrounged through the pile of scraps he’d collected earlier that night for a moment, before he found the faceplate he’d decided on.

“Here. See?” He held it up in front of Bonnie’s face with one hand, and grabbed some spare eyeballs in the other. They were mismatched at the moment, since he couldn’t remember the color of Bonnie’s eyes off of the top of his head, but they fit into the faceplate with an easy snap.

Bonnie’s remaining arm creaked upwards, and Mike did his best to inch out of its way so it could touch the faceplate.

It was almost kind of… touching. Cute?

Just as Mike thought that, it dropped the hand back to the table with a sudden bang! making him jump, and he got that huffing impression again.

Not cute. Annoying.

He’d still start with the face. The loud metal on metal sound had reminded him that this robot could, in fact, rip his arm off if it felt like it. He’d feel better placating it by giving it what it clearly wanted most first before continuing to order it around.

So Mike zipped up his coveralls, pausing when he covered his shirt completely. A cautious glance at Bonnie revealed no change in eye color, so he guessed just seeing it the one time was enough.

He put on his gloves and welding mask, standing in a kind of crouched way to get a good angle at Bonnie’s face, and holding up the faceplate in the position it was going to go.

He’d figure out how to buff out his mistakes after he felt more comfortable with this thing.

For the next while, the only noise in the room was the sound of his welding torch as Mike systematically connected Bonnie’s face back together. He wouldn’t be able to do the padding still, but at least now the guy would look more like a human being.

Which might be worse, but still.

It took more concentration than the wiring from the day before, so luckily Mike’s thoughts weren’t drifting to topics he had already declared to be out of bounds. The most he thought about was Liz at home, with a random image of him welding a face onto her instead of this animatronic.

The thought bothered him more than he’d like to admit, so he tried to shake it off. Luckily he’d see her soon enough and be able to get the thought out of his mind without much trouble, unlike other thoughts about certain other people.

After what felt like an hour, he was sweating and the face was done to his standards. He had been going slow since he wasn’t exactly a professional, but it seemed to have helped keep him more steady.

Unfortunately the angle he’d eventually had to reach was awkward, so his back was already hurting.

He took off the visor entirely and stretched his back out, trying to relieve the ache in it before he went right back to it. With the visor gone, he was suddenly reminded of his company, and looked over at Bonnie.

With the blank endoskeleton face he looked… less creepy. The red LEDs were still shining through the holes where the eyes would soon go, but he had an upper jaw and fake bone structure where it’d been mostly a mess of wiring and nothing before.

This robot… had felt more like a human than Chica had. Sure Chica talked, but it had spent most of its time in general acting more like a distant observer. Bonnie had an entirely familiar attitude and personality that flowed.

Mike was tempted to attribute it to their actual character personalities, as Chica had really always just been the ‘girl’ one, but…

“Do you… have a name?” He ended up asking, feeling a weird pit in his stomach as he did.

The prospect of it having a name other than, well, ‘Bonnie the Bunny’ was frightening. He wasn’t sure what it implied, both about the robot and about Henry. Or maybe this was something totally different Mike had no clue about yet.

There was a pause, and Mike could sense the petty reluctance. Still, Bonnie eventually replied.

“It’s been four hours.”

The whiney tone paused Mike in his tracks. What? Was he just bitching or was that an actual answer?

His voice came out slow as he tried to puzzle it together. “What does that mean? Can you explain it better?”

He waited, but the animatronic didn’t respond.

Well, maybe it didn’t want to. He didn’t really want to hear the answer either, if he was honest, so Mike decided to just move on instead of speculate.

It was time to return to the more comfortable part of the night, which was messing around with robots. He went to the pile of scraps and found a bunch of eyeballs of different colors, offering them up to Bonnie.

“What color do you want?”

Silence.

Was it giving him the silent treatment? Because he didn’t understand its complaint?

Wow. This one really was a petulant twerp.

Mike closed his eyes for a second, imagining that it was Liz sitting in front of him asking him to do her makeup instead of a seven foot tall animatronic. She was pouting and crossing her arms, refusing to help him literally help her.

He took a few breaths, ignoring the feeling of the robot’s gaze on him and trying to revel in the feeling of being home with her.

When he opened his eyes, his breathing was at a better pace, and the frustration building in his throat was easier to swallow down.

It was still super annoying, but now he didn’t feel as inclined to say something that would end up with him dead on the floor. A win was a win.

“Fine then,” he said, a forced smile on his face as he kept that image of Liz in his head, “You’ll have to do with one pink and one blue.”

He snatched up the said colors and leaned forward, clicking them into place. Within a second of their installation, Bonnie blinked and looked around, each movement audible enough to make Mike wonder if he should start bringing WD-40 every day.

Bonnie with those eye colors was odd, but the animatronic didn’t say a word, so Mike didn’t either.

It would live with it, and every time he turned and saw that stupid thing with its dumb eyes, he’d know he won today.

With that, the rest of the night followed in a similar manner. Mike added on the arm with all of its joints and began trying to buff down any of his mistakes along the way. He did mess up on occasion, but Bonnie appeared dedicated to its vow of silence for the most part.

Except, of course, when he didn’t want it to.

It was while he was attaching the hand to its wrist that something jerked his arm harshly, causing him to break the straight line he’d been laser focused on and create a bubbly stream of aluminum across the forearm.

Unless he could buff that out, he’d have to use a whole new forearm. Damnit.

He threw up his visor and turned to glare at the offender. Bonnie stared back with those stupid blank bicolored eyeballs.

“What the hell was that?” He spat out.

The animatronic blinked at him. “I can see clearly-”

Mike waited, but it stopped mid song. He took a second to wrack his brain, before rolling his eyes. “You want me to fix your eyes now?”

It remained silent, and he sighed in annoyance.

He chucked what he had just been working on to the table to the side, knowing he’d now have to spend time fixing it instead of continuing, and went to find the eyeballs again. Once he had them, he showed it to the animatronic.

After a second, it pointed to the one remaining pink eye.

Oh. Were its eyes pink the whole time? He thought he’d remembered they were green, but maybe that was a difference between the toy version and this one.

He replaced the blue eye with just a few movements and Bonnie tested its eyes again for a moment. Then the room returned to silence.

So that was all it ruined Mike’s work for.

He glanced at the clock, but it was only almost three am.

With a sigh, he continued.

It took maybe half an hour for Mike to feel the push of hard metal on his arm again, this time right after he’d finished attaching the arm so he luckily wasn’t in the middle of actively welding anything.

He took a second to put down what he was holding, only to receive what must be another harsh poke. He sent the robot a look.

“Can I just put down my stuff first? Please?”

It instantly poked him again, and he exhaled sharply through his nose.

Okay, this was actually officially more annoying than Liz. He needed to calm down now. Usually he’d be too tired to get to this level of anger, but he’d gotten a second wind from how the night had progressed and was feeling enough energy to have that heat sit in his veins.

“What? What is it?” He couldn’t hide his exasperation, all focus on not expressing the fury that was clenching his fists.

“All work and no play makes Bonnie a dull bunny!”

Huh. Was it asking if it could leave since he’d finished its arm? Some of the anger dissipated at the fairly normal question.

He cleared his throat, wiping off some of the sweat that had accumulated on his forehead. “Sorry buddy, but now I gotta buff out all my messes. It won’t take as long.”

“Aw, not today Freddy.”

Mike deadpanned. This again? “Yes, today. If I get it all done now-”

“Aw, not today Freddy.”

He had to control his breathing. He had to control his breathing. “I have to do it tonight-”

“Aw, not today- 8 hops to the left!”

Despite the clear name change, Mike couldn’t help his temper boiling over at the repeated phrase.

“Fucking stop it!” He shouted, throwing his welding torch down to its chair. He ignored the noises it made as it fell, glaring into those stupid pink plastic eyeballs that dared to look back at him challengingly. “Are you a child? I said no, so it’s not happening!”

Something in the air changed, though Mike could barely feel it through the heat on his skin and filling up his head. His gaze was stuck on Bonnie, who blinked at him a few times.

It didn’t say anything. Again.

Fine, was that how it was going to be? He went to stand up and close the door, just to cement the fact that the thing wasn’t getting out and to have something to throw around, when it finally replied.

“Yes.”

For some reason, a chill went down his spine. He could feel goosebumps on his skin, in spite of how warm he still felt.

But all he could feel was confusion. “Yes? Yes to what?”

The animatronic’s stare, which Mike had been able to easily brush off for the entire night as just an indignant one, was just as piercing and unsettling as Chica’s had been. He thought for a moment those eyes would turn into white pinpricks like Chica’s did, but they remained the same.

“Yes.”

This time, the shudder that went through his body was felt, and he could feel the heavy tension in the air suffocating him. When he took a breath, though, it didn’t enter his lungs. It just stayed outside of his body, surrounding him on all sides.

What was it saying yes to? Feeling the importance of the question, he mentally ran through the argument again.

A child. Yes, it was a child.

Was there lore that Bonnie was a child? It was a bunny, but usually the characters paraded around as ambiguous ages, just to try to be inclusive to both teenagers and little kids.

And something in him told him that wasn’t the case, anyway.

He just wanted it to be.

Mike opened and closed his mouth, mind racing as he tried to figure out what it meant and what he should say.

It… was a child. Whatever was inside of that thing was a kid. Or considered itself one.

The words were dragged out of his throat as he tried to answer, desperately confused and wrong footed. “...How? Why?”

It stared at him in silence, and he shakingly met its gaze.

He’d been mostly joking about being afraid of it, before. Once it had revealed its personality, he could only see it as he saw Liz. Biting and frustrating to be around, but less of a machine and more of a person.

A… child.

He winced as a creaking and scraping sound pierced his ears, watching the source of it as the robot raised its new hand and pointed it at…

The pile of remaining scraps that he’d pushed out of the way.

It wasn’t in easy reach anymore. He’d have to stand up and walk over, even for just a few steps. He didn’t want to turn his back on it, but it was obvious what it was telling him to do.

He would be fine. He… he hadn’t pissed it off all night even with their blatant arguments, and the ax was still there.

The ax.

Mike scrambled to grab it in his free hand, feeling more secure with its weight in his grasp. Bonnie thankfully didn’t react, even as it watched his movements like a hawk.

He inched over to the pile, keeping a steady gaze on Bonnie, and pointed down at it.

No reaction.

Okay, something more specific in the pile. He pointed at the excess arm parts.

Nothing.

The finger joints?

Nope.

The discarded eyeballs.

Bonnie blinked.

Mike scooped them into his hand for the third time that night and returned more easily than he had left, ax still being held in an iron grip.

Bonnie’s pointed finger moved with him until he got close, narrowing down the specific one it was pointing at little by little until he couldn’t deny which eyeball he was pointing at.

It was purple.

…Purple.

What did that mean?

He licked his lips. “What… What is purple?”

It stared at him, and dropped its pointing finger. Silence reigned over the room, and it didn’t even bother to blink at him. The heavy atmosphere let up just as suddenly, but the chill that had settled in Mike’s bones remained, and he knew without looking that the hair on his arms were still standing up.

He tried repeating his question, but didn’t get a response.

Either it refused to explain further and expected Mike to know, or…

It couldn’t answer.

He was inclined to think it was the latter. Bonnie wasn’t like Chica, who would apologize when it couldn’t explain something. Bonnie was an irritating dope who just wanted to go out and do anything other than work, even if it was for his own good.

Just like… a bratty little kid.

Bonnie never bothered him for the rest of the night, and deactivated just as Chica did as the clock turned to 6 am. The taste of bile in his throat from that interaction remained even after he exited from returning Bonnie to the backroom.

He turned back to see it sitting there, slumped over against the wall Mike had been forced to basically throw it onto with how heavy its dead weight was. It was completely lifeless, new pink eyes half-lidded and staring out blankly somewhere just beyond where Mike stood, arms splayed randomly where they had fallen.

It looked dead.

He felt sick.

“Kid! There you are!”

Mike jumped as a hand fell on his shoulder, and he whipped around to see Jeremy smiling down at him with a half crazed look, surprised at Mike’s reaction but eyes filled with something strange.

Everything was weird and wrong tonight. This entire fucking pizzeria was weird and wrong.

Mike hated it here.

“You said you talked to an employee, right? Who was it? Was it right at the end of the day or something?”

Jeremy’s voice was kind of breathy, though he clearly wasn’t out of breath. He seemed either shocked or winded about something. Mike was having a hard time understanding him when his mind was still on the form slumped against the wall behind him.

It took him a few moments to reply then, though oddly enough Jeremy didn’t push.

“No… There were still a few hours to go.” He shook his head, trying to get into the conversation. Jeremy was acting pretty serious, so he wanted to give him his full attention. “It was Un- Mr. Emily. The owner guy. Original… engineer.”

He couldn’t help but glance back at Bonnie again with that last title, frowning.

Mike was almost entirely sure Henry was the one to program in the safe room restriction. As someone just working with these robots for a few hours a night, Mike was already very much aware of the weird shit going on, but Nessa and Jeremy didn’t seem to even think it could happen.

Henry, as the owner and lead robot guy, would have to know. Even if he turned them off, they turned themselves on at night. How could he get the chance to program it in without getting a glimpse of what was happening?

Or did it not start until after that? Was it all just some… crazy programming error?

Mike already knew the answer. He just didn’t want to face the strange reality in front of his eyes.

Jeremy, who was not privy to Mike’s thoughts, continued on his tirade.

“Well clearly he had better things to do because those fucking animatronics were still attacking me!”

At this, he caught Mike’s attention again.

“No, it should’ve…” Henry… Where did he go after talking to Al? Surely he didn’t forget the thing Mike had opened the conversation with. “Maybe the order just didn’t go through? Or maybe…”

He didn’t want to keep harping on about Henry. Maybe he was innocent, and this was something else. Someone else being lazy and fucking up.

Henry wasn’t a violent guy. He had harassed Mike for years and was oblivious, sure, but programming robots to do this stuff? Was that something he would do?

Mike didn’t know. He genuinely didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure if that was because of his usual inability to read people or because of something else.

“What? ‘Maybe’ what?” Jeremy laughed harshly, grabbing his hair in one hand as he began to pace in a panicked manner. “Did you finally accept that these things are possessed by fucking demons? None of this is normal!”

“Possessed?”

Wait.

The teleporting without sound. The groans. The twitching. The impossible eyes and physics. Half interpreted conversations, but otherwise permanent stillness.

Bonnie was a child.

Five children’s bodies, the final remnants of which they were pressure washing out of the robots this week.

Mike could barely breathe. His words came out as a whisper.

“Holy shit. They’re possessed.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying!”

His shocked stupor was interrupted unceremoniously by the still-oblivious Jeremy.

He needed to make him understand. This was- what was this? What did it mean? “No, they’re possessed by ghosts!”

Jeremy finally paused in his pacing, dropping his hand from his hair to stare at Mike incredulously. Perhaps it had been the surety in his voice, or the trembling he could feel starting up in his hands, but he could see the man’s face soften a bit even as he remained curious.

When he next spoke, Jeremy's voice was quieter and more fitting to Mike’s mood. “…What? Where did you get ghosts specifically from all of this? Why can’t it be demons?”

Mike bit his lip.

He didn’t think he wanted to explain it, but at this point, it seemed inevitable. Jeremy was kind of dealing with it too, and Mike didn’t want to feel like he was insane. If he was left alone with this, how long until he convinced himself it was something even worse, or convinced himself out of the idea entirely?

He wanted to make sure he was right, even if that meant… Relying on Jeremy of all people to do it.

“Well I guess it could still be demons but… Okay, listen to this and don’t laugh until I’m done.”

Mike explained the events of the last two nights, skipping over some of the more comedic moments and focusing on each time the animatronics ‘woke up’ and ‘fell asleep’. The small details, the larger ones, and the fact that they talked through the programmed voice lines from years ago.

The older man started out looking dumbfounded, then vindicated, and moved to a thoughtful neutral by the end of the explanation.

The two of them looked over at Bonnie and Chica, who were still laying on the ground inside of the backroom. Simultaneously and without any verbal communication, they decided to take their conversation deeper into the hallway.

After they were nestled into the corner that turned into the main showroom, both the entrance to it and the backroom visible, Jeremy finally turned back to Mike.

“The new ones aren’t really doing that stuff exactly, and they don’t calm down at all.”

Mike nodded, glancing towards where the toy animatronics were probably standing, illuminated by the sun through the front windows.

In contrast, the hallway leading to the backroom where the withered animatronics were was still dark.

“I think maybe it’s different. The uh, withered ones are more alive acting?”

Mike faltered for a moment, feeling like a child explaining a strange television show to someone else. Jeremy only nodded and gestured for him to go on, so he continued.

“They even have like, weird names for things when I try to ask them about it. Chica was saying its name was ‘Just the Three of Us’ and Bonnie said ‘It’s Been Four Hours.’ They’ve also been calling me phrase names, like '8 Days' and umm '8 Hops to the Right' or something. I think they think in phrases that have specific meanings, but I haven’t figured out the rule behind it.”

He hadn’t technically had these thoughts, but with the chance to spitball out loud, it was all coming together in Mike’s head. He should have been paying better attention during his conversation with Bonnie instead of fighting with the… kid.

Jeremy raised an eyebrow through Mike’s rant, but let him finish before he continued. He had a small amused grin on his face. “You're joking right? Kid, they're using numbers. You're number 8, Chica is 3, and Bonnie’s 4.”

Oh. That made a lot more sense, both for him and the animatronics. Though he wasn’t sure why they couldn’t shave down the phrases to just the one word then.

Mike paused in the middle of rubbing his eyes, a realization making a shudder run down his spine once again.

“…Wait, but why do I get a number?”

Jeremy, in contrast, had seemed to relax with the amount of answers and information they had gathered, even as he kept an eye on the two directions the animatronics could come from.

“Maybe they’re targeting you? Or they could consider you one of them somehow? It explains why none of these animatronics attack you but attack me… Chica was part of the guys attacking me tonight too.”

That was… new. So they did move around at night when they weren’t in the safe room.

There was a high chance that the business Bonnie seemed so set on completing then was…

He eyed Jeremy for a moment, but saw no visible injuries. The guy wasn’t one to hide any, either. He was sure if something had happened, even if Mike had been listening to the sound of his welding tool all night, Jeremy would have made sure he’d heard about it.

Regardless, it was concerning. Mike didn’t really like the idea of being in the same group as the animatronics, especially if his theory was right.

What did the numbers mean exactly? Was it some kind of hierarchy in the ghost world?

But he wasn’t even a ghost, so why did he have one? Also, only five children died. Why were there seven other than himself?

“I don’t really think that’s it.” He settled on, rubbing his arm uncertainly.

He could almost feel their eyes on him now. They could be anywhere, and he wouldn’t be able to see him. He just knew they would be watching him, especially if they seemed more interested in him than Jeremy.

Maybe even while he wasn’t at Freddy’s.

“Well, we need some kind of explanation, 8.”

Mike snapped to attention at that, frowning at the man who busied himself with flipping his flashlight in his hands.

“Do not call me that.”

It was wrong. It was weird. It meant something, and Mike didn’t know what it was. If he was honest, he was afraid of the answer.

It might be saying something about the connection between him and them.

He tried his best to wrench that thought out of his brain the moment he put it into words, but it sunk its claws deep into his psyche, physically paining him with every second of attention he put into it.

He didn’t know anything. He really didn’t. Didn’t they know that too?

“C’mon, lighten up.” Jeremy reached out to put his hand on Mike’s shoulder, making him stiffen up at the unwanted contact. It burned cold, and set fire to the gasoline of paranoia that had been filling his body. “It’s not that bad of a nickname, and we’re in this together.”

Maybe Jeremy was attempting to give him a reassuring, playful look, but it only looked cruel in Mike’s eyes. He smiled wolfishly and spoke again. “8.”

Within the span of a minute, Mike was out of the door and heading towards his bike, precious welding equipment left behind as he desperately tried to shake the phantom feeling of eyes on him.

It didn’t work. Mike knew damn well you can’t affect a ghost with just the power of the mind, after all.

Chapter Text

He retied the red bow with a satisfying tug, earning a quiet ‘ow’ below him.

“That didn’t hurt.” He rolled his eyes, letting go of the ribbon and stepping back to take a look at her outfit.

It was simple and cute, Liz’s usual day to day outfit of pink shirts and dark skirts matching well with her ribbon. She hadn’t grown much in the past year, so thankfully he didn’t need to get her new clothes just yet.

His eyes still caught on the signs of wear on the edges and around the seams of her skirt, though.

He hated it, but it would have to do.

Mike must have spent too long focusing on her skirt, as Liz stomped her foot and crossed her arms in annoyance.

“Are we done yet? I need to go to school!”

Right, school.

He quickly retrieved her backpack and held it out to help her into it, which she let happen with some reluctance. He was sure his nervousness about today was helping her be much more willing to go along with how weird he was acting.

Now prepared, she quickly went to the front door and opened it to leave. Mike held out a hand to her, suddenly feeling desperate. “Wait!”

She turned back to look at him, an annoyed look on her face. He forced a smile.

“Don’t forget, avoid the roads and keep your head down. If anything happens, run to the woods. Don’t be a hero, okay?”

Liz nodded, and within the next second, had left the house, leaving Mike alone.

It’d been a long time since he was alone in the house. Escorting Liz to and from school every day ensured he’d technically never had a moment of peace. The quiet and stillness was refreshing, after so long struggling to look after an 8 year old.

He sat in the kitchen chair, still staring at the door Liz had just walked out of, and waited.

Of course he’d called out of school today. He had to make sure she would get home. School had never been a priority, their lives were more important.

It wasn’t like the teachers cared if Mike showed up anyway.

The silence stretched, and the sun crossed the sky as the day continued outside, only showing as streaks of sunlight peeking through the cracks of the boarded up window in the living room.

Mike didn’t watch them, instead continuing to stare at the front door.

She should have gotten there by now. Maybe started school. Maybe finished, and was on her way back.

He had no way of knowing. The day seemed to continue both too quickly and too slowly. The sun both inched across the floor and flew.

There was no noise, not even the sound of his own breathing. He didn’t blink, just waited for her.

And waited.

And waited.

…She should be back by now. Shouldn’t she be back by now?

He finally tore his gaze away from the doorway to check the clock. Though the surface of it swam in his vision, he knew it was 4 pm. Far past how long it’d take for her to get home from school.

And yet, the door hadn’t opened.

The panic came instantly, and Mike shot out of his seat to head for the doorway.

Who knew where she was? He wouldn’t be able to get help from the police, they couldn’t care less. The Robinson kids were the ones they ran across the most, but he didn’t think they would attack Liz, and they lived right by the woods.

That was only relevant if she had remembered his advice, though.

Why did he expect an 8 year old to be able to save herself? Why had he let her go alone? Just because she asked? Just because he was being threatened with suspension for skipping first and last period to walk with her? Just because he was sick of all the physical fights idiotic children initiated to punish the evil Aftons?

Their lives mattered most. He had just said that. Why was he being so selfish?

By the time he reached the door for what felt like an eternity later, he had worked himself into a gasping mess, heart beating so quickly he could feel himself growing dizzy from the lack of proper oxygen.

He needed to find and save her. He-

There was a knock on the door right in front of him.

Thank God.

He quickly opened it.

“Liz-”

His own face stared back at him, and he stumbled backwards, all panic dissipating into stone cold fear.

It stretched, much taller than Mike had ever been, staring down at him with a cold look. Silvery blue eyes shined with indifference and hatred, and blood was splattered on his clean shaven cheek. Dark brown hair, styled and curled to perfection, without a single hair out of place.

He wasn’t supposed to be back. He never came back. This wasn’t right, this didn’t happen.

The man’s mouth opened, and the expected dulcet British tones escaped from within. “Michael. I’m home.”

Somehow, Mike was 14 again, hands shaking by his sides as he watched his father step into the house and take a look around. His arms ached with bruises, and his voice was caught in his throat by both puberty and fear.

The sun outside had set, and it was pitch black outside. Only the broken overhead light in the living room was on in the house, occasionally flickering as the bulb stuttered and tried to cling to life for just a little bit longer.

Mike felt embarrassed and ashamed. Like the state of the house was reflective of his own failings. He knew Father was judging it with a critical eye, and he waited for him to turn back to Mike with his usual disapproving look, ready to send Mike up to his room for hours or smack some sense into him.

He didn’t. Instead, when he turned around to face Mike, he was smiling.

It was a simple, happy one he had never seen on his father’s face before, lighting up his eyes with delight.

“I ran into our little Elizabeth on the way over. She was quite happy to see me.”

Mike wanted to throw up. Please. No.

But he couldn't get his mouth to open, or his body to move from where he was standing next to the doorway. His eyes were stuck on Father's face, his face, with that pleased little smile on it.

Father gestured to the door, which had been left open. In the darkness of the night outside, Mike could just make out an odd shape, a large figure not quite adhering to the outline of a human being.

Liz wasn’t that tall.

“I was so proud of her for waiting for me all this time, so I gave her a gift. Why don’t you come show it to your big brother, Elizabeth?”

Father’s tone was both mocking and proud, but Mike couldn’t look over to see his expression. His voice instead curled around Mike’s form, freezing him in place

With loud clanking noises, the thing outside stepped forward, getting closer to the light and revealing each feature bit by bit.

Red hair, bright clothes, a smile, green eyes.

A tutu. Seven feet tall. Blood crusting around the edges of the eye sockets. Indistinct gasping groans filling Mike’s head.

The animatronic stood over Mike, occasionally twitching erratically in place, like it couldn’t decide how to properly fit into reality.

Mike knew he was about to die. He still couldn’t move, even if the thought had crossed his mind, somewhere distant screaming at him to run away.

Father’s voice silenced the groans and distant screaming. “Elizabeth, greet your brother.”

The animatronic raised its arm and pointed it towards Mike. As it spoke, its eyes lit up with LEDs, glassy and inhuman in spite of the blood coating the edges around it making them look bloodshot.

“Hello, number 8.”

Mike was startled into the world of waking by slamming into the floor of Father’s office, again.

He pushed himself off of it, blinking away the images of the robot and Father as quickly as he could. Thankfully, he was immediately aware he was awake. It was just forcing his body to forget what he had just dreamt that wasn’t coming quite fast enough.

“Fuck. What the fuck?” He gasped, taking a look around the room to try to replace the images in his mind faster.

The couch was pushed to the back of the room, but on either side there were dusty shelves of books Mike still hadn’t bothered to read. An empty desk with an old, dead computer sat right next to the doorway.

Where did that animatronic design come from? Mike knew he’d seen it somewhere before, but couldn’t quite recall where or why, nor why he would connect it to Liz so strongly.

Well. He knew why, now.

The memory of last night finally stayed his breathing, and he took a moment to sigh and cover his eyes with his hands.

That was… a fucked up dream, but not really that bad. It was more the- the implication of the animatronic that was disturbing, in the end.

Will was never going to come back. Mike did not fear his return, because it wasn’t going to happen. He would get crucified by the public, and had no interest in his two wayward children.

They were safe from him.

Still, Mike’s heart beat a little too quickly in his chest, and he frowned at himself.

He needed to see Liz. Just to see that she was alright. Hopefully without needing to explain his dream or anything going on at Freddy’s.

He stood up to fold his blanket and get his ass into gear, doing his best to brush that dream off to the side and focus on the present.

By the time he had collected himself and reached the fridge, he could hear the unmistakable sound of Liz already walking down the stairs.

He quickly turned to look at her, egg retrieval task forgotten.

There was no hulking 7 foot robot, no crusted blood or glowing LEDs. She was fine. Everything was normal. She had pieces of toilet paper stuck in her hair for some reason, and was still trying to get some of them out as she spotted him staring at her.

“Don’t laugh at me! I wouldn’t have done it if you just bought me a curling iron!”

Her complaint knocked him out of his staring, and he turned back to his fridge with a tired sigh.

She seemed to be nice and awake. The same as usual. It was as comforting as it was frustrating.

The daily nightmares so far were making him way too exhausted to want to fight back, and on top of that, he had only slept for an hour so far. So instead of going through with another egg making attempt, he retrieved the remaining milk and moved to set up a bowl of cereal and glass for her to have for breakfast.

Today, he was wishing he had any fruit, not just a banana, but fruit didn’t tend to last too long.

Behind him, he could hear Liz settling down in her chair. It only took him a minute to set everything up, and she scrunched her face in distaste at him as he placed it in front of her.

With a huff, she pushed the bowl away from herself and towards him. “I don’t want it.”

Mike frowned. It was going to be one of those days again, apparently. He pushed it back towards her. “You need to eat for your walk to school.”

She angrily grabbed it and slammed it down in front of her, causing precious milk and wheat bites to spill over onto the table.

He could barely muster up a bit of sadness for the spilled milk puddles he would be cleaning up.

Liz grabbed the spoon he had also given her and pointed it at him threateningly for a second, before huffing in what seemed to be frustration and shoving a spoonful of cereal in her mouth.

Years earlier, this kind of fight would have lasted far too long.

The image of an 8 year old Liz being shoved into that clown animatronic flashed through his mind, blood dripping through Father’s hands and pooling into her red hair. He chewed on the inside of his cheek as he traced a line of wood grain.

He shouldn’t be thinking about the past right now. It wasn’t a safe topic in any way.

But he wouldn’t be able to hide from it forever, especially with how crazy Jeremy was acting last night.

The thing Mike needed was information. Some kind of answer. God forbid Jeremy found out who Mike really was, being as into conspiracy theories as he seemed to be. That would be the end of Mike’s job and career.

They didn’t have the money to skip town yet. If he could provide some information for Jeremy, he could potentially discourage him from looking things up on his own, or connecting dots he didn’t want him to.

…Why was he being put in this situation? Wasn’t it a bit too ridiculous?

Why couldn’t it just be a normal clean and repair job?

He supposed he should have known something was going to go wrong when he realized he was being sent to a Freddy’s, but the ghosts of his father’s victims? Really?

A hand snapped its fingers in front of Mike’s face, and he blinked back to reality.

Liz was on the other side of it, and she frowned at Mike in irritation.

“Have you eaten in the past week? Why are you so floaty?” She snapped her fingers again, just to annoy Mike. “Stop ignoring me.”

He reached up and pushed them out of his face with a frown. “I’ve been taking extra pizza from Freddy’s. Don’t touch them in the fridge.”

Something changed in Liz’s expression, but he was too tired to be able to guess what exactly it was. She leaned back from where she had been reaching over the table to harass him and returned to her cereal for a moment.

Then, she smirked.

“I’ll do whatever I want, so make sure they’re gone by the time I’m home then.”

Mike narrowed his eyes. Really? Why was she always pushing his buttons? He didn’t get what enjoyment she got out of it every time.

Maybe a year ago he would rise the bait every time, but lately he just wasn’t in the mood.

Still, he tried to entertain her back. She liked her snark fests, and he really hadn’t indulged her in a while. They were supposed to be siblings, and he didn’t want her to feel ignored.

“Why are you so hungry? Aren’t you worried about getting fat?”

She gasped in response, and Mike felt a spark of amusement as she even took a second to raise her hand to her chest in offense.

“Michael Afton! Excuse me? What is that supposed to mean?”

It was his turn to smirk tiredly. “I dunno, I’m just saying I’m worried about your new habits. Do you have anything else you need to tell me, like about your hair? Baldness runs in the family you know.”

Liz must have been sleepy, or in too good a mood to escalate it, as she simply rolled her eyes at his half-serious question and took bites of cereal through her response.

“I’m not turning bald and fat, Mikey. And that’s not even true. Daddy isn’t bald.”

Mike couldn’t help but thin his lips at that, feelings of amusement sputtering out as his gaze lowered back down to the table.

They couldn’t know that. For all he knew, Will was bald now. It would be an easy way to help hide his identity.

However, he felt like he couldn’t quite make that comment.

The topic of Will had always been a harsh one with Liz. Not even mentioning the topic of fatherhood in general.

Mike was aware that at this point he was technically Liz’s acting father. But the thought of her calling him that made a pit open up in his stomach and his throat tighten.

It wasn’t right and felt disgusting, but he didn’t want William here to do it either.

As for mothers… the less said about that topic the better. Maybe when she was older.

He could feel Liz’s gaze returning back to him with his lack of response, and fished for something to shoot back without setting her off. He just wanted to keep this lighter atmosphere for a little bit longer. Was that so much to ask for?

“Well- maybe he is! You don’t know.” He threw on a half smile and forced himself to look up at Liz as he spoke.

It was just in time to see her face fall for a moment, and then shutter closed.

Fuck. He’d fucked up.

He raised a placating hand. “Liz-”

“Shut up!” Instead of the playful, whiny tone she’d been using the whole morning, her voice had returned to its sharp rage he’d been subjected to yesterday. “Why are you such an asshole?”

Mike’s mind raced as he tried to guess what exactly had set her off about it when he’d been trying to be careful in the first place. He didn’t comment on how she probably wouldn’t remember if Will was bald, or how they didn’t know if the man was even alive anymore, or even how he frankly didn’t care other than if the killer was going to show up at their house at any point.

But she was upset, so he answered. “I didn’t mean to-”

“Of course you ‘didn’t mean to’, you never do! That’s why Daddy always had to punish you before you drove him out!”

His jaw dropped. “What?!”

She bowled over his exclamation, continuing her rant. “You just keep saying and doing whatever you want, and you don’t even care who you hurt or kill. Daddy is going to come back and then you’ll be sorry!”

Mike’s breaths felt heavy in his ears, but time felt slow.

Was that what she thought about their life before with Will? About how Will would- and-

He grit his teeth, heat rising to his skin as he glared over at his sister.

She was just a stupid kid. He had to remind himself she was just a stupid fucking kid, and had no idea what she was talking about. She was lashing out at him because he…

He didn’t even know what he did, and it infuriated him more.

Why did everyone always punish him? Why was it never enough? How much penance did he have to live through before he would be absolved of his sins? How long did it take to earn the right to live as a normal person again?

He took a slow, deliberate breath, and tried to gather up all of the anger in his chest. Then he exhaled, trying to force it all out of his body.

It worked, just a little, enough for him to try to reply again.

“You… you don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

She barely waited for him to finish before responding. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Daddy is going to come back for me.”

He hated that he knew what it was now. With just that, Mike could tell where he’d fucked up.

This conversation had happened in some form or another throughout the years, but never in this way. Not with those words added to it.

Nothing he could do could shake her of her delusion that Will was going to come back. Not even years of him gone. She was 11, but she was still an immature, naive child, who didn’t give a single shit about all the harm Will had done and would do if he returned.

He hated it. And he hated how she was twisting it now, how she probably had been the whole time in her head, remembering what Will had done to him and saying it was right.

So in the end, his response came out with a cold kind of anger Mike could barely remember ever reaching.

“What would you know? You barely remember him.”

Liz glared back at him, eyes shining with tears, but Mike didn’t feel much sympathy for them.

Didn’t he deserve to be mad? To cry? Why did he have to let her beat him down with things she didn’t have the brain capacity to understand?

When she realized he wasn’t backing down, she let out a wordless yell and pushed her chair back from the table. He watched with a cold gaze as she grabbed her backpack and left without another word or look in his direction.

The front door slammed shut behind her, leaving Mike alone with the spilled bowl of cereal and a burning hot ball of rage in his chest that had no target to aim at.

So he went to the most logical target he could think of.

William Afton. Serial killer, child abuser, errant father.

Even now, even now, half of their conversations were about him. The man had been gone for years, and all anyone could talk about was him.

He hated him. He hated him far more than he hated anything Liz said, because at the end of the day, there was a small, young part of him nurtured by Will that had agreed with her words more than raged in defense of himself.

And he hated that part of him too.

Mike put his head in his hands for a moment, taking a second to breathe through his anger.

It had happened a long while ago, and he was normal now. He was an adult. That was all in his childhood, it was gone. Liz bringing it up was a fluke, there was no point in dwelling on it all. No memories to remember and get lost in for hours, mindlessly pacing around the house as he worked through it instead of getting the sleep he desperately needed.

He couldn’t afford to lash out at anything here, anyway. He had to save his money to go to the grocery store soon.

The thought of a task, a plan, something to focus on for the house instead of everything that just happened and the not-so-distant memories of years ago, made him raise his head again to stare at the bowl.

Wasted milk, and it had been the last of it too. But the grocery store…

After the landmine he had just stepped in, he wasn’t willing to touch that warzone, at least for another day.

Plus, he needed coupons anyway. It helped that he should probably head to the library today for research as well.

…Even his plans were centering around the consequences of what Will had done.

That fucking monster.

Mike hoped he was dead.

The library was a common feature in his life, in spite of the fact that he had dropped out of highschool almost a year ago and been a Bs and Cs student his entire time there.

The figure of the building, connected to the post office in a kind of joint formation, was an oddly shaped one, and had no grandness to it. It more resembled a two story colonial house missing a few windows than what pictures he’d seen of famous libraries around the world.

But it was Hurricane. Who was expecting grandeur from here? Not even the Mormons spent much time in their town.

Still, the library doors were the main attractive feature of the building. They were some kind of heavy, dark wood, and had random flowers and curly stuff carved into them. The mere sight of them calmed some of the remaining storm in Mike’s chest, though the numb anger didn’t quite fully dissipate.

In the library, he was somewhat safe. Everyone had to stay quiet, and any fights had to be moved outside.

And…

“Sonu!”

A shorter woman appeared, straight, blown out black hair tucked behind her ears to show off her newest pair of long, dangly earrings. She had a large, easy smile on her brown face as she approached Mike, and he returned it with almost the same ease.

He gave a wave and beelined for where she stood behind the check out desk. “Hi Ms. Kulkarni. Sorry for not being here in a while.”

She reached over and smacked him in the arm, pointing at him in accusation. “Do not call me that! I’m not an old lady, I’m 28! It’s V-A-L-E-R-I-E.”

Mike rubbed his arm, unable to help chuckling at the interaction.

It felt so normal and comfortable, like he was finally relaxing in front of the TV after a long day at work. More of the anger faded, not quite gone but more easily pushed to the side.

“I’ll call you Valerie when you tell me what sonu means.”

Valerie waved her finger in his face again with a stern look. “It means rude brat, that’s what it means.”

“Yeah, right.”

They both rolled their eyes at each other, and then burst into laughter.

Mike couldn’t stop smiling. Why didn’t he come here as often again? At the moment, he couldn’t quite recall any explanation other than shitty work hours.

He had met Valerie years ago, when he had first trudged his way through the snow to the library in a desperate bid to find some kind of information on how he was supposed to create a resume to get a job, so sure that was the reason why no one would hire him in town.

She was fairly new to Hurricane and America as a whole, and it meant she didn’t really know who Mike was. Valerie was also stubborn in a nice kind of way, as once he had implied to her that he knew she wouldn’t talk to him anymore once she knew, she’d told him she would never learn.

To this day, as far as Mike was aware, she still had no idea what blood or mistakes riddled his past. She only knew him as ‘Sonu’, the boy who needed help with figuring out how to make a bank account but was too nervous to openly ask the bank teller.

It was one of the few places where he felt like Michael Afton didn’t exist, nor matter.

Skipped days from school, when not spent at home, were here.

This warm building with the yellow, fading lighting, the smell of books he never bothered to read, and the comfortable chair on the far left of the seating area that he always took when he stuck around.

The chair might even have an imprint of his butt from the amount of hours he’d spent sleeping or just hanging out in it, occasionally chatting with Valerie as she walked around doing her librarian duties.

He’d even considered inviting her over to his house one day, maybe to ask her to help teach him how to cook instead of going off of the borrowed library cookbooks and sticky note tips she’d written him.

Mike had never quite committed to it, in the end.

He didn’t want to share her with Liz, or open her up to the potential of learning who he really was. Maybe that was selfish of him, but he liked things as they were.

“I haven’t seen you in so long, how have you been Sonu? How’s your sister?” She poked his cheek with a cold finger, and he brushed it off with a huff. “Shouldn’t you be at work, mister?”

“She’s good, she’s at school. I have new hours, so I can come in now. It’s only temporary.”

Valerie clucked her tongue and suddenly grabbed his cheeks with both hands, pinching them painfully. “They should be giving you more money, look at you!”

“Ow, ow!” He pulled her off of his cheeks and rubbed them, knowing there would be red marks there now.

One thing about Valerie that he had to complain about was how often she liked to touch and pinch him, like he was her baby cousin or something.

She ignored his pain, as usual, and turned to search behind the counter for something. Eventually she procured a few plastic baggies of what she told him was called chevda and held them out to Mike.

“Take these, they’re good healthy snacks for you. Eat it while you work.”

“Valerie, you know I can’t do spicy!” Though he whined, he reached out and took the bags anyway, moving to throw them into his old backpack he’d brought with him.

She only clucked her tongue, reaching out to pinch his cheek again and raising an eyebrow at him when he dodged her.

“You need to eat more of my mix and get better at it then, white boy. Your sister gets some too. Don’t be a pig.”

He wasn’t a pig. If he was too skinny, how could he be a pig?

Mike didn’t voice the petulant thought though, shrugging back on his backpack without replying.

Of course Liz would get some. Though she really didn’t like it, so he’d probably eat it all again. It was a bit too spicy for his virgin mouth, but food was food and he didn’t want Valerie to be upset she’d given up her snacks only for neither of them to eat it.

When he was done, Valerie was back to smiling normally again, though it had barely dropped to be mocking before. “Are you here for coupons, Sonu?”

He nodded quickly, slightly embarrassed. He should have visited more often, now it seemed like he was only appearing to get what he wanted from her and screw off.

Luckily he was also planning on staying a bit longer before he had to go to work, so he would alleviate some of the guilt after an hour or two.

She smiled in amusement at him and raised her hand to ruffle his hair this time. He knew this song and dance so well, it was never an issue for him to guess what she was trying to do.

He dodged the hand anyway and stuck his tongue out at her, causing her to shake her head.

“Hah, fine, fine.” She turned to the side and lifted up the partition meant to keep people from going behind the desk. “I always save some for when you come, but I had to keep it in the back this time. Let me go get it for you.”

“Alright.”

Valerie waved at him as she passed him by, and he watched her disappear into one of the few doors leading into the staff rooms.

He hadn’t gotten to go into one of them yet, but he was pretty sure it was the break room. Had she been keeping them in the equivalent of her locker?

It was… really nice of her. His chest felt warm and heavy, and he couldn’t keep a small smile off his face as he boredly looked over the interior of the building.

The library looked the same as always. Their conversation was a little on the louder side, but there was barely anyone around to be bothered by it, which was always nice about the Hurricane Public Library.

Some teenagers were in the kids section, rifling through some of the titles and pointing them out to each other. Mike thankfully didn’t recognize any of them.

An older gentleman was sitting in the table area with a large swathe of books around him and writing on a paper. He was probably doing some kind of research, though Mike didn’t care about the details. He just liked how it all added to the general atmosphere.

By the edge of the aisles, someone was standing there, holding a book over their face.

They lowered it and-

Ice ran down Mike’s back.

He was glaring at Mike, and noticing instantly that Mike had seen him, pointed at his eyes and then at Mike.

Mike remembered why he had been avoiding the library.

Detective Burke had found his safe space.

He wondered why he hadn’t quite felt that blazingly angry gaze on his back until now. It was piercingly painful, and one so familiar he felt he could recognize it even if he wasn’t aware Burke was in the room.

The previous warm atmosphere was completely gone, and all he could feel was the stare of the detective burning into his own eyes.

He had to look away, but even when he did, he could feel the accusing weight of it.

Why did he have to run into him here? Why now?

He knew what he wanted. He was waiting for Mike to slip up, looking for an opportunity to take him into custody. Especially now that he was legally an adult and didn’t need an errant guardian to show up and be in the room while they were interrogating him.

Al is going to be so pissed when he doesn't show up for work. One or two times missing work because he was detained for jaywalking was already pushing it, especially when he couldn’t call in his absence when forced to sit in that stupid interrogation room for hours.

Mike frantically ran his fingers over the strap of his backpack, going over the worn stitches over and over and trying to keep himself grounded.

He hoped he wasn’t making a scene. That- that would be a public disturbance, and then Burke would-

“Here you go, Sonu!”

Mike looked down at Valerie, where she was holding out a stack of coupons she had used a rubber band to tie together.

Right, yes, he was here for coupons. Very legal stuff.

He chanced a glance to the side, and could barely hold back a flinch at the intense gaze that met his for a brief moment.

Mike should not have gone out to the library today. He should have just taken the hit to his bank account and gone to the grocery store. At least he wouldn’t get jumpscared by a cop in the grocery store, only the usual suspects.

All the excitement with seeing Valerie again and the chilling mystery of the animatronics had made him forget, but he resolved not to do it again.

He hated this.

Wordlessly, he reached up and took the coupons, swinging it into his backpack quickly and turning to leave before Burke got any funny ideas. He was stopped by a hand on his shoulder, and he whipped his head around to look at Valerie’s serious expression.

“Mike. What happened while I was gone?”

She worded it like a question, but it was undoubtedly a demand.

However, he wasn’t quite sure how to answer without giving away something he didn’t want her to know. What would she think of him being scared of a police officer, enough to recognize him out of uniform?

He looked over again, just to check that the man hadn’t been some figment of his imagination, but nope. He was still there.

Valerie had followed his gaze, and frowned in the direction of the detective before turning back to Mike with a smile.

“Hey, Sonu, do you have anything you’ve been meaning to read? You’ve been gone for a while, I got a new easy cookbook for you. Maybe you can try some Indian recipes?”

Her voice was lighter, now, and more indescribable to Mike’s ears. It wasn’t a tone he’d heard her use before, but he could smell how fake it was.

Did she want him to stay, or not?

Regardless, he couldn’t. Not while Burke was around, and the possibility of arrest and everything Mike had here falling to pieces was still so high.

He would have to wait out Burke, make him think he’d lost interest in hanging around the library. He’d done it with the local park, though eventually replaced it with the library anyway. Maybe now was time to go back to sitting on the swings for hours.

But first, he would have to come up with a good reason for leaving.

He mustered up a smile and shook his head, pointing his thumb behind him towards the exit. “Ah, no I gotta get going. Work and Liz, you know the deal. I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back for a while.”

Valerie’s smile somehow widened, and he realized she had never let go of his shoulder. She glanced at the officer, and then leaned in towards Mike with a lowered voice.

“Sonu, I will not let you be bullied out of my library. Choose a book to read or I will choose for you.”

Today was a day of random revelations about people he thought he knew, apparently. Mike’s mouth dropped slightly, and he strongly resisted the urge to meet the piercing eyes that had grown more intense when Valerie had leaned in to whisper.

Could she do that? Force a cop to get the hell out of her library, just because she felt like it? Would Burke tell her something if she did?

Mike didn’t want to lose this nice, warm place, but he was already losing it. Even with Valerie’s return, Burke’s mere presence was still making the conversation feel icy cold, and his chest was heavy with panic and guilt rather than that earlier comfortable feeling.

He licked his lips, and chose. “I-I need to see, um. Newspapers from June 1984.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Local or national?”

“Both.” He didn’t want her to know what he was looking for.

After a moment, she nodded, and backed away from him again with that same smile. She gestured to his usual seat at the tables, still as free as it had been earlier when he was looking for it. “Take a seat, Sonu! I’ll bring those to you in a moment, I need to go do something first. Actually, go clean your face in the bathroom first, then take a seat. You look exhausted.”

He stood there with indecision for a minute, turning to glance at where Burke was standing, but Valerie physically stopped his head from moving with her hand. “Wash your dirty face, please.”

Mike nodded, and she let him scurry off into where he remembered the bathroom being.

A glance spared backwards showed her warpath towards where Burke was watching him run off, oblivious to whatever she was about to say to him.

Mike hoped she punched him in the dick so hard he couldn’t say anything that incriminated him.

When he returned a careful ten minutes later, the sensation of being watched was gone, and a pile of newspapers had been placed by his usual seat.

Valerie wasn’t anywhere to be seen, and the other patrons had moved deeper into the aisles. Even the old man who had been sitting at the tables had gone missing, abandoning his books and paper.

He hoped that didn’t mean she vacated the entire place, or there was a loud argument. He hadn’t heard anything from the bathroom, but it was in one of the corners of the library, and he had been too busy focusing on breathing through his anxiety to make a good attempt at eavesdropping.

Still, he got so few gifts nowadays, he wouldn’t look the gift horse in the mouth. The place was virtually empty, and even Valerie wasn’t here to potentially question what Mike was looking at. This was the best chance he was going to get to subtly find some information.

He searched for the exact date he was looking for, knowing it by heart, and quickly picked out the issue of the Daily Hurricane that corresponded to it.

The headline read ‘Freddy Fazbear’s Owner Finds Dead Children in Animatronics!’ and featured a black and white image of a distressed looking Henry. His hands were covered in something dark, and he held them out from his body like he couldn’t stand to have them too close to himself. He was talking to a police officer, clearly making some kind of report or statement by the time the press had shown up.

A smaller picture later down the page showed five small bodies lined up in front of Fredbear’s Diner, covered in white sheets.

Mike felt sick to his stomach, memories of screams and thrown bricks welling up against his will, knowing each of their parents personally by this point.

But not the kids’ names.

So, he read on before Valerie came back or it was time to head to work and take a breather from everything, just for a little while. A short break for him to delve into mechanical work without having to think about the shitshow that was his life was just up ahead.

In the end, work ended up being no better.

Mike walked into the back room, slightly late as was becoming usual, only to find everyone standing and gossiping loudly instead of doing any work.

He could spot Al across the room, but had to wade through his coworkers before he could get there and sign in.

He had only taken a few steps in when he was noticed by Reese, whom he was passing by.

“Mike, did anyone tell you yet?” She whispered excitedly, grabbing his arm to stop his momentum.

He paused and turned to her, feeling a crawling sense of ominous doom from both the touch on his arm and her tone of voice. Today had been really shitty so far, even if Valerie had bought him some coffee and donuts to eat in the library despite it being against the rules. He dreaded what was going on now.

“No… Does it have something to do with the cops?”

She rolled her eyes at him, clearly feeling more energetic and peppy than he was. “No, why do you always ask that? Claudio found an actual finger in the bear’s head!”

Instead of feeling sick, Mike just felt numb.

Freddy. So that was Gabriel then. The oldest boy.

He had been only 12 years old. Liz was still younger than him. Still in the prime age range.

The world around him was unbearably loud, and the noises of everyone talking pounded in his ears. He resisted the urge to cover them, unwilling to draw attention to himself any more than he felt like he had already.

Reese continued to chatter on about how the finger was found, but Mike let it go in one ear and out the other.

He just didn’t want to hear about it.

Looking around the room, he felt like he could tell just exactly what they were all talking about.

The thrill and excitement. Maybe some grossed out comments. Sympathy, of course, stated after the rest, a reminder of their humanity. His coworkers weren’t terrible people, just terrible gossips.

But in the back of the room, he saw Freddy. Head padding removed entirely, exposing his endoskeleton face. Without the fake fur, it was just blue eyes sticking out of a metal skeleton. They were still half lidded, staring out at the throng of people standing around and talking to each other.

Watching. Unable to move or react, until midnight hits and everyone’s already gone.

Mike chewed on his lip for a second, before turning back to Reese and interrupting her. “I need to talk to Al, sorry.”

She blinked at him. “Oh, okay?”

But he was already walking away, heading over to where Al was talking to who he now noticed was Henry.

He took the rest of the walk to actually observe Henry.

The older man seemed… stressed. He was periodically switching between scratching the top of his head and rubbing over his face. Al was the one leading the conversation, and he was mostly nodding along to it while occasionally saying a short comment.

Mike wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but he imagined it was something similar to the picture he had seen in the newspaper just a few hours ago.

He hoped another one wasn’t taken today. For both their sakes.

When Mike finally, finally reached Al, Henry had turned to walk away, causing them to successfully avoid each other.

Al turned to Mike with a frown that Mike shared, both a black hole of silence in the continually rising buzz around them.

“You gonna be okay, Mike?” Al spoke quietly, the low tone and proximity standing out against their backdrop.

Mike couldn’t help but glance around nervously at the verbal reminder of his connection to current events, but no one was watching them. So, he thought about the question.

He didn’t think it was a trick, or Al was fishing for something. Mike had already had it pointed out that he looked pale from his lack of good sleep, and the shock of multiple things happening today must not have helped his complexion.

Al was the only one here who knew how serious this might end up being for Mike, and he was asking the question.

There was the right answer, that would let Mike keep this specific job at Freddy’s and get the extra pay and possible answers he wanted, and the wrong one, which was the truth.

Obviously, he went for the right one.

“I knew it might happen when you told us the job. I’m lucky I wasn’t the one to find it.”

The cops would have loved to hear that, when the report was eventually filed.

Especially Detective Burke.

Al opened his mouth, clearly about to ask him something, but there was a loud shushing sound traveling across the room. Mike wasn’t sure he had wanted to hear what the man was going to ask, anyway.

Perhaps to balance out his good luck, it would have been an accusation.

He hoped he wouldn’t have to use Valerie as an alibi.

Henry stood at the side of the room, and had pulled over one of the boxes sitting around to stand on. It didn’t add too much to his height, but it did well enough at directing everyone’s gazes over to him.

The man was still rubbing his face now, but visibly stopped himself with a small sigh and looked up at everyone through his thick glasses.

“I’m sorry you all have had to go through with this. While we knew it was a possibility, the police and crime scene cleanup team had assured me years ago they were properly cleaned out. I am the one to blame for not properly checking.”

Why was Henry apologizing for that? Mike couldn’t really understand his thought process here.

If he were Henry, he wouldn’t have even shown up to greet their mechanic group at all, nonetheless spend hours in the same room as the robots.

Was it the fact that Mike knew they were alive in there that was coloring his perception, or was he just being normal? Mike couldn’t really tell anymore.

Everything was weird since he’d come to Freddy’s. He hated it.

“I hope none of you spread rumors about what has occurred today. Rest assured, there are no more bodies or deaths, we at Fazbears have long since upped our security and have checked, considering recent… accusations regarding some local disappearances.”

This was the first Mike had heard about it. While his finger wasn’t exactly on the pulse of town gossip, something usually reached his ears within a week or so of it occurring, either through his coworkers or Liz.

It must be more recent, then.

Henry’s face was in a pained smile, and it was so fake Mike couldn’t help but cringe. This was pretty fucked up.

“If anyone would like some extra compensation for the ordeal you have gone through, feel free to come to me or Mr. Cawthon and we’ll provide it for you.”

Extra compensation.

Mike, stupidly, raised his hand immediately upon hearing those words. He only realized after Al snorted behind him what he had done.

Henry squinted in his direction for a moment, before blinking in surprise, the expression more comical with the magnification of his glasses. “Michael? Do you have a question?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Where did all his previous gloom and contemplation go? Would he really be asking for money from Uncle Henry for something he hadn’t even been in the building for?

Mike thought about the coupons in his backpack, and Burke watching him in the library. About the inevitable trip to the grocery store tomorrow, before he would have time to cash in his latest paycheck.

The greyhound bus tickets to Illinois rotting in his bedside drawer, not ready to be used.

They needed to move forward. Mike and Liz were alive, in spite of everything trying to change that. Utah was temporary. Seeing Henry again was temporary. Even dealing with the animatronics was only until their job was done.

Someone else could find a way to fix their ghost problem. Mike was just surviving it.

It probably made him a terrible person, but Mike had always known that was the case. It was about time he accepted that about himself and moved on.

“How much is the compensation?”

Henry frowned in response, but Mike blankly watched him process his question.

Eventually, after staring at Mike oddly for a bit, Henry answered. “Fifty dollars.”

“I’ll take it.”

One of his coworkers burst out into laughter, and the entire room turned to see Seth as the culprit. When he realized everyone was looking at him, he stopped to point at Mike. “Classic Mike move! You’re such a cold hearted money grubber, kid!”

Some of his other coworkers joined in with chuckles, but Mike turned away instead of joining them.

Yeah, that’s what it was.

All he needed was the cash. Nothing else.

The tension and respect had been broken by Seth’s outburst, and everyone dispersed into groups crowding around the animatronics again.

Mike could feel Henry and Al’s gazes on him, but refused to look back and see what they were thinking about him.

He didn’t want to see it. He already knew.

Instead, he looked at Freddy one more time. Gabriel.

He was not going to deal with that today either.

Mike pivoted towards Foxy and stalked forward, refusing to look at his coworkers or voyeurs. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it far before he could see the figure of Henry catching up to him out of the corner of his eye.

He tried to ignore the man’s presence, but Henry opened his stupid mouth anyway and forced his words into Mike’s ears.

“Why do you need the extra money Michael? Are you doing alright? Is W-”

Mike couldn’t help but glance sideways at Henry as he started to say the name, but the man cut himself off without him having to do anything.

It was all the same. Henry was the exact same as Mike, he just had different goals.

If Mike and Liz were the casualty of what Henry was doing, Mike guessed the ghosts were his.

Like father like son, he supposed.

So he didn’t pause in his walk at all, instead letting his dark expression answer Henry for him.

Thankfully the man stopped following Mike, and he was able to make it to Foxy and his coworkers without any more interference from anyone else who wanted to give their two cents on what was happening in Mike’s life.

Foxy was-

A robot. Just a robot. Nothing else right now.

So Mike would focus on only the robot today.

There was no point in bothering to try to talk to anyone.