Chapter Text
"So... What's your favorite color? Do you even have one?" A ghost was sitting next to Goldie. his long sleeves, black and grey, or maybe blue? was holding his knees against his chest, just close enough to Goldie to make him wonder if the kid had managed to defy the nature of his existence and lean against him.
Goldie didn't even know how this happened, to be honest with you. One moment, he had been alone. Alone like he had been for the past week. Alone in this dark, drafty room where there was nothing to do, and where everything had gotten boring. He had paced around so long that even without any lights he could roughly tell where he was in the room - in all fairness, it wasn't an amazing feat to memorize the layout of a small room with barely anything in it.
It seems this room had been for repairs on small parts, maybe? The only thing of note in the room was a table with a toolkit, a few thin books and couple heavy metal blocks with seemingly random grooves and edges. If it hadn't been obvious already, Goldie wasn't a human with eyes that adjusted to changing light levels, or that had any sort of light source. Well-theoretically, his eyes could've illuminated the room, but his eyelights were dimmed down as low as he could manage to save battery power.
Actually, that might be a concern, but Goldie had been trying his best not to think about it. Normally, employees would have removed his battery packs every few days or so to recharge, but now he had gone a week without the ability to take it out; much less with the knowledge of how to plug it in, with a nonexistent charger he didn't have, to a power outlet he COULDN'T SEE AND H-
-Could you tell Goldie was stuck in a dark room? He was stuck in a dark room and it was very dark and a flashlight would've been just about incredible right then.
The one good thing about this room was that there was a lot of tools laying on the floor and scattered around. While Goldie couldn't tell what most of them were from feel alone, aside from the occasional mini wrench obviously used on tiny screws or the hammer he for some reason found, he was able to make them useful.
See, Goldie was very smart. Smarter than his brother even, it wasn't Goldie's fault he was bad at math! Maybe he couldn't help the kids with their homework like Freddy did, or figure out what temperature to cook pizza for, or how to tell if the fries were burnt or... Okay, maybe Goldie wasn't that smart, but he was clever. He was the one that could tell when a kid was about to spill a drink, or go fetch an older sibling because one of the kids got overwhelmed by all the sounds, or - and most importantly, in this situation - how to fix a malfunction despite none of the mechanics having been around to help the pair of bears.
And so when Goldie found a pair of thin, metal pieces just the right size to fit between his jaw? He fiddled around with them - at one point snapping one of the pieces, having to pause and look around for a slightly less convenient replacement - and eventually wound the springlocks back into place, double checking that he could open his mouth comfortably again.
Sure, his voice box was still...water...logged with no hope of repair, but finally getting a break from the horrible springlocks putting constant strain on his endo-skeleton? That was the highlight of his week. Ignore how pathetic that sounds, its an improvement he swears!
After that, he had tried to use the various tools laying around to investigate the metal blocks left on the desk, but that gave him just as much feedback as his large, definitely-not-meant-for-investigation-paws. Goldie had pretty much gone back to zero after that, with the addition of occasionally tightening various springlocks for a few hours before going back to wandering around the tiny room.
And really, Goldie's only guessing that its been a week since he got locked in here, and maybe a couple hours max since "Whatever This Is" happened. Goldie had been in the "sit under the desk and question life" segment of his routine when a dim glow near-flash banged the bear, putting a hand up and squinting his eyes against the change to the darkness around Goldie. He froze.
In the middle of the room was a see-through kid with a blue aura around him, allowing Goldie to finally see the checkered floor tiles, as well as the stains on the floor he tried to avoid looking at. The boy himself was somewhat de-saturated, with dark hair and a striped shirt that went down past his hands, blue? shorts and matching sneakers. What the true colors of his appearance had been were hard to pick apart from the blue glow.
"Hello?"
The words were less of an echo, like you might hear in the stories that Freddy would tell to the older kids, but more akin to a whisper with nowhere to go, reaching the end of the room at the same volume that it originated from. The boy turned to Goldie, and Goldie totally didn't let out a loud scream that ended up more like garbled static. He scrambled back against the wall and bumped into the desk above him, causing an even louder clatter. Various wrenches and screws fell to the ground, worse yet causing the ghost to scream and jump a foot or two in the air, a loud high pitched sound that made Goldie's heart sting with regret.
Goldie waited until the kid stopped screaming and waited a bit more after that to calm himself down. He slowly crawled out from under the table from the left side, putting his hands in front of him as he stood up. The kid still floated a bit above Goldie's eye level, either unaware of his predicament or unable to do anything about it, in a tight ball. There was a ring of blood around his head, dripping into the boys hair and sleeves, but never seemed to get past his shirt.
Goldie was the best at handling kids, his entire purpose was to take care of them! But comforting the kid that he... killed [and that alone was enough to make Goldie puke], while he couldn't speak? That was a bit out of his skill range. Standing there, hands up in surrender while the kid sobbed wasn't helping anyone though, so he had to at least try.
He slowly stepped forward, the sound of his foot connecting to the floor with a clank suddenly became the bane of his existence as the child flinched at the sound, whimpering in the middle of his sobs. Goldie had comforted enough kids to know that he shouldn't be going any closer, but what was he supposed to do without a voice? Lay on the floor and wait to show that he wasn't a threat?...Oh, wait maybe that was what he was supposed to do here. The bear lowered himself to the ground again, not quite laying down in fear of losing his hat in the darkness, but small enough when sitting down that hopefully the kid would be up for conversation.
He waited. As much as not being able to do anything to help the kid tore at his heart, and not being able to say any of his programmed lines of comfort to stop the sound of crying hurt, he waited. Goldie traced the lines of the floor with his eyes for what felt like forever - now barely visible again due to the child's distance, but still overwhelmingly bright in comparison to how the room used to be. When the cries slowed down to sniffles, the only movement Goldie made was putting his hands in his lap to be more comfortable.
Goldie lacked self-control, he'll admit that in the privacy of his own mind. He did not lack the patience to stay still while the child, now calm aside from the occasional sniffle slowly made his way down to standing on the floor [with a bit of struggle as far as Goldie could tell?], and nervously approached the animatronic. Once the kid had crouched down to his level, Goldie slowly moved his head up to look at the boy [he still flinched].
After what felt like forever, Goldie got the child to sit down and was able to wave a small hello without spooking the boy back into the afterlife. Goldie didn't really know what ghosts were supposed to look like, and it wasn't like he ever had a chance to look into it while he had access to the restaurants computer, but he didn't expect that ghosts wouldn't have pupils, pure white observing his every move. Goldie selfishly hoped that the kid was as blind as he appeared, just for a second, before having been proven wrong.
The kid spoke hesitantly, sounding as if he second guessed every word. "Why are you here? Where... is this?"
And oh god how was Goldie supposed to respond to that. Looking around the room [the quick movement scaring the kid again, Goldie noticed], there wasn't much to help Goldie communicate. Goldie worked with a lot of small children who couldn't read or write, so seeing if one of the books on the desk had anything useful wasn't a good plan. He could guess that the kid was smart enough to know that seeing Goldie meant being in the diner, but-
Oh, the kid had leaned over to the side, hands hovering over a wrench and looking back up at Goldie. "This is where they fix you?"
He looked to the side, nodding before putting his hand up in an eh, kinda motion. It was pretty clear no one was coming to get him, especially since he hadn't heard footsteps outside the room all day. Goldie wasn't quite sure what to do at this point, fighting the urge to hum quietly. He had gotten used to the silence, sure, but having to endure the silence with another person was the worst, and Goldie felt a sort of helplessness as he watched the kid.
The ghost had pressed his hand down, shivering as the cold metal went straight through his palm without any indication that he was even there. Goldie saw tears start to fall down his face, though the boy was quiet, quiet sniffles echoing out instead of the loud sobs and cries from before. Maybe the right thing to do was just let the boy cry it all out, but Goldie was uncomfortable with that idea.
The bear carefully got up, trying to be as quiet as possible and went to the corner of the room, by the door. Goldie knew there was a trashcan filled to the brim with crumpled balls of paper, though now it could be useful. He sorted through the pile, knowing that at this point the sound had made the kid look in his direction, and hoped beyond hope that- Aha! There!
Goldie pulled the short, broken pencil out of the bin and grabbed the first piece of paper his hand met, walking back over and laying the paper as flat as he could [not very] against the tile. He still didn't know if the kid could read, but he knew that everyone could understand drawings, and traced out a small heart, writing "its ok" under the heart just in case, and pushed the paper and pencil toward the kid.
After the boy looked at the note, he let out a loud sob, doing the exact opposite of what Goldie intended. Though, afterwards Goldie could have sworn he heard a "thank you" mumbled under those sobs, so maybe it wasn't as much of a failure as he thought it was.
After that was a lot more tears, even more patience, and Goldie testing if the kid could read, leading to where they were now, sitting side by side against the far wall of the room. Goldie hadn't managed to get a name out of the kid, but had gotten at least a little bit of information. As he wrote out another answer to the kids question, he thought about it. The last thing he remembered was being in a hospital, that the kid's head "didn't hurt anymore", and that he was celebrating his 8th birthday, one of the 3 birthday parties that was scheduled that fateful afternoon for the pizzeria. It wasn't that much, the kid hadn't even mentioned any of his family, but it was a start.
The kid looked over the piece of paper, at this point filled with eraser marks and random words, as well as a few rips. "Your favorite color is purple?"
The ghost smiled. "Me too."