Chapter Text
A loud sad trumpet sound bite plays from the broken arcade cabinet speakers, breaking off the clickety-clack of your fingers desperately mashing the buttons and yanking around the joystick. You bang your head down on the control panel of the arcade machine, your hands itching with the urge to smash the glass of the display as it flashes with a death screen. But, alas, you know the damages will be taken out of your (non-existent) paycheck.
You pick yourself up and take a look at your watch. Five thirty. The whole day sprinted by and you didn't earn a single token from this godforsaken game.
Welp. To the supply closet you go then.
The door to the closet was never locked, which was probably a severe customer safety hazard, considering the amount of very child-accessible chemicals stored in there, but it was Freddy's, so nobody gave a fuck. Still, it was more convenient for you to not have to look for keys to the place, so it didn't take much time to climb through a copious number of mops (seriously, why did they need so many) to reach the shelves upon shelves filled with bleach. The abundance of bleach, unlike the mops, didn't raise any questions, as it was vitally needed in any Freddy's location to clean out the grease. And the vomit. And the blood.
Bottle of bleach acquired, you settle down comfortably on the floor of the supply closet (which was upsettingly dirty, considering the amount of mops here), and unscrew the lid before bringing it up to your mouth. You can only imagine how putrid it must smell. Thankfully, your nasal cavity has decayed far too much for you to be able to sense anything (the same couldn't unfortunately be said for your taste buds, so you'd have to bear it).
You're halfway through the gallon before the door opens, and a familiar phone-headed silhouette appears in the doorway.
"Employee, where have you been all- Employee! What the h-h-heck are you doing?" Phone Guy's tone changes from annoyed to shocked in a matter of a second as he catches sight of you gulping down what is basically poison.
You pause momentarily and pull away from the bottle to catch your breath (unnecessarily, on account of your lack of functional lungs).
"Uh. Quality taste test?" you grin and gesture to the phone-headed man in a mock of a toast before going back to chugging down the deadly drink. He stares at you for a second in bewilderment until he comes to his senses and launches at you, tearing the bottle from your hands and throwing it somewhere to the opposite corner of the room, the liquid spilling onto the floor. Well, at least it's cleaner now.
"Have you completely lost your mind, employee? That is, more than usual?" he grips your shoulders, trying to keep you from falling over. His voice - his real voice, the one that you remember - glitches through and distorts his speech. "Don't you dare die on Fazbender's property, Jack! We can't handle another lawsuit!"
"Don't worry, Phoney, I'm not gonna sue you," a crooked smile stretches across your face. Your vision goes blurry, making Phone Guy's head look like a red blob. You find it very funny and start to giggle, but instead something else pushes against your throat pipe, and you pitch forward as you gag on the bile filling your mouth. It spills past your lips and onto your legs and Phone Guy's jacket. He makes a terrified sound, his hands pushing you back into an upright position as you choke on the vile liquid forcing its way out of your rotted stomach.
"Shit. Guess I did cause you a lawsuit. Heh," you manage to wheeze out before another wave of nausea overtakes you, and this time you don't surface back up. You die.
But you come back. You always do.
***
You wake up, and it's Thursday again. You waste twenty minutes in the bathroom brushing your teeth to try to wash the taste of chlorine away, but eventually give up on the idea. Then you spend a couple hours putting on your concealer and fuck around until it's time to set out for work. God your life is boring.
This time you probably (probably) won't lose the whole day trying to win that damn arcade game. There are other ways to earn tokens, after all. And most of them (or at least two) don't involve pure dumb luck.
You think when Freadbear brought you back to life and granted you time bending powers this wasn't exactly how he planned on you using them. In any case, he hasn't shown his muzzle around ever since you clobbered him after murdering a bunch of kids that one time (or maybe not one time, but, well, these things happen sometimes). So if you exploit your abilities in order to cheat at arcade games and jump into deadly ball pits, it's really no one else's business but your own.
You spend the first few hours of the day digging around in the trash for pizza ingredients before waltzing into the kitchen and dumping the disease-ridden pile of molding pepperoni in front of a bedazzled Ronaldo. Afterwards the two of you work like clockwork: Ronaldo pumps out "pizzas" by throwing various "ingredients" onto a stale crust, and you deliver them out into the dining area to the excitement of the children and the horror of the parents.
You ignore the wandering animatronics as you dash between the kitchen and the tables, pretending not to notice their knowing stares. They always end up like this, no matter what you do. The only difference you can make is whether it's your own hands that seal their fates or not.
Sometime closer to the end of your shift, Phone Guy crawls out of his office and watches in shock as you breeze between the tables, placing the pizzas with perfect precision and assuring the customers with a patient smile that no, the fungi and the mold are supposed to be there, they add extra flavor. As you're about to dive back into the kitchen for the next batch, he catches your shoulder and leads you over to a corner. You try not to snap at him for messing with your work flow and give him the same cardboard smile you've been putting on for the parents.
"You wanted to talk to me, sir?" you say politely and try to not think about him clutching onto you as you vomited all over his shirt.
"So I did, employee," he doesn't seem fazed by what happened yesterday. Because it didn't happen, of course. Stupid. "I must say, you've been very uncharacteristically productive today. Could you tell me what is the, uh, reason for this sudden change? Did you hear those rumors about Freddy Fazbender's cutting off health insurance for the least profitable employees? I have to warn you, those are only rumors. Fazbender's doesn't provide any health insurance."
"No, sir, nothing like that," you can feel your smile slipping and turning into a smirk. "I'm actually saving up to buy cocaine from eternal toddlers."
He stands frozen for a few moments, and you fear you might've crashed his programming before he gives out a long-suffering sigh, the sound distorted by the mechanical voice box, and puts his phone-head in his hands.
"Right. Of course. What the heck else was I expecting," he murmurs seemingly to himself before standing up straight once again and addressing you. "I can't complain, obviously, your output has been the best among all of our employees from the two past months combined. ...Though one of those employees is a purple menace actively sabotaging the company and the other one is Matt, so perhaps it isn't saying much."
He pauses for a long moment, looking off into the distance, and you're about to sneakily retreat back into the kitchen before he turns to you and puts his hand on your shoulder, trapping you in place.
"Listen, employee, if substance abuse is what motivates you to put your all into work, then I cannot stop you." You are startled by how serious his tone is. What's his deal? "Just don't do drugs on Fazbender's property. But please think about this: is it really the best use of your time?"
You almost lose composure and laugh straight at his phoney face. Time? Time? You've got plenty of time. You've got so much time that the passing of it practically lost meaning to you. Your today is your yesterday and your last three decades have never happened. None of it matters. One hour, one day, one month, one year, one century - it's all the same to you.
No matter what you do, you'll never have your happiest day.
Phone Guy seems to see something show up on your face, and a single electronically distorted syllable makes it out of his voicebox before you interrupt him.
"Will that be all, sir?" you manage to grit out, casually shrugging off his hand from your shoulder. He sighs again and lets you go with a wave of a hand. You slink away to the kitchen in a totally nonchalant way, where an impatient Ronaldo greets you with a tower of ten stacked pizzas.
Welp. Back to work you go then.
Still, as you serve the last of today's cold moldy pizzas, you can't stop thinking about what Phoney said to you. Now, instead of avoiding looking at the animatronics stalking around, you find yourself staring at their twitchy limbs and dark eyes that gaze back at you, pleading. Why won't you help them? Didn't you promise, Jack?
You glance away, focusing instead on a bunch of screaming toddlers clawing at your ankles and trying to climb up your legs to reach the pizzas. There's nothing you can do. You've saved them a dozen hundred times. You've killed them a dozen hundred times. The outcome always stays the same.
But isn't that just the thing, you realize as one of the kids bites into the meat of your calf and immediately recoils, tasting the rot. Every time you've been through this, five children die. It's a fixed constant. You've never had a present in which there were no kiddie stranglies. Maybe, maybe, if you could somehow prevent their deaths, something new will happen. That's bound to mess up the flow of events, right?
You kick the crowd of toddlers away and throw the pizza you were holding at the nearest father's head. At first you plan to pay a visit to the good old supply closet again, but then you remember the hundreds and hundreds of tokens filling your pockets. It would be such a shame to let all your hard work be for nothing, right? Phoney told you not to waste your time, didn't he?
A very quick trip to the cocaine land wouldn't hurt. You've already got the licorice. And you know a good place on Freddy Fazbender's property to do some drugs.
***
You wake up, and it's Tuesday again. Your memories are foggy from the drug trip, but you vaguely recall wrestling a bunch of pissed off dads, yelling at Phoneface about the existential dread of existence and then setting the pizzeria on fire with yourself inside it. Well, it wouldn't be the first time you've burned down a Freddy's location. Or the second. Or the third. Or the- actually, never mind.
You brush your teeth for a normal amount of time, put on your orange concealer and get dressed before sitting down on your bed and staring into space for four hours while you think of a good plan of action (as people tend to do). In the end, you come up with Jack's Judicious Four Step Strategy (gotta have the alliteration):
1. Don't kill the kids.
2. Stop Dave from killing the kids.
3. ???
4. Profit.
Truly, you are a master tactician.
As soon as you arrive at the diner, Phoney drags you off to open up the main doors for the grand reopening. It goes as smoothly as always (you almost get crushed by the crowd of overexcited children), and Phone Guy tells you to go put on the suit and entertain the kiddins. You aren't going to follow his orders, of course, you have better things to do. There's no need to earn more tokens for now, anyway - you can't remember what you did on Monday because it was like two weeks ago for you, but your pockets are full of shiny plastic coins. The hell did you waste all of these on last time? Whatever. Doesn't matter anymore.
You head towards the safe room anyway. There's someone you have to meet again, and you'd rather get this over with sooner than later.
The door of the safe room closes behind you with a click, and you turn towards the dark corner that you know Dave is hiding in. He still makes a show out of slinking out of the shadow, gliding to you in that theatrical way of his. You've always thought he would've made a good dancer. You've thought he would've been a lot of great things if he wasn't a kiddie strangler.
"Why, hello there, old sport!" he greets you with the same wide smile.
"Hey Dave," you say back, and lean against the closed door casually, radiating the aura of not giving a fuck. "Say, I have a proposition for you."
That immediately peaks his interest, and his grin takes on a sharp edge as he conspiratorially hunches down closer to you. "Well, shit, that's a new one, old sport! Let's hear it!"
Now, you have to pick your words carefully here. Talking to Dave sometimes feels like spinning one of those slot machines back in Vegas, especially when you don't remember what you did at the Colorado location this time around. From the way Dave keeps a certain distance instead of draping himself over you, it's clear that you ditched him and his murder plans. This meant that you had to be diplomatic, as Dave doesn't have the same trust in you, so you'd better think what you'll say over.
"Don't kill any kids this time," you blurt out. Dave blinks and then promptly bends over in a fit of laughter, clutching at his stomach.
"Damn, that's a fucking good one, old sport!" he chuckles, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. You wonder why his tear ducts haven't rotted away like yours did. "'Don't kill any kiddin's-' You're hilarious!"
"I wasn't joking," you try to salvage the conversation by asserting yourself. "I'm serious, Dave. Murder any children again, and I'm giving you over to the police."
"Oh, and now you're threatening me with the cops! You're such a riot, old sport!" He claps you on the shoulder, still laughing, and you roughly throw his hand off. What's with everyone touching you today? "Those pigs couldn't dig up anything on me last time, do you really think they've suddenly become smarter? Did you give your brains over to them as well? Would certainly explain how stupid you're being right now."
You eye the Spring Bonnie suit behind him and seriously consider stuffing him inside before throwing him into some sewage pipe. He would certainly end up smelling better than when he decomposed inside the thing for decades.
Your attention snaps back to Dave as he straightens up (as much as he can in his constant slouch), the smile leaving his face. "You should stop lying to yourself, old sport. Here you are, pretending to be the 'good guy', but I know what you really are. A rotting corpse, just like me. Do you hope to restore your soul by playing the hero? It doesn't work like that, sportsy. You and I both know that. So how about you stop being in denial and join my side? The two of us could work wonders together."
He offers his hand to you. You stare at his long thin fingers. You've always thought he would've made a good pianist.
The worst thing about Dave was that he was impossible to say no to. That's how you ended up dragging him to your pizzeria even when he was a dilapidated amalgamation fused with the springsuit. That's why it was so hard to kick him out. That's why it was so hard looking him in the eyes as you ignited the lighter.
But you promised Phoney you won't waste time anymore. Granted, you don't have a particularly good record of keeping your promises, but this time it's different. You've been through this song and dance before, with luring kids in and messing with the animatronics and the bite of '87. Now you have a chance to do something new. Something that hasn't happened before. You can always fuck off to Vegas with Dave again later.
"Come on now, old sport, don't leave a guy hangin'," he wiggles his fingers in the air, drawing your thoughts back to the present. "Aw, are you too embarrassed to shake on it? There aren't any homosexual connotations in touching hands with another man for three seconds, trust me. ...Unless you think there are any."
You look back up at his face. His toothy grin is back, and he doesn't seem annoyed at you taking so long to respond in the slightest, more amused than anything. Him being able to put up with you so well is probably the second worst thing about him.
"The answer's still no, Dave. And don't forget what I said earlier. If a kid turns up missing, there will be consequences."
His hand slowly falls back to his side, as if he's expecting you to change your mind and catch it mid-air. His expression turns sour. That's a familiar sight as well.
"You've crossed the wrong kinda guy, old sport. I won't forget this. Guess we'll see whose 'consequences' will outweigh the other's."
He throws you one last long look, perhaps hoping you'd feel so threatened you'll drop to your knees and beg for forgiveness, but you just stare back at him, unmoving. With a scoff, he pushes past you and throws the door out of the safe room open before slipping out and slamming it behind him. Dramatic bastard.
That didn't exactly go as planned. Evidently, after putting so much effort into avoiding Dave and decidedly not ever thinking about him, your Aubergine Man handling skills have gotten a bit rusty. You also probably need to stop staring at him and remembering things that never happened.
Speaking of remembering things, you realize you spent far too long standing in the safe room lost in your head while there is a child murderer roaming around numerous children. Goddammit, you promised not to waste any more time, and look at you now. You're the worst promise keeper ever.
You hurriedly make your way out to the dining area and quickly spot Dave tinkering with the cameras on the other side of the room. He notices you as well and smirks before turning back to his work. You're struck with the overwhelming urge to come over there and knock him off the stepladder, but you know it will not accomplish anything. Instead, you find an old rag and pretend to busy yourself with wiping down the tables so Phoney won't come and yell at you about slacking off.
You try to keep Dave within your sights at all times, but he's always been a slippery fuck. You glance away for barely a second to address a mother concerned about the safety of the ball pit slides, and when you look back, he's disappeared into thin air, no matter how hard you try to relocate him for the rest of the day. He reappears only several hours later, watching your reaction from afar as several parents approach you with worries about their missing children. If you hadn't already known what happened to them, it would've been clear from the shit-eating grin Dave gives you.
You leave the dining area fuming with anger, the oily rag clutched in your hand so hard it drips with various fluids you've been pointlessly cleaning up. Stupid. You should've just locked him in the safe room. He would've found his way out eventually (he always does), but that would've given you the opportunity to prepare better. Come up with another plan. But instead you just scrubbed tables like an idiot.
A sound of a familiar melody makes you freeze in the middle of the hallway. The music comes from behind you and gets louder as something approaches, but no footsteps are audible.
Shit. You forgot about the music box, didn't you.
You turn around, and sure enough, there it is. Dangling lifelessly in the air, its eyes boring holes through your dead body, accusatory. Permanent tear tracks stain its mask, a reminder of your failure.
"Hey, Dee," you say with an easy smile. "Looks like I've fucked up again, huh?"
She doesn't answer you, of course. There's nothing for her to say to you, anyway. Instead, she reaches out with her long stripey limbs, and it makes you think of the way she used to hold her arms up and ask you to pick her up. You'd complain about how she wasn't a little kid anymore (she was; she was so small), but then she'd threaten to tell on you to Peter. The two of you would argue back and forth before you'd concede and lift her onto your shoulders. She'd make you run in circles around your living room while she pretended to be a spaceship pilot. Your muscles would ache for hours after you put her back down.
A sharp arm pierces right through you, striking where your lungs would've been were you alive. You choke on the rot that rushes up your throat pipe and spills out of your mouth. You reflexively gasp, uselessly trying to draw in some air, but it only throws you into a coughing fit, your body convulsing as you vomit up more bile that splatters in dark blotches on the floor.
The limb withdraws from your insides with a sickening squelch, and you crumble down onto the floor without it holding you up. You curl onto yourself, clutching at the deep wound to stop your decomposed insides from leaking out. You look up.
The marionette floats in the air above you. Dark fluid drips from one of its arms. The mask shows no emotion as it stares down at you. No regret. No pity.
It's alright. You certainly deserve this after letting her down so many times.
You retch again, vomiting more rot onto the floor. Something gets stuck on its way out of your throat, and you struggle to force it out, wheezing and gasping until it dislodges and clutters onto the floor with a clink. You stare at the piece of metal and the chunks of flesh sticking to it as you start to feel more of them pressing against your windpipe.
"Jesus. Thank fuck I won't have to clean that up," you rasp out, before another coughing fit overtakes you, and this time you don't manage to breathe in again. You die.
But you come back. You always do.
***
You wake up, and it's Tuesday again. You brush your teeth, put on your concealer, spend thirty minutes breathing in and out, dress up, and sit down on your bed to think about where you went wrong. Yesterday, you mean, not in general. Fuck knows you waste enough time dwelling on the latter already.
Clearly, stopping Dave from killing the kids requires a more calculated approach. He barely knows you this time around, and while you're sure he's as inexplicably obsessed as always, he'd never go against his own plan for you.
Well, here's your solution. Just make him follow his own plan. But with some slight modifications to exclude the child murder.
Truly, you are a master tactician.
You pass the hours before your shift thinking about not thinking about Dave before you get bored of walking in laps around your bedroom and decide to show up to work early. The shocked noises Phone Guy makes after seeing you makes the break in routine totally worth it.
"Employee!" he exclaims, throwing his hands up in the air. "What are you doing here at this time? Did your watch break? It's only ten in the morning, you know!"
While Phoney seems to be having his reality crashed, you curiously look around the empty diner. It's been so long since you've been at Freddy's before the opening time. The absence of annoying customers, the dim lights, the paper plates and party cone hats sitting untouched on the tables - the atmosphere reminds you of when you used to work nightshifts. And also of when you used to run your own pizzeria, you suppose. Though it's a bit cleaner, compared to your joint. And less dodos running around.
"My watch is fine, sir," you assure him with a diplomatic smile. "I just wanted to get an early start."
"Employee, you... you are actually excited about starting the work day? And you're doing extra hours... voluntarily?" He looks at you like you just told him you're his long-lost brother (which, well, wouldn't be exactly wrong). "Perhaps my initial assessment of your mental health was far too optimistic. You are clearly insane."
"Oh no, like hell am I doing extra hours. I'm leaving early," you step around him before he can recover from shock, and start heading in the direction of the safe room.
You're halfway there when Phoney finally processes what you said. "What- Hold on, employee, you can't just do that! We aren't even open yet!" he shouts at your back, but you just give him a cheeky wave and turn around the corner. You can hear him sigh loudly and mumble something under his breath, but you aren't listening. Your attention is already on the entrance to the safe room. The door's slightly ajar. It's never ajar.
You reach for the handle, but before you can touch it, the door opens and almost hits you in the face. Thankfully, you step back just in time (your experience with dodging feral running children coming in handy). You look up to come face-to-face with a certain aubergine man.
"O shit, whaddup, old sport!" he greets you with a familiar smile. "What the hell are you doing here at this hour?"
You'd ask him why he was here, but you know he probably just wanted to mess with the animations before the grand re-opening or something. You are often left to wonder how Fazbender's hired this guy in the first place.
"I wanted to talk to you about something," you whisper to him, and glance behind you to seemingly check that no one is listening. "Can we speak in private?"
He's startled by the proposition for a second before he grins and steps aside in the doorway, holding the door open for you. "Well, shit, that's a new one, old sport! Let's hear it!"
You come inside and Dave closes the door, leaning back on it with his hands in his pockets. You turn to him with a serious expression.
"I need your help," you start off, knowing that will catch his attention. Sure enough, you can feel his sharp gaze starting to poke holes into your skin. "I'm sick of working at Freddy's. I'm sick of having to deal with little shithead kids and putting on sweaty deathtraps and being in the same room with Matt. I know you're sick of it too, Dave. Fazbender's is basically holding us hostage with the Red Contracts, and it's time to make them see what a huge fucking mistake they made by keeping us here. We're going to bring the whole company down."
"Damn, old sport, you sure know to get a guy hooked," his eyes glint with curiosity. "Go on, I'm listenin'."
'Hooked' is certainly the word for it. You are a master Dave Miller fisher.
"Alright, Dave, I've got a plan. I call it 'Orange Man's Orderly Octo (meaning eight) Step Operation'." Dave nods approvingly at this. Gotta have the alliteration. "Freddy Fazbender's whole shtick is completely based on animatronics, right? So, if we make those hell machines look dangerous to kids, then they'll have no choice but to shut the whole chain down."
Dave raises a hand to stop you. "I can already see a huge problem with your plan- sorry, operation, old sport. Everyone knows those robots are walking toddler death machines already, and nobody gives a shit! Fazbender's simply has too much money and influence."
"That is true, yeah, but there hasn't ever been a serious scandal. They can pay off the cops and health inspectors all they want, but if the public gets really mad about something and stops coming to their diners, they'll lose all of their customer base. No more customers means no more money, right? That's how we kill the Bear. Are you with me?"
He lets out a little chuckle, the dim lights of the safe room dancing around in his crinkling eyes. "Are you kidding me, old sport? Do you even know how long I've been dreaming about this?" he asks it as a rhetorical question, but you know the answer. Probably since he's met you in Colorado for the first time. "Let's kill the fucking Bear, you and me. Tell me about what's the scheme you've been cooking up in that head of yours."
Alright, Jack. You've got him hooked. Now you just have to reel him in while avoiding bumping into all of the fish that involve child murder.
"Step one is very easy. I'm gonna need you to hijack the toy animatronics so they start freaking out while on stage. Make them do stuff that's inappropriate for kids and the like."
Dave's smile falls slightly. "I'm gonna be honest, old sport, that's not the level of debauchery I was expecting. I'm pretty sure they do that already. How's that going to cause a scandal?"
Shit. Maybe you should've thought this out better. Time to bring out the good old "bullshitting your way through this" strategy. You've learned this one in online business classes.
"That's just step one, Dave! One of eight. We're just warming up, so to say. We can't start with the good stuff off the bat, it'll ruin the build up!"
"The 'build up'... Right..." he studies you with narrowed eyes, and you fear you've lost him before he claps a hand on your shoulder (why does he always do this?) and grins broadly. "Alright then, old sport! Let's go fuck with some robots! And not in the yiffing sense, you sick freak!"
The two of you make it to the stage unnoticed, which isn't hard considering the empty state of the diner. Dave brings out a box of tools from behind the curtains and picks out one of the million screwdrivers he has in there. You take a seat on the stage, your legs hanging off its edge while Dave opens up Toy Freddy's stomach. The robot looks at you pleadingly and you flip it off. You'll feel guilty when there's a child stuffed inside it. Which will be never, if everything goes according to plan.
"Say, old sport," Dave starts, elbow deep into Freddy's inner machinery. You're pretty sure the latches holding the stomach open are as reliable as springlocks, which is to say, not at all, but Dave looks like he knows what he's doing. "You really changed your tune since the last time we've seen each other! Back then, you were like 'Oh Dave, you're so handsome, but I can't possibly join you in your evil plan!' and now look at you! Coming up with evil plans all on your own!"
You're pretty sure you never said that. At least you hope you didn't? Your memory is all garbled up. You might've said that at some point.
"What happened?" he pulls his hands out of Freddy to grab a wrench and glances back at you "Did one too many toddlers vomit on your shirt or what?"
"Something like that," your face scrunches up and you look away, wiping at your mouth. Dave hums and dives back inside the robot.
"But, you know, I'm really glad you changed your mind, old sport! It's been a while since I've had a partner in crime..."
Oh no, this isn't happening. You can't listen to another one of Dave's Henry reminiscences that are incredibly factually incorrect. Change the topic, right now.
"You're very good at tinkering with those robots," you say, cutting the impending disaster off.
"That I am, old sport! I thought that's why you asked me to do this, no?" Great, he forgot what he was talking about. Catastrophe averted. "You know, I practically built those babies! Not these plastic toy fucks, of course, but the original animatronic designs, that was all me! Back at Freadbear's Family Diner, Henry and I- Henry was a friend of mine, I don't know if you've heard of him-"
You just dug out your own grave, didn't you. God fucking dammit.
"-and then Fazbender's, those assholes, bought us out! Can you imagine the audacity, old sport? Of course, Henry refused to sell the Freadbear character, but they-"
"Why didn't you become an engineer?" you interrupt him. He stops twisting some bolt with a wrench and pulls away from the mechanism to raise an eyebrow at you, but you just stare back at him. He hmphs and presses a button that closes Freddy's stomach up before collecting his tools back into the box and sitting down next to you.
"You need, like, a degree and shit to be a fancy engineer, old sport. Don't have one of those. Never went to school, either."
He twirls a screwdriver in his fingers, expertly making it spin around. You've always thought he would've made a good magician.
"Yeah, but you could've… I don't know. Continued making robots. Anything would probably be better than working a minimum wage job at Freddy fucking Fazbender's."
"Oh, don't exaggerate, old sport! This isn't a minimum wage job, we don't get paid at all!" he laughs, throwing his head back before turning back to you with a twinkle in his eyes. "But we won't be stuck here for much longer, right?"
You nod, and Dave smiles deviously. He stands back up, throwing the screwdriver into the air and catching it with the other hand. "Now, what d'you say about rewiring Chica to harass single fathers?"
You spend the hours remaining before the opening making the animatronics act even more fucked up than usual (well, Dave does, you mostly just sit next to him and try not to fixate on his hands for too long). Phoney finds you at one point and raises his suspicions about your activities, but you just make up a lie about doing routine maintenance. He doesn't buy it, but what is he going to do, fire you?
Eventually, noon rolls around, and you have to open the front doors to let the hoards of screaming toddlers in. After you get your eardrums blown out by the little beasts, Dave leads you over to a table in a corner of the dining area that has a good overlook of the stage and its surroundings. He leaves for a second to get two glasses of... something from the kitchen (you could bet it's tap water mixed with ethanol, but you've drunk bleach before, so it's not that bad) and takes the chair next to you, throwing his feet up on the table. He only smirks at your disapproving glance and gestures enthusiastically towards the stage.
A large crowd has already formed in front of the animatronics, little kids of all ages with varying degrees of excitement on their faces awaiting the start of the show. It begins normally enough, with Freddy's built-in speakers winding up with a song as he grabs his signature microphone. He opens his mouth to sing, but instead he lets out an ear splitting screech, amplified by the sound system. As if on cue, Chica opens her beak as well, and a siren sound comes out of her voice box as her eyes start flashing seizure-inducing colors. The audience rushes to cover their ears, and you do as well, but Dave seems unaffected, observing the results of his work with a wide smile.
Bonnie's guitar falls out of his hands and his head starts spinning, quickly gaining velocity. His whole body begins violently vibrating, making him lose balance on his feet and fall over. Freddy seems to notice the audience flooding out of the room, so he picks Bonnie off the floor and raises him above his head, shouting out "A new age of Toy Freddy cometh!" before throwing the rabbit into the crowd. Chica stops the siren for a second to squeal out "Crowd surf!" and lunges into the fleeing customers as well. The two robots land on top of each other, crushing some child under their weight. As Chica and Bonnie try to untangle themselves from each other, Freddy remains on the stage, bursting out into an unholy dance that you think hasn't been invented yet.
"Was that supposed to happen?" you yell out at Dave under the cacophony of the siren and screaming customers.
"What? I can't hear you, old sport!" he yells back, although you can hear him perfectly well.
"Was that supposed to happen?" you shout again, leaning over closer to Dave.
He lets out a laugh that somehow is louder than the sound of the siren. "That's true, old sport, that ass sure is slappin'!"
"That's not what I said at all!" you cry out, because you would not ever fucking say that.
"That ass does beat them all, old sport! Didn't know you were into plastic bears, though!"
You hate this fucking asshole.
Chica finally separates herself from the vibrating Bonnie, and runs into the crowd. Her siren turns from wee-wooing into long high-pitched shrieks of "Pizza!" as she sweeps the remaining food off the tables, toppling them off in the process. The customers flee from her in terror, several of them slipping on Bonnie vibrating on the floor and falling down into a quickly growing pile. Freddy meanwhile starts preaching about his visions of the future, still continuing to bust it down.
"I didn't even make him do that!" Dave yells out at you again. Somehow he's closed the distance between you without you noticing, so his loud shout penetrates your ear canals and reverberates inside your skull like a giant bell. "The sermon thing, I mean! I added the dancing, I knew you'd enjoy that."
You're about to yell at him to shut the fuck up when Phone Guy storms into the dining area, actual smoke steaming from his receiver. Before he can spot the two of you, you spring up from your chair, grab Dave's arm and drag him with you to the safe room. He goes without resisting, giggling all the way there. You slam the door closed behind you and fall back onto it, holding it shut as if Phoney will come barreling in like a possessed Foxy.
Dave doesn't stop laughing. If anything, his cackling only intensifies after seeing you panic. He leans his weight into you, pressing you into the door. His shoulders shake with laughter, and you can feel the breaths he lets out against the skin of your neck. You're still holding his arm for some reason. You let go.
"Sportsy- Holy shit, sportsy, that was amazing! Did you see that little shit get his bones crushed under the toy fucks' asses? And then everyone stumbling over the rabbit like-"
"Dave," you interrupt him. "Dave, get off me."
He leaps back like a startled deer and watches intently as you stand up straight and dust your shirt off. "Jeez, sorry, old sport, didn't mean to cage you in like that. No homo, you know?"
You give him a flat look. And this guy is telling you to stop lying to yourself. Fucking hypocrite.
He continues on like nothing happened. "Say what, old sport - we've done some great work today. How 'bout you take the rest of the shift off? I'll cover for you."
You are exhausted enough by the whole ordeal that you find yourself agreeing. Besides, if you stay in Dave's periphery for longer, you'll have to think about the warmth of his body against your own dead cold shell, and that wouldn't lead to anything good.
Dave accompanies you to the staff exit, and you briefly pass through the chaos-filled dining area. Freddy built a barricade of tables that he stands on top of, shouting about being god, while Chica rampages through the kitchen, devouring half-prepared pizzas one by one, the pepperoni promptly falling back out from inbetween her robotic joints. Bonnie is nowhere to be seen. You think he might have found his way onto the roof again.
Dave looks onto the carnage with a proud look on his face and raises his hand for a high-five. You begrudgingly accept. Your skin contact meter for the day has been blown past its limits already.
"See ya tomorrow, old sport! I'll have a surprise for you prepared, so don't come too early again, okay? Wouldn't want to ruin it," he gives you a wide grin, and you're too tired to read into it. You nod in reply and leave. The door doesn't close behind you, so you assume Dave held it open to watch you walk away, but you don't turn around.
Tomorrow is another day. For once.
***
You wake up, and it's a new Wednesday. You brush your teeth, put on your concealer and get dressed before relaxing on the couch in front of the TV. They're replaying some show you've seen a dozen times before, but you don't mind. It's nice to let your head be empty for a while.
As the clock hits noon, you arrive at Freddy's and try to sneak through the staff entrance before Phoney notices you. Fate, however, has other plans, and when you open the door you find him already standing there, his arms crossed and feet tapping impatiently. Damn. He must've seen you on the security cameras.
"Well, look at you, employee! Arriving perfectly on time! Did your insanity streak start and end yesterday?" he starts off in a confrontational tone that you haven't heard from him in a while. "Oh wait, it didn't! Because you evidently had the gall to show up after what you decided to pull!"
"Is this about what happened yesterday, sir? I'm sorry about leaving early, but I had a family emergency," you blatantly lie. All of your family is dead and in Freddy's (which you suppose is a sort of an emergency).
"That- No, that's not what I'm talking about, employee, though you better believe I won't be forgetting about that fact as well," he says after forgetting about that fact. "I'm talking about you and Dave messing up the animatronics! Don't think for a second that I bought into that 'routine maintenance' bullc-c-crap! I know you two did something that caused the robots to go haywire! Do you know how much money we had to pay in damages? Freddy started a new religion! Chica dug a hole in the ground and almost let the thing under the floortiles out! It took twelve men to get Bonnie off the roof! This is catastrophic, employee! What do you think might happen to the diner if this happens again?"
"I imagine it'll get shutdown," you say without a hint of regret in your voice.
"Exactly! This is a serious offense! I'm not going to let you off with a simple warning. I'm assigning you extra working hours, so you can compensate for the destruction you've caused."
"Do you want me to fix the animatronics?" you ask, even though you don't know if you can or want to do that.
"Hm? Oh, no, there's no need. They somehow fixed themselves overnight. Clearly, Fazbender's programming overwrote whatever you two did," he pauses, looking intently at the passing nearby Freddy. He lowers his voice, as if the robot will listen in on your conversation. "Although they have been acting a bit… off-putting. So you could get them fixed. To make up for your transgressions. Don't assume that you'll be excused from the overtime, though!"
You inspect Toy Freddy as well. He has a slight dent in his front panel (probably from getting into a fight yesterday), but he doesn't seem that unusual to you. That is, until you look into his eyes.
They are dark, dark, filled with anger and resentment and regret. They look straight through your soulless corpse.
"WE REMEMBER," he says, another voice echoing under the robotic one. A young one. That of a child.
No. No, this isn't supposed to happen this time. How could it? Dave hasn't killed the kids this time, so how-
Oh. That motherfucker.
"Employee? Employee, did you hear what I said? I'll have you know, if you need to get your ears fixed after yesterday's ordeal, Fazbender's won't be covering the bills- Employee, where are you going? I'm not done talking- Jack!"
You pay Phoneface no mind as you storm through the pizzeria. On your way, you spot Bonnie and Chica, as well as Balloon Boy, all of them carefully watching you. Accusatory.
You fling the safe room's door open, spotting Dave standing over the Spring Bonnie suit. He turns to look at you, a smile instinctively appearing on his face.
"Well, hello there, old-"
You close the distance between you in two steps and grab the lapels of his uniform, slamming his back into the wall.
"What the fuck, Dave?" you growl into his face. You can feel your hands shaking.
His smile falls slightly upon seeing your expression, but it quickly morphs into a smirk.
"Oh, so you've seen my gift already, old sport! I would've liked to show it to you myself, but I guess we don't always get what we want, do we?"
You're going to kill him. You're going to plunge your bare hands into his ribcage and tear his unbeating heart out.
"Your 'gift'?! What the hell is wrong with you, Dave! I didn't tell you to kill any kids!"
"Oh, you didn't tell me, did you, old sport? What, did you really think I'd let you order me around?" he chuckles humorlessly. Good. You'd actually lose your mind if he started laughing right now. "Do you think I'm stupid, old sport? You were such a stuck up baby back in Colorado, and now you come here wanting to destroy Freddy's? It was too good to be true! What if you were secretly planning to use me in some scheme and then screw me over? So I wanted to test you, old sport. I wanted to see whether you're really on my side or not. Don't get wrong, old sport, yesterday was fun! But working with me is a long time commitment. I needed to know if you're made out of the right stuff!"
'Right stuff'. 'Right stuff'? The only thing that you're made out of is rot and decay and missed opportunities. You're going to kill him.
"So, whaddya say, old sport? Do you accept my gift? Or do you admit this all was just a ruse?"
His expression slowly turns unsure in the resulting silence. The quiet is suddenly broken by someone's laugh. You realize that it's yours.
"You know what, Dave? You're right. I didn't need you. I could've done this on my own. I could've closed Freddy's down by myself, and I could've killed the kids by myself," you can feel the corners of your mouth involuntarily raise up into a smile. By the growing fear on Dave's face, you don't think it's a very good one. "I was just planning on using you. The same way Henry used you."
Dave chokes on air, bewildered. Or maybe that's because you're cutting off his air supply by raising him off the ground. "Old sport, what-"
"But you can't even do that right!" you interrupt him. God, you can't stand hearing another word coming out of his mouth right now. "You're just a useless, selfish failure that can't even keep its promises! What makes you think a soulless monster like you deserves to be treated as a person? You've died decades ago! Fucking lie down and decompose already! But no, you just keep on coming back, and coming back, and coming-"
"Old sport, please- you're going to kill me-" he gasps out, his fingers clawing at where your hands wrapped themselves around his neck. You're going to kill him. You let go.
He drops down to the ground, gulping for air, his hands touching the bruises forming on his skin. You did that. You almost killed him again. You-
***
-wake up, and it's Monday again. You spend a normal amount of time throwing up into the toilet and then picking at the scars on your face until they leak rot. You put on your concealer. You brush your teeth. You get dressed.
You sit down on your bed and stare at the red digits on the clock, unblinking. 8:32. 8:33. 8:34.
This isn't going to work. You need to come up with a different approach. Preferably one that doesn't involve you having to talk to or see Dave ever again.
Thankfully, you know just the right puppet for the job.