Work Text:
Work had Vanessa wanting to bang her head against the wall most days.
It shouldn’t have been that bad. She’d signed up to be a security guard so she could stare at camera feeds around the mall from the relative quiet of a security office. Her shift meant a bit of patrolling every few hours, it meant locking down the Pizzaplex for six hours every night. It meant free food from the various restaurants around the place, and a place to do her laundry free of charge, and “free” clothes from outdated merch shipments in the basement... Vanessa was in the middle of university and living off of her meagre night-shift wages, so anything free was greatly appreciated.
The shift meant time to relax for a few hours, to sit down with her laptop and notebooks spread out on the desk, poring over notes and lessons before her classes the next morning. It meant getting to sleep somewhere peaceful, outside of her stuffy dorm with an insufferable roommate who walked all over her.
She had a packed schedule, but there was at least a chance to study or sleep or do whatever she wanted with the graveyard shift she’d been stuck with. There were no supervisors to tell her she was doing her job wrong, because every normal person was asleep while she was on the job.
And of course there were the animatronic mascots to consider. They’d been a concern for her at first- just one more thing to deal with... but they were nice. The Glamrocks didn’t rat her out for sleeping through most shifts, or try to kill her on sight, or stand outside her office playing ominous music... not to mention they were friendly and polite with her. They wandered around once the Pizzaplex closed for the night, but she didn’t mind it so much after a while, so long as it didn’t cause trouble she’d have to deal with.
Vanessa was comfortable around them before long, because it was nice to be acknowledged when she dragged herself through the front doors in the middle of the night. Nice to be asked how she was doing, how she was managing her courseload, if she needed something to eat before heading to her office.
All the great things about her new job lasted approximately two weeks.
Vanessa was studying for a degree in game design, but she’d picked up some skills in programming that, unfortunately for her, passed through into her job. Her employer found out she was halfway-decent at it and tried to hire her for a technician’s position instead.
Vanessa refused the offer without a second thought. Her pay was low enough- technician’s wages were nearly half of what she was earning. As a result, some very specific tasks were added to her current job- all of which were regular system checks and software maintenance on the Glamrocks and assorted bots of the Pizzaplex. Technician’s work. Nothing she was getting paid for.
The hot-headed side of her wanted to quit on the spot. The rational voice in her head reminded her that if she lost this job, she’d have to juggle her courseload on top of finding a new job somewhere close by, and it just wasn’t worth it.
It was around that point that Vanessa discovered another horrible, consuming part of her job. The Glamrocks, with all their careful rule-breaking behind the backs of upper management, had decided it was a good idea to harbor a child in the mall.
The 11-year-old was a pain, to say the least. He spent weeks running from her, glaring distrustfully from a distance, hiding and trying to stay out of her reach. Vanessa had to talk to Freddy, the leader of the Glamrocks and, apparently, the ringleader of this nonsense, and he argued on the kid’s behalf, all-too-eager to let him stay for the foreseeable future.
“He will not cause you any trouble, I assure you,” Freddy reasoned, turning to look over his broad shoulder. “Isn’t that right, superstar?”
The boy in question peeked out from around a corner and scowled fiercely at Vanessa, making a rude gesture she was tempted to return if not for the animatronic in front of her.
It was extra work trying to cover his tracks every night, locking down archived camera footage so only she could access it (hopefully no one would ask why, for a while.) It took her too long to communicate that she needed the kid to keep a low profile during the day, and when he nearly got caught, she had to spend one long, awful night patrolling through the mall, searching for a supposed intruder with the rest of the security staff.
She accidentally slept through an exam period the next morning. The work on her plate kept piling up over the semester. Vanessa struggled through panic attacks when she was outside of her safe bubble in the security office. It was a fight just to keep her job, to keep her scholarship, to keep herself sane.
So, yes. Her job only got more difficult by the hour, more frustrating each day, wearing her thin. Even so... Vanessa had to admit, there were some pretty good things that came out of her job.
At some point, Freddy and the other Glamrocks caught onto her growing stress and confronted her about it. They were nice, always nice, and the offers of help were enough to make her cry.
They helped her get a schedule together. Weekly check-ups. Maintenance guidelines left for the day-shift technicians who, from what she’d heard Roxy and Monty muttering about, didn’t know anything about their own jobs. One patrol per night- the Glamrocks assured her that they wandered so much, no intruder could escape their notice.
The Daycare attendant set up a makeshift bedroom for her in one of the back storage rooms behind the daycare, complete with a cot, thick blankets and pillows, and quick access to her office, just in case. Chica made sure she was eating properly, since her diet had become mostly pizza and Fizzy Faz. Monty and Roxy tried to engage her in conversation, and the occasional game of mini-golf or visit to the salon. She didn’t see Freddy as much, but that only made sense; he was busy trying to raise a kid.
Even he came around after a while. Gregory, as she learned his name was, stopped being so nervous around her, eventually trailing after her on patrols, showing her areas of the mall she hadn’t previously accessed before, secret rooms and stairwells and corridors the boy had discovered while living here. He was quick and whip-smart for his age, watching her run diagnostic programming checks in fascination, messing around with the monitors in employee areas to do his own coding. He dragged Vanessa to the West Arcade one night and revealed his initials at the top of nearly every scoreboard. He was almost as good at gaming as she was- not quite, she’d told him as he giggled gleefully, but very close.
Gregory was quiet at first, opening up more on some days than others. He could be bright and talkative one day, then end up quiet and jumpy the next. The kid had watchful eyes, paying a little too much attention to where he was at any given time, with survival skills that a child his age shouldn’t have needed, and a past he didn’t feel comfortable talking about.
The most she got from Freddy was that he’d come off the streets and didn’t have anywhere to go outside of the Pizzaplex. It was more than enough reason for Gregory to stay here, except that he needed sunlight and exposure to the world outside of the mall...
...and before long, Vanessa was taking him with her on errands, just to get Gregory outside. As the semester drew to a close, she found the time to bring the boy out for cocoa at her favorite cafe, to visit a park and the frozen-over lake. They sat at the library for hours while she studied, and Gregory wandered through the shelves and picked out books to read and eventually made a couple friends, something he admitted to her later was usually hard for him.
She kept her grades up, and her scholarship was extended through her final year. Vanessa got through exam season somehow, tired and burnt out by the end of it, but miraculously still sane.
She didn’t search for a place to stay during break. When the time came, she packed up her dorm and drove to the Pizzaplex. Freddy and Chica helped her carry her things to the bedroom she’d been using more and more frequently, neither of them questioning it. Gregory, grinning like a little maniac, told her that his secret bedroom was close by, and happily gave her a small stack of drawings to pin to her walls as decor.
Against her better judgement, because things were going okay, Vanessa took on another, temporary shift during the day. It was more difficult to have to be out around the Pizzaplex, guiding lost visitors and ushering large crowds away from the main stage after concerts, and the extra pay didn’t make that much of a difference.
It was tiring. Sometimes she barely remembered to take a break to eat. Dealing with visitors, especially the difficult ones who tried to get her fired or yelled and made a scene, was a headache. The Pizzaplex was staffed by few people who actually wanted to work there, tired adults and bored teenagers filling the jobs that S.T.A.F.F. bots hadn’t already taken. Vanessa was no exception, and she should have hated her job.
It was on one of these particular days that Freddy dropped by for a visit. He wasn’t supposed to be able to enter her office, but Gregory was working on glitching the doors so the Glamrocks wouldn’t be restricted in their own home (despite the many accidental power failures and broken door locks, it was turning out to be really effective.) Vanessa lifted her head off her desk that particular afternoon to see the bear holding out a coffee to her from the food court downstairs, beaming at her as always.
She couldn’t manage to return it. Once she’d taken it with a grateful nod and slumped back in her chair, Freddy folded his hands, looking over through the observation window behind her, seeming thoughtful. A moment of silence passed.
The animatronic mimicked the sound of clearing his throat. It was disarming when the Glamrocks did strangely human things like that. “I have been meaning to thank you.”
“For what?” She didn’t lift her head, one hand curled around the warm styrofoam cup.
“For everything, I suppose.” Freddy chuckled a bit. “You have done nothing but work hard since you arrived here, and you are certainly doing more than you are paid to. Your night shifts could not have been easy to balance with classes, and yet you made time to spend with us.”
“Mostly against my will,” she mumbled, but a smile was tugging at her lips. “Not like Roxy was going to take no for an answer when it came to the salon. She repainted my nails three times the first time I went.”
He shared an amused look with her before turning back to the window. “You also found the time... and the patience... to get to know Gregory. You have given him more than I ever could have hoped, and he adores you.”
That drew her out of her daze. “Oh...” Her heart warmed at that. “Does he, now?”
The animatronic nodded. “Of course. As do we all, Vanessa.” He turned back to face her, resting a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps we do not say it enough, but we all appreciate what you do for us. I am forever grateful that you have stayed at the Pizzaplex with us, in more ways than one.” Freddy smiled. “You are doing a wonderful job.”
Vanessa swallowed the lump rising rapidly in her throat; her face was suddenly very hot, vision swimming. “I... thank you.” She was sure her voice was wavering. She didn’t know what to say to any of that, she didn’t know how she was supposed to feel...
Seeming to sense this, Freddy backed off a bit. She took a deep breath, whispering thank you again a few times before it felt like enough. It was something so incredibly new to be appreciated... to know she was doing things right...
Freddy had to leave, at some point, apologetically stepping toward the door. Vanessa was on her feet and moving toward him before she knew what she was doing, and when she was close enough she wrapped her arms around the bear and squeezed her eyes shut. Her breathing hitched when Freddy simply enveloped her in a proper hug. “I am so proud of you,” he told her quietly- or she thought she heard that, warmth spreading through her chest, settling her nerves.
Vanessa didn’t particularly enjoy working. She didn’t like every shift she had to sit through, every mess she had to clean up, every accident she was held responsible for. But at the end of the day...
...someone was proud of her. And she was doing things right, for once in her life. That was something.
FIN