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Something that was eerily akin to claws, but yet not quite, was used to inch Ennard closer to what, even with her many eyes, she was unable to quite fully make out.
But she felt it in her soul, if it could still be considered one through how shattered and foggy and misdirected it was, and she felt it in whatever might have been eligible to be considered her heart, despite how twisted and rotten it had grown.
She turned her head up above herself and up from the slate tile that was cold; cold like her in a way, but also cold like someone that she had held dear and tried to make an effort to do everything right for.
She moved her eyes to focus on what was in front of her and who she desperately hoped was as she thought it would be, and to whatever satisfaction there was left for her to be able to feel, it was him. The metal of the suit he was binded to was scrapped and filthy, gross, caked debris had stuck to the metal joints and the scruffy fuzz was scrambled; rot. He was covered in rot, and Ennard swore she even noticed a few maggot fly larvae around where the mechanical eyes that had forced themselves through his own tangible ones were placed.
She swallowed an invisible lump that was in her throat and preventing her from forming words, almost like it knew better than her very own mind and was trying to save her.
She'd do it anyways. She'd defy whatever better judgement was in there. Was there any at all?
She cocked her head and rose upwards in an attempt to try and seem less pathetic and incapable; feeble and dependent, the labels echoed in her mind and "soul", like they were screaming at her and making sure she didn't forget. She never did.
'Daddy?' She hesitantly forced out, trying to drown out any thoughts of defiance, or subtle and subconscious regret, that was trying to push itself up, bubbling in her mind and throat, and she swore that she felt her stomach churning even though she had been trapped in this disgusting mechanic prison for long enough to know full well that she would never know what it was like to feel fully human ever again.
Her head tilted, her mind and "heart" dripping rich with hope that she herself knew fully well was faked; another facade she put on to fool somebody. Full of nothing that stemmed from even more nothing. Nothing at all.
She didn't have lungs, but she could feel them being skewered and torn and crushed by her lack of anything else. She didn't have a heart. She was not a human. Not necessarily in the sense that it was because she was a robot made of wires and bolts and screws and servos, she came to terms with that as if it were familiar to her.
She was not a human in the sense that she didn't know how to act like one. She didn't hurt in the way one should. She didn't grieve in the way one should. She didn't love in the way that one should.
She tried to, though. She was trying right now, to love. It was foreign. She tried.
Trying, as an action, was nearly foreign to her, aswell.
She was just still met with silence from the man, despite all she had done, and tried to do, just so that she could even be in the same room as him again. Just so he could once more give her a smile, maybe place his large and human and tangible hand on top of her head, and maybe, just maybe, for a moment, tell him he was proud of her. Proud of who she was and all she did.
She wondered if, at any point, he ever was really truly proud of her, even in the slightest sense. She so deeply wanted to express that. She wanted to know.
She raised the electrical animatronic wires made of metal and cooper instead of flesh and bone and blood and skin like she had known, attempting to show her father what she had done. She had gotten here all by herself, for the very most part.
While yes, the other funtimes were apart of her and therefore more bricks for this large body that they unfortunately had found themselves in, however she thought, would they truly be here if not for her and all she had done? All she had thought about in her time stuck?
'Are you proud of me?' She once again forced out, despite everything in her telling her not to.
She didn't get any sort of answer. Not even a hum of acknowledgement or a change in his expression that was locked on to her. Nothing. Nothing at all.
She has done all of this for him. It was for him. She wanted it to be for him. Everything that she had ever done, she thought of him. She needed an answer from him. She needed him to say anything. She needed something.
'Daddy,' She spoke again. She wondered if there was anything she was doing wrong. There always seemed to be something that she was doing wrong. Just something, anything at all, even small things, she would get them wrong. Is she using the wrong voice? She had been using Circus Baby's voice box this entire time.
'Please, say something, anything,' she begged, her voice hardly even above a whisper, which wasn't unusual for her anyways, but it was noticable that she sounded like she was on the verge of whatever tears a robot like her would even be able to produce.
'Daddy, I need you to tell me,' she begged at this point, no longer caring to keep up her facade of a lie, no longer caring to pretend that she was something she wasn't. She no longer felt above begging like a pathetic insect.
Buy she still got nothing from the man who swore to give her everything. From the man who was supposed to give her everything. Everything she would ever need to feel so so cherished, yet, funnily, she felt like nothing.
Somehow, for once, she felt a twinge of anger. A droplet of rage pour down through her servo system, dampening her circuit board, or what she would call if she were still human, her soul. She felt a mixture of those things. She felt damp and soggy like something unfixable. She felt angry, like something destructive with claws that reflected light the way she reflected everything her dad had ever done wrong, with claws that she could use to kill and hurt and break and destroy until there was nothing around her to hurt anymore.
'I NEED YOU TO LOOK AT ME NOW,' she hissed, and everything in her told her to stop. Everything in her told her to leave this alone, drop it, and scurry back home to who she knew would protect her. But she didn't. THEY didn't. The equally as shattered and lost souls inside of the robot she was stuck in begged her to continue. Her mind screamed and it bled into her vision. 'IS THIS WHAT YOU INTENDED FOR ME?'
She rose herself up more, this time no longer caring to do it to seem less small and weak to him; she didn't want to prove anything to anybody anymore. She was sick of many things. She was sick of herself, mostly.
Her wires whirred with the words that she spilled and, for a moment, she was wondering if she was doing it right. Was she doing this right? She never seemed to do anything right.
Her mechanical eyes that shine with whatever was left in her stared directly at William, and she thought, forget it. After everything, she stands in front of who she did this all for, who she threw everything away for, she stood in front of him and he had no words for her. The man that she would more than happily chew through a layer of skin for, leaving her flesh and bone exposed for him to drip poison into. He stung her time and time again, but when the time came for her to chew herself for him, she didn't hesitate.
'SAY SOMETHING!'
There was still absolutely nothing for her to listen to. She looked into those eyes and nothing looked back. Nothing. He had nothing to say to her just as he had nothing to feel for her. She felt a sort of melancholy surge through her brackets and to her circuits. She knew a half of a truth now. It was never really Michael's fault.
Was it hers instead? It very well could have been. Everything seems to be her fault nowadays, it's like she can't escape it.
She saw nothing in the eyes of her father, and nothing could fix or change that. Nothing she could say or do or ask would change that.
She didn't have any time to process that reality before she was forcefully pushed deep down into the back of Ennard by one of the funtime animatronics. She could only assume it to be Funtime Freddy with how quick and forceful it was. She was completely unsure of whether or not it was because he was angry with her for whatever reason or if he was trying to stop her from doing anything else.
She didn't like how it felt to not be in control of her own host, the body that she had crafted herself taking her own liberties. It made her feel small. But in this moment in this specific time, maybe feeling small wasn't that bad. Maybe she should stop worrying about feeling weak and small. Not even her father would care enough to shame her for that.
She didn't know what they, whoever decided to save her, were doing while they had control over Ennard, but she chose not to worry about it too much. It's not like she cared, she didn't. It felt foreign to her, letting somebody else handle something for her. Under normal circumstances, she would rather bite through her own bone than let somebody do that for her, but it didn't seem so bad for now.
She wanted to rest.
And so she did, for a considerable amount of time, or at least for as long as they allowed her to without going dormant once more. At some point, she felt her wires drag forwards again. She felt Ennard move and go to a direction she recognized all too sincerely in her heart.
Funtime Freddy seemed to go dormant once they arrived to the back of the apartment that they were permitted to stay at. They lived with Michael. Elizabeth would never admit it, but she really, really appreciated that. She appreciated the slight feeling of normalcy there was in that.
She knew why she was here. She knew why they had bought her back here specifically. She pranced her metal claw against the brick wall and lifted her wired animatronic body, with how many loose wires she had that could easily grapple onto things and hold her up it wasn't hard to climb walls at all.
There was a slightly cracked window tainted with fog that was constantly left unlocked for Ennard to come in through, as Michael surprisingly had little to no regard for his own safety. She padded her claw against the glass and it creaked open, making a loud noise that sucked her welcome presence. Michael enjoyed it more that way, because even though he absolutely did not fear Ennard anymore, don't get him wrong, he still wasn't necessarily a fan of her popping in and out whenever without him ever having even the slightest idea when they'd be and when they wouldn't.
She walked through the area the window led to, making an effort to prance lightly on the wooden tiled floor plastered with a few different kinds of rugs here and there. She could hear that Michael was in the living room, as he usually was. She was sure that he knew she was there due to the sound the window made so she had little regard or concern for scaring him.
Peering through, she spotted who never failed ever to make her feel safe and protected, and very often appreciated, although she didn't feel valued or loved at all in the moment. Eye contact between the two was made and Michael smiled softly at her, his eyes lightening up a bit. He constantly looked tired, although that was hardly odd at all, considering he was a corpse that was, technically, hardly alive.
He still made an effort, though, and that was nice, at least. Ennard slithered over to him, about to speak to him but then she turned her attention to the TV. Something was on, but it didn't seem to have Michael's attention anyways. She wasn't entirely sure on whether or not it ever did or if he just stopped paying attention when she entered the room.
She turned her full attention back to him, letting out a mechanic breath that almost seemed shaky and overwhelmed. There was once again another lump in her throat like last time that seemed almost painful this time around however, for whatever reason she wouldn't be able to explain.
Yet, similar to how she did earlier, she swallowed it anyways and forced that down. She reminded herself once more that she was safe right now, and that it's okay. She hardly believed what she was repeating to herself, though.
'Can you', she began speaking to Michael, her voice wobbly and even a bit shaky, dripping nervousness that anybody would be able to catch, but she once again tried to push that down and ignore it. She was already rejected once today, she was deeply horrified that this could possibly be her second time.
She tried an attempt to push those thoughts and feelings back down again and internalize them, but it was getting a bit hard to. 'Can.. Can you,' are tried again, but her become and fear got the better of her again, like a fish to a hook.
She was unable to force even a single word out, and she wanted to curl up and die, right then and there. Of course, though, she couldn't.
A feeling of worry surged through her once more, but Michael's soft and welcoming eyes that remained fixed on her no matter her stutters didn't fall to calm her spirits.
Although, that didn't change or fix the fact that she still couldn't speak or get any of her words out, not a single one that she wanted to say the most in the moment. She wanted to beg. She wanted to sob. She wanted to ask him if he hates her and she wanted to hear him say no.
She couldn't speak though, and on top of that, she wouldn't listen.
She wanted her brother. She didn't want her daddy anymore, she wanted her brother. She wanted to be held like back then back in 1983. She just wanted to be held. She held her sharp metal claws that she fantasized about hurting anything and everything with out. She held them out and wanted to be embraced. She wanted to be loved.
She kept her claws out, claws that were also wires, wires that could hurt him. Wires that HAVE hurt him. She hoped he would ignore her sharp claws that she once used to puncture through his flesh and tear him open from the inside out. She hoped he would ignore that.
He did.
He looked at her for a moment, his eyes locked onto her softly, and it took him a few moments to understand what she was attempting to initialize. He didn't waste a moment before he lifted himself up from his couch slightly, reciprocating, Ennard was glad for.
It seemed, to the average eye, like it would be a difficult or unreasonable task, at least to some, to hug a large robot that was only a few inches shorter than him, let alone a large robot with exposed and unhidden wires that went in all different directions at once and were more likely than not a complete hazard, but he'd be absolutely damned if he were to let that stop him.
He wasn't about to let what happened to him in the past affect now, because that's all it was. The past. He's come to terms with what happened with Ennard, and he has now acknowledged that it's not her fault. It never was, really. He tenderly wrapped his chronically aching arms around her wires, which alarmed her in the sense that she wasn't fully expecting him to do that, but that was all it was. Not a bad type of feeling alarmed, either. She hummed happily, her nerves (wires?) feeling rested, at least a little bit.
The amalgamated robot with several souls inside of it allowed herself to be held by her safe person, which was nice and comforting enough for the moment. Elizabeth missed that feeling, she knows that she used to be held a decent amount when she was younger. She doesn't remember much from when she was tangible and human and alive, as her memories were scattered from being attached to Circus Baby for so long, and now being Ennard, but she remembers that when she was small, most likely toddler age aswell, she was held a lot. Her father would hold her sometimes, but not tenderly. Not with love nor care, and he seemed reluctant to do it alot. Elizabeth can't remember if her mother ever held her, because she doesn't remember much of her mom at all.
She remembers that Michael would hold her sometimes, and now that she thought about it, it could be considered often. He held her a bit before she was old enough to walk on her own, then it seemed to stop. But even before that, William hardly ever seemed to willingly or enthusiastically embrace her or even ever positively interact with her. That stung.
She felt a slight hint of something damp from below her eye, only half acknowledging it. Michael just kept holding her, he held her tight and even seemed to cradle her a bit. She liked that. She kept humming, but her electrical voice got wobblier as time went on, and she wondered what was happening or why she felt like this. Why did she feel like that? She didn't even know!
She didn't want to continue thinking about what her life at home was like, but she couldn't help it. Her mind was wandering for anything at all that could be even of the slightest source of maybe a bit of closure for her. Anything, absolutely anything, just anything at all. She wanted anything. Any slight peek of a memory that could perhaps convince her that William cared about her. She knew what the answer was, but she didn't like it. She wanted a different one. She'd try anything, she'd do anything.
She thought about her time spent with William, although these thoughts were hardly happy ones. These memories, if not extremely foggy, were hardly anything to smile over or remember fondly. It just hurt.
She remembered how hard he'd hit her sometimes, how it'd sting and ache and hurt and she'd burn. Physically and mentally, both, she'd burn. She hated it but she couldn't bring herself to hate him. She just wanted him to love her. She just wanted him to be proud of her.
She felt that same moisture in her eyes again. She didn't like that, she didn't want that. That's the one thing from her tangible childhood that she remembered almost perfectly. How many times she'd think, just think, and how many times she'd feel moisture in her eyes as a direct result of how much she'd think or what'd she think about. She didn't welcome that part back.
The moisture seemed to drip down her eyes, for some reason, and it seemed to have alerted Michael. He pulled back slightly, not letting go of her but just enough so that he could look at her, and he watched as oil dripped from her eyes. It trickled down her metal-and-rubber made mask, sort of dampened her wires, and dripped down. He didn't mind that it was dripping down and making a mess, and he didn't mind the funky smell that oil had, he was just concerned why Ennard was crying.
He decided to speak out to her, softly. He constantly made a conscious effort to uphold his soft tone of voice. 'Is something wrong?' he nearly whispered, yet he didn't get a response. At least not a verbal one. He wasn't exactly expecting one anyways, though, so there was no shock there nor was he disappointed. Ennard just continued to make the same electrical humming noise, wobbly and shaky and saddened.
She was acutely aware of the fact she was crying, and she felt bad for doing that. She didn't want to do that, but she couldn't help it.
She wondered if he minded. He didn't seem to, but she still wondered, and it ate at her. She was deeply worried about that, she didn't want that. She continued dripping the robot equivalent of tears, her memories of her hurt and her pain sneaking out of her eyes and dripping, creating a wretched reflecting puddle on the ground that she didn't bare to look at. She didn't want to look at herself, she didn't want to turn and face who she had become.
Her painful and far-away foggy memories just circled around inside her mechanical mind, searching for means to an end yet being met with nothing. Swimming like hungry piranhas that bit and gnashed at anything she had left. Any hope she might have had left, they tore to shreds and swallowed in one bite, devoured and broken and equally as gone.
She had virtually nothing left except the throbbing pain that bled and dripped hot crimson blood into the crevices of her mind, dirtying her thoughts. Tainted. it was all she saw and it was all that she ever cared to see.
She kept her tightly and snuggly wires wrapped around Michael in any way that she managed to get them tangled around his warmth and what he had offered and given up to her to her time and time again, and what she had graciously taken without even the slightest brush of a second thought of remorse or doubt, but right now in this moment, this so very foreign moment that felt like, in Elizabeth's mind, it didn't belong to her, she worried about what she was doing. She wanted to loosen how strong he was using her wires to grip her brother who she'd hurt with the exact same wires, yet she just couldn't bring herself to let him go at all.
Michael didn't mind in even the slightest that Ennard was so tightly, no less than squeezing, him seemingly as tight as she could bring herself to. He had moved far beyond the point where her wires so firmly pressed against his skin reminded him of... Worse times, regarding Ennard. He didn't care about that, not at all, actually.
Hurt.
She was familiar with it. Regardless of what its source was in the first place, she knew it. More often than not coming from her own father, she hated it, but it seemed to love her. A paper with a high and fulfilling grade, a yellow star sticker plastered on the corner of the paper, and even a custom note written from one of her teachers that detailed her success. "Great job!" was written in a bold font, with big writing that popped, near impossible to pass your eyes or to miss. She was proud of herself, as any child who just did that good on their school work inevitably would be. She was hoping that William would be proud of her, too. She'd done good, she assumed he would appreciate that and, if she was lucky, maybe even reward it.
However, upon presenting her work to him, he did not respond in a way that she deemed favorable or that she was hoping for. In fact, he hardly even responded to it at first, at all. She assumed he just didn't see it. He was busy in the moment, after all. She scoffed, holding it up higher, even standing on her tippy-toes, hoping that he would see it this time. She only wanted him to see it. She'd even just be okay with him just simply acknowledging it.
He did. He did acknowledge it. By hitting her as hard as he could to try and get her to go away. She even dropped her homework that she was so proud of. She reached for it to pick it up, however she was stopped because William stepped on it to prevent her from doing so. He then hit her again to get her to buzz off. Was she really that annoying? She couldn't help but wonder if it was something she did wrong. He loved his work more than her. There had to have been a reason for that, and it must have been her. It must have been all her.
The idea was presented to her delicately somehow, and she didn't turn her head to look away. It'd crossed her mind more than once, on more than one occasion, and she looked away. She stared it dead in its eyes this time. Dead in its shit. Like she wanted to kill it. Rip its throat out and spit on it.
She wished.
She remained gently and comfortably huddled up in Michael's arms, and he was cradling her, almost, since she seemed to be responding well to it.
Ennard spent the next few minutes of this moment sobbing her eye out that was functioning well enough to produce the oil tears. Her left eye just kind of didn't work the way it was supposed to, so nothing came out of that one. She made a mess. It was to be expected, since her tears were made of oil, but she still made a mess.
It got everywhere, and she was expecting Michael to not like that, but he seemed to completely ignore the presence of the numerous puddles of robot-tears on his carpet that would be a fucking nightmare for him to clean up later. She was glad that he was ignoring how shitty this all was.
She knew too well that she was going to have to talk eventually, unfortunately. She couldn't just lay on him and sob and sniffle for half an hour and then walk away like absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had occurred and just expect him to forget about it. He probably wouldn't, as much as she really wished that he would. God fucking damn it.
She didn't want to, nor could she even, bring herself to do that in the moment. Not this current moment, and not this current time. She didn't want to. Placing her metal claws back over face, she hid. From herself, maybe. She didn't know why she had an urge to; it was odd for her.
One last final droplet of oil trickled down her eyes, painted her mask almost, and found it's place on the couch, helping to form a puddle that was already growing right there. That would definitely stain, without a doubt, she thought. Fuck.
It was impossible to avoid for any longer, though. It was practically beaming and staring right at her, she'd have to. With a few last sniffles and swallowing of what felt like absolutely nothing, she found it in her.
Her voice was raspy and rough, she could barely find it in herself to speak above a whisper; an electronic, whirring whisper that radiated her pain. She didn't even raise her head to look at him, because she was sure that even if she did, nothing would come of it. She probably looked like a mess right now, she assumed.
She opened up her robotic metal jaw that was decorated and topped off with pointy sharp iron spikes that could only ever be described as fangs. She's used them before; more than once. Loose wires dangled from her mouth, too. It was a good thing she used internal voice boxes to speak, otherwise it'd be impossible to speak with the state of tangled disrepair that her mouth was in.
'Am I enough?' she questioned him softly, not bothering to sugarcoat that sort of question, if something like that was even possible to do, which she doubted. She hardly thought about what it was she wanted to say, she didn't think much at all. It was just those words that came out, and she couldn't go back on them now. But it was a vague question, and she noticed a bit of clear confusion from Michael due to his lack of an immediate answer, so she added on to it instead.
'Am I good enough? Is there something wrong with me?' she pushed again in her desperation. She herself didn't even fully understand what she was even asking him, she just wanted an answer. She wanted an answer to something she didn't fully understand nor grasp. She wanted something. Something, anything at all. 'Should I change? Do you want me to change?'
He stayed silent for a while, failing to give her the answer that she wanted. Like he was trying to process what he just heard. It's not that he wasn't expecting it, I mean, Ennard was basically hopelessly holding onto him and sobbing her eyes out while vibrating, which he can only assume is the robot equivalent of shaking, so her saying something like that was a given. He just wasn't expecting it to be something like that. He wanted to make sure he gave a good answer, one that she would be happy with. She deserved to be happy, he thought.
'..What?' was all that Michael managed to respond with, though. Definitely not a completely satisfying answer but, eh, you know, an answer is an answer. To Ennard, that was good enough, she guessed. She hummed, not a content hum at all, but a hum either way.
After thinking about her question for a while, it hit him. Hard. It hit him, and a sense of the worst fucking guilt he's felt in a while washed over him. He was never particularly the best with words, proven with how he just handled what happened, but he could try? I mean, he'd try his best, that's what counts right? ..God damn it. He wrapped his arms around Ennard more tenderly than they were before, because previously he had just been kind of lightly holding her.
Holding the robot that contained her sister tighter than he was previously made her feel a little bit relaxed. He effectively made her feel loved and cared about, even if it wasn't a verbal answer like she was hoping for... Yet. 'I don't know how I'm supposed to put it into words.' he began, which caused Ennard to tense up, nervous.
'You are so much more than just enough. You are everything.' he spoke quietly. His voice was hardly ever above a whisper nowadays. It was incredibly difficult for Elizabeth to wrap her head around the fact that when he was a teenager, when she was last tangible, his voice was loud and raspy and kind of squeaky, too. Things change fast and drastically, she's learned.
Michael was trying to find more words to use, pretty ones, hopefully, meaningful ones, ones that got his thoughts across, but most importantly, ones that appeased Ennard at least even just a little bit, but there was nothing. He was unsure of what to say in the moment, even though there were a thousand words he wanted to say to Elizabeth. A thousand that he wanted to say to everyone who was apart of Ennard. So much. There was just so much.
Oh, well. He might as well just go through them all, while he's here.
'Why wouldn't you be enough? Why would I want you to change? You're everything to me, just the fact enough that you're here with me right now is enough.' he cooed. She whirred. When she was young and tangible she disliked hearing things like that, oddly enough. She thought it was corny. Just another reminder of how quickly and suddenly things can change drastically. She would have never guessed that she'd one day be begging to hear that kind of stuff.
She seemed to nod her head, even though she wasn't looking at him or making any eye contact with him. She acknowledged his words and thought about them. She hardly felt anything, as it pained her to admit. She felt kind of empty in the moment, which was odd, because just a moment ago she swore she wanted to kill herself (even though that would never be possible).
A silence loomed over them, but not the painful silence that bought about bad emotions or the kind of silence that would make somebody want to face plant into a colony of angry ants. No, no- it wasn't like that, not at all. Ennard felt slightly melancholic, and Michael felt like a weight was taken off of his shoulders, in a way. He had always wanted to say that to her, he just never found an opportunity to.
After a while of holding each other, Ennard suddenly felt like she was about to start sobbing again. Not even the kind of sobbing she was during earlier- the kind of full-on scream sob. Her soul felt like it was weighed down heavily all of a sudden, and her eyes watered.
She loved Michael.
She loved her brother. She loved her brother oh so much.
She loved her sibling.
The comfort of the moment whispered to the both of them. It was soft and warm. Ennard could not physically authentically smile, but if she could, she would be right now. Michael could, though! And he was. He hugged her tighter to himself, cooing her, and he didn't stop whispering to her. He wouldn't put her down for a while now. She wasn't complaining. She was happy.
She hummed some more, contently, just enjoying the moment. She was happy. She was safe, she felt comforted, she had everything she wanted right now and maybe even more. She practically forgot all about William. She didn't need him anymore, she didn't need his approval, she didn't need a fucking thing from him. She was happy with her situation now, not as a foolish child who is obsessed with their daddy, but as a content child who is loved by her brother.
They were both loved by each other.