Chapter Text
It hadn't been enough.
70 animatronics, aggression set to maximum.
And yet, he managed to win.
Any rage she felt, rage that had been boiling for nearly 40 years, had slowly begun to fade. In its place, fear began to creep, clouding her mind until she entered a panic. This eternal hell was maintained entirely by the agony of her death, and the burning rage built from it; what would happen next? HE was free.
The amalgamation of forms Cassidy had fused to be her avatar of unbridled hatred had broken, revealing the true nature of her lingering soul- the 12yo child who's death was far more cruel than any of his other victims. A mere child who tried to make herself an unstoppable force of vengeance to hide the fact that she was terrified of the man who put her body in that suit.
And, as if some form of divine comedic cruelty, he appeared. Not as the Yellow Rabbit Killer of Hurricane, Utah. Not as The Springtrap, the centerpiece of Fazbear's Fright. Not even as the Man cloaked in Purple Shadows, the form he took in those altered arcade machines. Before her stood the man in his truest form.
William Afton.
And for the first time since her death, she felt small.
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As 6am rounded for the last time, William could finally relax. He leaned back in his shitty office chair, relaxed his tense muscles, and let out a breath he'd been holding for nearly an hour.
"Fuckin' hell," he muttered to himself.
He sat there, staring at the ceiling for at least half an hour. He'd grown to expect another row of threats to be added to the roster, maybe a brief interlude playing one of those cheap games that filled the arcades of Freddy's. Instead, the monitor sat there, screen dark and dead.
It was eerily quiet, now that he thought about it. The rattle of the desk fan, the whoosh of the oversized vents, the occasional twitches from Candy Cadet, all absent. He was beginning to acclimate to the silence, but then it happened.
The building began to crumble. Pieces of the floor began to fall into the abyss, the walls collapsing soon after. William grabbed his jacket and began sprinting down the left hallway, jumping between the many gaps in the ground beneath him. Reaching the dining room, the animatronics he'd been protecting himself from were melting into puddles of molten metal. As it pooled together, it began lashing out at him, trying to add William to its pile of scorched suffering. He managed to avoid the tendrils of melted endoskeleton, he managed to reach the entrance.
He tried to open the front door, to no avail.
"It's locked," William stated, speaking to no one but himself.
He rammed his shoulder into it, hoping he could break the locks and escape. He, quite frankly, had no idea where he would go after this. Hoping his shoulder wouldn't give out faster than the door, he contemplated what would come next. As far as he could tell, there were only 3 outcomes.
Maybe he would escape this false hell and fall to the real one. It was what he deserved, after all.
Maybe he would return to his scorched corpse back on earth. Immortality had lost its luster long ago, so that was less than ideal.
Or maybe William would just be lost in the void, left to lose what remained of his sanity. 30 years in the saferoom was nothing compared to eternity.
After the door finally gave out, he got his answer; he was in a small, near-empty room, flanked by walls of brick. The few pieces of furniture in the room were an aged wooden stage, a few wooden tables with some chairs, a bundle of balloons, and a few gift boxes. Sitting upon the stage was a little girl, curled into the fetal position. One of his victims from '85, if he remembered correctly.
It was likely her keeping him bound here. There was no way out, as the door had disappeared. William decided he was going to do the unthinkable; have a proper conversation with her. Grabbing one of the balloons, he kneeled in front of the stage and offered it to her. Her shaking stopped, and so did the tears. She took the balloon, looked him in the eyes and asked him a question he had no answer for.
"Why?"