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It’s a quiet night. Something that was so commonplace for so many years is now a rarity in their new, free, lives.
Gregory finds himself tossing and turning. The blanket Vanessa bought for him - one with the older Fazbear band on it - is too bulky for the summer heat. Even the fan she had placed on his dresser to cool him down isn’t helping.
He imagines Vanessa might also be tossing and turning, thoughts running wild in the abnormally silent apartment. And, for a brief moment, he thinks of leaving bed to go check. It wouldn’t be the first time he went to her room for comfort, nor would it be the last. But the thought that she just might have fallen asleep keeps Gregory in bed.
It wouldn’t be kind to wake her up, especially with how much of a light sleeper she is. No, it would be better to stay in bed and, at the very least, try and rest his eyes.
His eyes slip closed, though his head is filled with so many what-ifs it’s hard to do anything but think. He wills them away,
It doesn’t work.
Gregory groans, turning once again to rest on his other side. He flips his pillow over, silently wishing it might stop growing warm so quickly.
For the millionth time, he settles down, closing his eyes, and willing the what ifs into tomorrow when (hopefully) he’s wide awake. His breathing slows, and his body grows heavier, sinking into the mattress.
He’s just about to….
“Hi!” A childish voice chirps. It’s quite a friendly voice, all things considered, but to Gregory it might as well have been Satan himself coming to drag him to hell for all his past misdeeds.
It’s only because of his life with that creature in the basement of the Pizzaplex that he holds in a scream when he opens his eyes and sees a little boy sitting at the edge of the bed.
Gregory scurries all the way to the opposite side of the bed. He clutches his blanket in shaky hands, hoping and praying that the little boy is either a hallucination from his traumatized brain, or one of the neighbors’ kids that wandered into their apartment.
As kindly as he can manage, Gregory asks, “who…who are you?”
The boy stares at him, considering the question. He looks both older and younger than Gregory himself, though most kids do. The only thing that denotes him as younger is his voice.
The boy’s big brown eyes light up suddenly, and he crawls onto the bed, closer to Gregory.
Gregory - whose brain has stopped working - can only stare in abject horror as the strange boy approaches, a smile on his freckled face.
“You’re Gregory,” he says, like he already knows it as fact.
Still, Gregory gives a tense nod. He thinks of yelling for Vanessa or Freddy (though the latter of the two is still just a talking head) but decides against it. It’s just a kid, and if worse came to worst, then Gregory could probably take him in a fight - maybe?
(Probably not. He’s always hated fighting, especially when his life isn’t in active danger. It feels too much like his old life - the little he remembers of it, at least).
“Oh, good. Well, I’m David.”
“...Hi….” Gregory says, unsure of what to do. “Not to be rude, but why are you in my room?”
“I wanted to meet you,” David answers. He seems sincere in a way most adults aren’t. Big brown eyes, similar to Gregory’s own, shine brightly as he stares at him. It’s both unnerving and sweet.
“Meet…me…?” Again, he’s at a loss for words. Gregory, as himself, never had a lot of friends. Maybe a few at school and one or two in other places, but those were causal connections. None of them were ever interested in Gregory when he was himself and not possessed by the digitized version of his captor.
“Mhm!” The boy frowns. “Mimic wasn’t very nice to you.”
“Mimic…?”
“Yeah, he’s my best friend. Though, he seems to have changed since I died.”
Gregory does a double take, nearly giving himself whiplash. Because surely, he heard that wrong, right? Right?
“I know he cared about you, in his own way, but he didn’t go about it nicely. Kind of like my daddy. He took really good care of me. He built the Mimic so I wouldn’t be alone and loved me very, very much, but sometimes,” David’s voice grows softer, quieter, almost a whisper. “Sometimes he scared me. I think Mimic was like that to you.”
If the boy was talking about the thing in the basement, then he must be sorely mistaken. That monster didn’t care about Gregory or Vanessa or any one of the million other people that fell victim to its tricks.
He finds himself audibly disagreeing, “no.” Because surely David must be out of his mind. “He hurt Van- my friend and I, for years.”
David says nothing, getting even closer. He seems to scan Gregory's face, as if reading his emotions.
Gregory leans back, but there’s only so much space between his bed and the wall. He closes his eyes instead, hoping either the boy will be gone come morning or his brain will stop tormenting him with visions of little kids that apparently adores the monster he fought so hard to escape from.
David follows, face two inches from Gregory’s.
For a second, both boys stare intently at one another. Gregory can feel his neck starting to tense, the muscles straining from how far back his head is tilted. All in a fruitless effort to avoid looking into David’s surprisingly intense stare.
Gregory drops his head, giving into the pain in his neck and shoulders, only to see David raising his hand towards Gregory’s face.
Gregory, in his panic, freezes. It’s unlikely that David would do anything too bad, but there’s also the possibility he could. After all, he doesn’t know this kid.
He holds his pointer finger out, and the thought enters Gregory’s mind that this kid might actually be trying to poke his eyes out.
He remains frozen.
The finger is raised just below eye-level, and he continues forward, all the way to….
“Boop!” He pokes the tip of Gregory's nose. A series of childish giggles follow soon after, while he’s left confused as to what exactly just happened.
“Wha-”
“Daddy used to do that all the time.”
Gregory thinks, maybe, his father did the same to him. But all his past memories are still jumbled, and it’s a miracle he remembers he had a father at all.
(He wonders if maybe his father was the type to poke his nose and tell cringy dad jokes, or if he was serious and stern.)
“Right. So, why are you here?” It might be rude to phrase it like that, but Gregory doesn’t care. He can’t deal with an apparently deceased but very lively child this late at night.
“I want to be your friend, too.” Which is a sweet sentiment, but it’s quickly overshadowed by, “just like Mimic was my friend.”
Gregory tilts his head to the sky, wondering what he must have done to invoke God’s wrath. Because surely this must be one of the ten plagues they mention in the bible.
“Okay,” he breathes, trying to remain calm. “But why me? Why now?” He’d been with that creature for several years before being freed, and though he remembers very little of it, being friends with a boy that looks uncannily like Gregory himself would have been something he’d remember. “All those years….”
“I remembered.”
“You remembered what?” Gregory finds himself leaning forward, now more bewildered than scared.
“Daddy and Mimic and home and my name and everything in between.” The corners of David’s lips twitch downward. For once since Gregory noticed his presence, he looks away. “I don’t remember where I was before that, or what I did for all those years. I think maybe I was asleep, but that could be wrong.”
Gregory looks away as well. His heart hurts for someone that mirrors him in more ways than one.
“I don’t remember my family either,” he confides for reasons unknown even to himself. But he has to say that, has to let this other boy know he isn’t alone.
David looks at him, less sad than before. “You don’t?” He asks.
“Barely. Blurry images and fragmented memories are all I have of my past.” He swallows past the lump in his throat. It’s always hard to talk about what he can and can’t remember. All the little memories that were erased. Memories that probably meant something to him before everything went wrong. Memories that he would never fully get back.
“Sorry,” David whispers. “You didn’t deserve that.”
Gregory softly whispers back, “you didn’t either.” He isn’t sure what happened to the boy in front of him, or if his claim of being dead is fake, but he doesn’t care. For once there’s someone other than an adult thirteen or so years his senior that can understand him.
David smiles, though this one is smaller, but no less bright. “Thanks, Gregory.”
Even if all this is a fever dream gone awry, Gregory finds it doesn’t really matter. “We can be friends,” seeing how that might sound he hurriedly adds, “if you want, of course.”
David’s smile grows. “Friends.”