Chapter Text
Vanessa thought about death often. It was impossible not to.
Some part within her hoped it would like coming home for the first time—dark, painless, and beautifully silent. But like most things in her life, things didn’t go to plan.
Like the explosions threatening to burst through her eyes as the bright lights of the room pierced her eyelids. Her head felt like someone was trying to hammer it open. She groaned, trying to move, but tubes entered her body on all sides and her limbs didn’t feel like her own. Against the scratchy fabric of her hospital pillow, Vanessa felt her hair uncomfortably tickling her face. It was out of its signature ponytail, splayed out messily around her head in a matted mess. She felt like a foreigner in her own body. And that thought in and of itself made her want to vomit. Her whole body felt like it was fighting against her. Overwhelmed, she quickly lost the fight against her eyelids' betraying need to seal shut against the searing lights.
Vanessa’s natural instinct was to play dead and figure out her surroundings but the pulsing rhythm of the heart monitor picked up its racing pace as she grew more panicked. Hearing the racing of her heart echoed through the high-pitched, mechanical sounds of the heart monitor only made her panic more, until all she could hear was the beating in her chest, in her ears, in her throat. Her shaking fingers reached weakly towards her face, clawing at the tube funneling air into her lungs. Faintly, she noted the screeching of a hospital chair on her left.
“Breathe, Vanessa, breathe. You’re alright, the nurse is coming.” Mike. That was Mike. She remembered Mike. He was the latest security guard at Freddy’s. He… he was supposed to be dead.
Vanessa let out a choked noise as she tucked into herself. Her eyes were still squeezed shut, leaving her blind. She tried to push herself up into a sitting position, feeling much too vulnerable.
“Woah don’t move, you’re still recovering. You’re alright, just breathe.”
Recovering? Vanessa barely processed Mike’s words as she began to feel all too aware of the stinging pain in her stomach. Her head was still so fuzzy, her memories clouded by some wall she couldn’t yet break.
Mike was cut off by the nurses barging in through the door. In her haste, she didn’t even process that she’d ripped the IV out of her hand, leaving a trail of red streaming down her arm.
“It’s alright, you’re alright.” Vanessa heard Mike back away from her hospital bed, the warmth of his hands still lingered on the hospital sheets as a nurse checked her vitals. She squinted through the lights, catching a glimpse of Mike. He looked out of place in the sterile environment in his scruffy, wrinkled clothing and dirt laden sneakers. Another nurse was shooing him out the door as he met her gaze.
“Hang in there, Abby’s been waiting for you!” Vanessa faintly heard him shout.
Abby? Vanessa wondered as she slowly drifted back into sleep’s clutches. Right… Abby. Mike’s little sister. She’d been there when… when…
When Vanessa awoke for the second time, she felt less like cornered prey and more so like a human being. Her eyes fluttered open and she exhaled, thankful for the dim lighting. The blinding fluorescents were turned off, the only light entering the hospital room coming from the noon sun through the hospital curtains. Now that she could see, Vanessa took in the bare bones hospital room. It was uncomfortably sterile, the only color being the classic blue of the hospital machines. The awful breathing tube was no longer shoved down her throat but the IV was once again back in her arm, taped down with extra medical adhesive. Vanessa pushed herself into a sitting position, ignoring her body’s sharp protests. To her left slept two bodies, uncomfortably tucked in the cheap plastic chairs. Mike and Abby.
With that, her memories came crashing back like a dam shattering. Mike bringing Abby to Freddy’s. Mike getting attacked by the animatronics. Vanessa saving him. Abby being lured back to Freddy’s. Mike going to save her. Vanessa aiming her gun at her father.
Him stabbing her.
If Mike and Abby were alive then her father…?
Vanessa flinched as she felt something cold hit her arm. She reached up to feel wet cheeks. She was crying… why was she crying?
What happened to her father?
He was…
William Afton was…
Vanessa tried to think back to the last thing she remembered. If she could still remember what had happened to him after her vision had begun to fade. She felt an unconscious feeling deep within her gut. Something in her knew that he was gone. She didn’t know how she knew but she did. The tears burned in her eyes. He was gone. He couldn’t hurt her anymore. She was free…
So why didn’t she feel free?
Tears spilled down Vanessa’s face in streaks. She knew the answer even if she didn’t want to acknowledge it. She shouldn’t miss the man, he had tried to kill her. Thrown her away once she was no more use to him. But they had good times too. They had good times. That man was her father and she couldn’t bear to hate him. Right? He was still the father that had once given her piggyback rides through Freddy’s and swung her through the air until she was a giggling mess of blonde hair and sparkly bracelets. The father that had once tucked her into bed every night and whispered “I Love You”s. Real ones. The kind that were not stitched together with ulterior motives. He had loved her once. And that was the one constant she’d always held onto for all those years. He had to have loved her.
“Vanessa…?”
Vanessa didn’t respond, tears still leaving new tracks down her face. Her hand had unconsciously reached up to her neck, tracing the bruises her dad had left on her pale skin. She could hear Mike shifting so that he could stand up without disturbing Abby. Vanessa heard his soft oh as he noticed her red eyes and half-curled state.
“How much do you remember?” he whispered, trying to pick his words carefully. “I’m sorry about—“
“How did he die?” Vanessa cut Mike off, her voice hoarse and trembling.
“The suit. You know the weird doll suit you showed me with the um, what’s it called? Springlocks? Turns out the Yellow Rabbit suit had them too. But I assume you knew that.” Mike looked away. “The robots– er, animatronics pulled him away after they went off.”
Vanessa was silent for a second before turning to face Mike.
“Spring Bonnie. That’s what he called it.”
“Right… um...” Mike trailed off, not quite knowing what else to say. He looked unsure of how to talk to her. She didn’t blame him. The version of her he had befriended at Freddy’s wasn’t the same woman laying in that hospital bed. The confident cop Vanessa Shelly couldn’t be further from the deer in headlights Vanessa Afton staring back at him.
“How long was I out for?”
“Two weeks, give or take.”
“Mmm…mnessa?” Vanessa barely heard Abby waking up. The little girl blinked once, then twice, before springing up in her chair. “Mike! I told you to wake me up when Vanessa woke up!”
Vanessa quickly wiped the tears off her face, the edges of her mouth curling upwards despite everything. Abby had that effect on people.
“Hey Abby, you didn’t miss anything interesting. Mike and I were just talking about boring adult stuff.” Vanessa tried to hide her sniffle but Abby understood anyway. She smiled at Vanessa with so much love that Vanessa had the urge to wrap the girl in a warm bear hug. Abby excitedly grabbed the pile of papers she’d left on the small table.
“Oh! I’ve been saving these just for you. They’re get-well gifts!” Abby began with an enthusiasm that Vanessa admired, “Look, look! That one there is me. And that one is Mike, obviously, and the blonde one is you!”
Abby had crawled halfway up the hospital bed at that point and Vanessa took the chance to scoop Abby fully onto the white sheets, making the girl yelp in surprise before she repositioned herself as comfortably as she could on the hospital bed.
“Oh? Well don’t I look adorable.” Vanessa traced Abby’s crude depiction of her laying in a circle with the band of animatronics with one hand, the other squeezed between her body and Abby’s. She was touched that Abby considered her worthy of being such an integral part of her drawings despite everything they’d been through.
Vanessa nodded absentmindedly as Abby continued on, showing Vanessa all her drawings from the past two weeks. Most were quite innocent. Mike burning mac and cheese, Abby and another girl with curly brown pigtails labeled Cassie building lego towers, Mike and Abby sitting by her hospital bed. Suddenly, she felt Abby tense in her arms as she got to the last drawing.
“Um… you don’t have to look at that one. Mike said it might make you sad,” Abby said, hiding her face behind her brown curls.
“No, it’s okay,” Vanessa replied tightly, swallowing as her eyes scanned the last drawing. It was of a small blonde girl and five other smiling children at a birthday party. “Do you still see them?”
“No… I haven’t seen them since Freddy’s collapsed. I think they’ve moved on.” Vanessa felt her body lose some of its tension. She turned her attention back to the drawing.
“That one was Gabriel, and that one was Fritz, and Susie, and that one there is Jeremy.” Vanessa pointed from one kid to the next. She paused for a second before pointing to the last kid. “That’s Cassidy. He was in the Fredbear suit—“
“The Golden Freddy!!”
“Yeah, hah, Golden Freddy. I rarely saw him, he didn’t like me very much. I can’t say I blame him considering the circumstances.” She faltered again. “But I don’t think he liked me very much before he died either.”
“You knew them?” Abby exclaimed, with an excitement only a child could have discussing such a morbid topic.
“I thought you knew, you drew me there after all,” Vanessa said curiously, pointing to the blonde girl at the forefront of the drawing. Abby’s eyes flicked to her drawing and back to Vanessa again, as if assessing the similarities.
“I see things in my dreams, sometimes I don’t know what they mean.”
“Fair enough. But yeah… they were my friends.”
“Oh, I’m sorry Vanessa.”
“It’s alright, I’m glad they were able to move on. And that they had such a good friend looking out for them. You were brave out there Abby, much braver than me.” Vanessa watched as Abby flushed red in embarrassment. “We wouldn’t have gotten out of there if it weren’t for you, you little tomato.”
“I wasn’t brave at all, I was so scared.” Abby tucked her face into the crook of Vanessa’s arm.
“Being scared doesn’t mean you weren’t brave. The opposite in fact, it means you were brave enough to push past that fear.”
“Then that means you were brave too!”
“Yeah, I guess so then,” Vanessa whispered softly into Abby's hair. Mike cleared his throat gently to get their attention.
“As sweet as this is, my shift starts soon and I need to get Abby home. Finally found a new babysitter after um… yeah.”
“You got a new job already?”
“Had a friend with some connections,” Mike smiled, “Managed to get a construction job at the site down the road from our house. The pay is still not great but anything is better than the last job. No offense.”
“No offense taken,” Vanessa smiled back as Abby squirmed out of her arms. “Has the nurse said anything about me getting out of this place?”
“Calm down, geez. You’ve been awake for all of like 5 minutes, it’s gonna be at least a few more days before you get out of here. You better take it easy for a while, you lost a lot of blood.”
Vanessa felt her whole body deflate as she slumped back onto the bed. She hated being confined anywhere, especially in a hospital. She’d already been there for two weeks in her coma. The thought made her irrationally paranoid. She needed to get moving. To where? She didn’t know. Though some part of her was relieved that she could spend a bit longer in the liminal peace that the hospital brought. She knew that things would get infinitely more complicated once she finally got out and she wasn’t looking forward to it.
Vanessa ran her fingers along the edges of her thick bandaging. She would likely have to mark her dad as missing and presumed dead once she was able to go back to work and hope it went under the radar. It often did. No one paid too much attention to her anyways. And then she was going to quit that godforsaken job. She’d only joined the force to cover for her dad and the last thing she wanted was more red on her hands. Especially once ownership of all of her father’s businesses transferred down to her. Meaning she was responsible for Afton Robotics and all of the rest of her father’s various pursuits. She couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do less.
Her eyes flicked up to Mike still standing awkwardly by the doorway and pushed herself up with her arms again.
“Alright, shoo. Don’t lose yourself another job Mike.”
“I’m going, I’m going, geez Vanessa. Be kind to me!” Mike complained as he made his way out of the room.
“Get well soon!” Vanessa heard Abby squeal as she bounded to follow Mike. Vanessa put her mess of thoughts on the back burner as she watched Mike and Abby close the door behind them with a light click. She let herself slump back onto the bed. Even after everything, they still wanted her in their lives. They were good people, Mike and Abby. A sad smile danced on the corners of her lips. Vanessa wished she deserved it. Their kindness and patience. But every part of her was relieved that she didn’t wake up in that hospital room alone. It was an unfamiliar feeling, but Vanessa curled around it all the same as she drifted back into a restless slumber.