Chapter Text
Today is the big day. Mike’s been planning for months, and today is his and Vanessa’s one year anniversary. He’s picking her up later to take her to the same restaurant she took him to on their first date, and then to the gardens he knows she loves, where he’s got a big surprise for her; what the whole day is all about.
As long as the ring comes in time.
He’d gone to the store in person a few months back, picked out the perfect ring, and ordered it in her size (which he’d ever-so-carefully measured while she was asleep; he’s still not sure how he managed to pull that off without waking her up). It still hasn’t come, and Mike’s not sure what he’ll do if it doesn't come before five o’clock, when he’s picking up Vanessa.
He spends the next hour peeking through the curtains in the living room every couple minutes with the T.V. on mute. At one point, he notices a car parked across the road from his house—just sitting there, engine turned off, windows too tinted to tell if someone’s in there. But Mike’s too focused on the ring hopefully arriving soon to worry about the strange car.
Just as Mike is about to go get ready for the date, already planning out when he’ll propose instead, the doorbell rings. He opens it to a small package on his doorstep—thank God. As he closes the door, he catches a glimpse of the car he saw a bit ago, but it’s farther back now, to where he wouldn’t have seen through the window. Again, he shrugs it off—hardly even notices, in fact. He’s just glad the ring came in time.
Mike opens the package inside, and sees a note taped to the ring box, which is weird because the package shows no signs of being tampered with. He ignores the note for the time being and opens the box.
The ring is everything he had been hoping it was: a gold band with an emerald in the middle—instead of the traditional diamond, because Mike knew emeralds were Vanessa's absolute favorite, and he'd also remembered how she'd joked about how she'd only accept a proposal if the guy gave her an emerald instead of a diamond back when they'd first started dating—surrounded by little white gems. She'll love it. Tonight will be perfect.
Mike's so excited for later that he rushes off to get changed and forgets all about the strange note that had been on the ring box that he'd meant to read.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
Today is the big day. Vanessa's been planning for months, and today is her and Mike's one year anniversary. He's picking her up later to take her to dinner, but the rest is a surprise, he'd said. She's also got a surprise for him.
After dinner, she'll take him to the gardens that she loves. Not many people go there, and it'll be dark.
Vanessa will make sure Mike doesn't scream.
Seeing the time, she goes to get ready. She puts on the same red dress she'd worn on her first date: a bit longer than her knees, long, flowy sleeves with lace at the ends, sheer at the chest with a flower design. She’s not usually one for makeup, but she wears the one lipstick she owns that’s also the shade of her dress, and she leaves her hair down, which she also doesn’t typically do.
There’s a knock at the door right when the clock hits five—Mike is right on time.
Vanessa can’t wait for tonight…
⊱ʚɞ⊰
Mike can’t wait for tonight.
Vanessa opens the door, and she looks beautiful. Just like how she did on their first date. It gives Mike a sense of deja vu—her hair down, the same red dress and lipstick. She looks perfect.
“Hey, beautiful,” Mike murmurs as he pulls her in for a kiss.
“Hey yourself, handsome,” Vanessa replies as she wipes off the bit of lipstick that ended up on Mike.
He takes her hand and leads her to the car, opens the passenger side door for her, and drives her to the restaurant where it all began.
At the restaurant, Mike can't believe how stunning Vanessa looks in the candlelight from across him. It’s just like the first time.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
It’s just like the first time. Mike, sitting across from Vanessa in the candlelight.
Vanessa forgets about what she’s been planning for months.
Vanessa fights back.
Vanessa just lives in the moment, in the moment that is so like the first, and forgets that it’s supposed to be the last, also. Or it was, anyway…
⊱ʚɞ⊰
After dinner, Mike tells Vanessa he's got one more surprise for her. He drives her to the gardens, the ones she loves so much, the ones they had their first kiss in on this very day a year ago.
Vanessa is admiring the flowers in the dim dusk light, the sun all but gone. She’s lost in the nostalgia of the night, and Mike sees his opportunity. He pulls the ring box out of his pocket…
⊱ʚɞ⊰
It’s dark, and the perfect chance. The perfect time for what tonight has been all about for Vanessa. There’s nobody around, nobody to hear the screams. But he won’t scream.
She turns around, fully ready to finally execute her plan—
Mike is on one knee.
There’s an open ring box in his hands, displaying the prettiest ring she’s ever seen. It has an emerald, not a diamond; Vanessa faintly recalls telling Mike that if a man gave her an emerald ring, she’d marry him.
And there he is with an emerald ring, beaming up at her like she’s the only thing that exists right now.
Vanessa doesn’t hear the words, but she knows what he asked her.
Vanessa does not do what she was supposed to do tonight in this dark and quiet garden.
Vanessa fights back. She isn’t supposed to. But for the second time tonight, Vanessa fights back.
“Yes,” she breathes.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
When Vanessa had turned around, there was something else in her eyes that Mike had seen. A kind of emptiness, like she was looking through him. She seemed to do that a lot lately. He almost thought she would say no—
She’s saying yes.
He’s slipping the ring on her finger, she’s pulling him up, and she’s pressing her lips against his, and everything is so, so perfect.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
They aren’t going to last. Michael knows this. He tried to warn Mike, even—left a note on that ring he just gave to Vanessa. Mike hadn’t even read it.
Michael knows that his sister is not his sister. Mike, however, does not. Mike does not know that the woman he’s been dating has not been Vanessa. There are a lot of things that Mike doesn't know.
He’s started to catch on, just a little. He saw Michael’s car earlier, but didn’t think much of it.
Michael needs to get Mike away from Vanessa without letting him know he’s been stalking him. Which is proving to be very hard, seeing as he just watched them get engaged and they’ve also been talking about moving in together. Mike wouldn’t believe him, anyway. He wasn’t there. He didn’t see it.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
Michael and Vanessa had decided to go back to the original Freddy’s to tie up some loose ends.
“You think anybody’s been here?” Vanessa asked as she unceremoniously broke a window to get in.
“A police officer breaking into an old abandoned restaurant, totally not breaking any laws there,” Michael chuckled from behind. “No, I suppose they would’ve broken the window before us.”
The two of them climbed through the broken window and moved through the pizzeria; Michael going to Foxy’s stage and Vanessa going down to the Marionette as Michael expected.
“Just… be careful,” he called to her as she went down.
Michael knelt down at Foxy’s stage, at the broken pieces that were once Foxy.
“Kids can be so heartless,” he murmured to himself as he picked up a limb. He’d brought a few tools with him: a small variety of screwdrivers, a wrench, some screws. He’d wanted to try and fix up Foxy. Foxy was his, pretty much, but the whole take-it-apart, put-it-back-together attraction had failed and he was, essentially, ripped to pieces.
Michael was attempting to put Foxy back together at least a little when he heard it: a scream coming from below.
He shouldn't have let Vanessa go down to the Marionette alone. Because the Marionette wasn't just the Marionette—the Marionette was Charlotte. And who knew what Charlotte would do; she probably wouldn't recognize Vanessa. Michael bet she’d just see a new body to possess.
He dropped his tools, whipped out his flashlight, ran down the stairs leading under the stage to the Marionette—
“Michael—” came a choked voice as he burst through the door.
He was too late.
His sister was not his sister anymore.
Vanessa Charlotte crawled out from around the corner, limbs twisted in ways they shouldn’t be, a horrifyingly creepy smile spread across her lips. The light fell on her face, and Michael saw it—the striking resemblance to the Marionette.
Michael couldn't save his sister now.
So he ran.
He turned and ran and didn't look back until he'd climbed back out that broken window, hearing Vanessa's—Charlotte’s?—laughs echoing in the dark and empty restaurant behind him.
In the car, he fumbled to start the ignition. He almost went back in, but he knew that Vanessa could not be reasoned with. He knew that that wasn't Vanessa anymore; that was Charlotte. Charlotte could not be reasoned with. Not after what happened in that same restaurant. Not after what his father did.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
Something is up. Something is… different? Weird? Mike isn’t sure. He knows things had just felt a bit off between him and Vanessa lately, but he’d figured the proposal would change that. It had, for a moment; he’d seen it in the way Vanessa’s eyes had lit up like they hadn’t for months.
And there was the matter of the hours before then, too: that note Mike hadn’t ever read that came with the ring and that car he’d seen parked across the street. He assumes the note got misplaced or thrown away, but he wonders what it said. If this is all tied together somehow.
Him and Vanessa have been talking about moving in together. Mike thinks that maybe it’ll help things between them, that the life will come back to her eyes like it did that night.
Mike is hopeful, even though deep down he knows something is wrong.
He decides to look for that strange note that came with the ring. It’s ridiculous, but he has a feeling he’ll find some answers. Mike thinks back to when it had arrived, where he’d been when he opened the box… the dining room table? Would the note even still be there?
Still he checks the table—under it, because of course it would’ve fallen off by now. But it isn’t underneath the table or anywhere on the floor around it. When he stands up, however, something sitting on top of the table catches his eye…
A folded piece of paper that looks like it was deliberately placed there.
“…Must’ve put that there,” Mike mutters to himself, but still he goes and checks to be sure that the front and back doors are still locked. They are, but it doesn’t ease the ever-growing feeling forming in his stomach.
He walks back to the dining room, locking the windows for good measure on his way. He opens the note, and it reads just two words in messy handwriting: “BE CAREFUL.”
Be careful?
“Be careful… yeah, right.”
What kind of sick joke was this? Who puts a note with that message in a ring box? It certainly isn’t the company he’d gotten it from…
Maybe it’s whoever was watching from that car.
Mike shakes this off and tosses the note in the trash, then ties up the trash bag and carries it out for good measure, even though it’s not even half-full. On his way back inside, he sees something that catches his eye: a car, maybe the same one from before—
No. Nobody is watching him. Everything is fine. Nothing is wrong with him and nothing is wrong with his fiancée and there was no note in the ring box.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
Mike threw away the note Michael had left him.
He finally read it, only to throw it away.
He needs to warn him without absolutely freaking him out, but Michael isn’t sure there is a way to do that. “Oh, I’m your fiancée’s brother who’s been stalking you because she’s possessed by a child my father killed in his restaurant back in 1983…” No. He needs to keep watching, keep his tabs on both of them. Michael knows they’ve been talking about living together for quite some time, and while this would make it easier to keep an eye on them, he knows it would only hurt Mike more. Move in with Vanessa, maybe even have the wedding, only to find that Vanessa is no longer Vanessa. She was, once, at the start of their relationship. Mike really was with Vanessa at one point.
But not anymore.
She is dangerous. Mike could be the next victim, even. Charlotte will grow impatient.
Michael suspects that the night Mike proposed, Charlotte was going to kill him. It would’ve been perfect—no people around, dark, secluded. He knows Vanessa fought back then, but Charlotte will grow impatient with her.
Mike stares at his car for a moment longer, then shakes his head and goes inside.
Michael leaves an envelope in the mailbox on his way out.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
Vanessa is being watched. She knows this. She doesn’t know how long they’ve been watching her, but she knows that they’ve caught on.
She’s going to send them a message.
They’ve been getting bolder, going from watching from afar to her very own yard. So she switches on the TV, waits until she’s sure they’re nearby, and then slips out the back door with her gun, quiet as a mouse.
There they were—the bushes by the living room window. Vanessa never would’ve seen them if she weren’t searching. But she was, and she caught them. They knew things they shouldn’t.
She crept up along the side of the house and rounded the corner, yanking them out of the bushes by the collar of their shirt. They began to say her name, but she wasn’t listening. She just brought the back of her gun hard and fast on the side of their forehead, leaving a crumpled body lying in the grass—
Michael?
A moment of clarity, a moment where Vanessa realizes that she quite possibly could’ve killed her brother—
Charlotte does not allow this weakness.
Charlotte does not care for either of the Afton siblings, does not care that she could’ve killed Michael. It would make things a bit easier if she had, but he’s only unconscious. There’s still a pulse, even if it is somewhat faint.
“Oh, Michael,” Vanessa Charlotte laughs as she drags his body to the car. “Michael, Michael, Michael…”
⊱ʚɞ⊰
Michael awakes tied to a chair with a blindfold covering his eyes. The last thing he remembers is hiding in Vanessa’s bushes to keep an eye on her. He hadn’t heard her coming. He has no idea where he is; he just knows his head hurts and his ears are ringing. He pulls against the rope tying his hands behind him to no avail, so he runs through all the possible places Vanessa might’ve brought him to while he painfully waits for something, anything to happen.
It occurs to Michael that she could kill him. He’d thought she’d go for Mike first, and even then she'd wait just a little longer and he would have time to figure out what in the world he should do about it.
“Vanessa?” he calls, his voice muffled by—what’s in his mouth?
“Michael,” sings a sickening voice from somewhere far away. “Oh, Michael…”
She doesn’t sound like Vanessa. She sounds like Charlotte.
There are footsteps approaching from behind, Michael thinks, but he isn’t sure; he’s too disoriented after that blow to the head. The blindfold is being untied and then Michael finally sees where he is: the original Freddy’s location. The one where Charlotte died.
Of course she would bring him here.
Light shines in through the windows, and it feels sharp. Michael’s seeing stars and everything is hazy. He opens his mouth to speak, but there’s still something tied around his mouth.
Charlotte could kill him. She could pull the gun out again and shoot him this time instead of just giving him a concussion. She could—
“Michael,” Charlotte says again, drawing it out. She circles the chair slowly to stand in front of him. “Do you remember this place? Do you remember me?” She pulls down whatever was keeping Michael from speaking.
“Ch—Charlotte,” he croaks out, “you don’t have to—have to do this—”
She laughs, sharp and unnatural. “Oh, but I do. You see, I need my revenge. I need to know that you and your sister will pay for what your father did. And I want to watch you suffer, because you’re just so much like him.”
Michael flinches at this and tugs at his restraints again. He’s dizzy and not even sure if he could stand on his own two feet right now, but he doesn’t care. He is not his father. He will never be his father. He’s changed.
“V—Vanessa—”
“Don’t.” A hand on his throat, squeezing just enough to make him gasp. “I’m not Vanessa anymore. As a matter of fact, I don’t think she’ll be coming back.”
She lets her hand drop to pull out her gun again. Michael isn’t sure if she’ll shoot him or knock him unconscious again and he can’t fight back. He’s helpless, he’s vulnerable, and he’s probably concussed. “You need to stay out of my way,” she whispers before bringing the gun down against his head again.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
There's a letter in Mike's mailbox. In an unmarked envelope, a folded piece of paper reads the same thing the note in the ring box did—“BE CAREFUL”—in the same handwriting, but with one key difference: it's signed with the initials “M.A.” Mike doesn't know anyone with these initials, and he thinks the whole thing is creepy, so he goes to throw it out.
But something stops him, something inside him says he knows this person, if only faintly; maybe just met in passing once or twice.
Mike begins to connect the dots: the note that came in the ring box, the first time he'd seen that car supposedly watching him, the second time he saw the car, and the letter he just got from the mailbox with the same handwriting as the other note.
M.A…
Vanessa has a brother named Michael, who has a different last name than her for whatever reasons. It doesn't really make sense, but it's the only lead that Mike has. He decides that he'll stay extra alert and catch them in the act next time and get answers.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
Michael has faint memories of what follows after he regains consciousness again: waking up in his bed with Vanessa—no, Charlotte—standing over him, a fake smile plastered on her face.
“I'm saving you for last,” she'd said before disappearing again, and Michael's eyes closed again.
Now, he's awake and trying to stay awake this time. He has to figure out where Charlotte will go, what she'll do in his poor sister's body. Michael stands up only to sit right back down again. Everything spins, even while sitting. If he didn't have a concussion before, he definitely does now.
Michael knows he has to track down Vanessa. He has to stop her, get his sister back. As soon as he can stand without the world turning on its axis and light doesn’t hurt so much.
He needs to get Mike Schmidt in on his plan, get him to understand that Vanessa is gone and they need to take her back from the Marionette.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
It’s been a week since Mike has seen whoever—presumably Michael—was watching him has come back. He should be relieved, and he tells himself that he is. But all he feels is a weird sort of feeling that something is wrong. Mike brushes this off and goes to see Vanessa to keep his mind occupied.
Ten minutes later, he’s knocking before entering and greeting his fiancée with a kiss. She smiles, but it’s different. Almost fake, but not quite.
“You’ve been kind of… off lately,” Mike comments as they sit down on the couch. “Everything all right?”
“Oh, just… a little under the weather, I guess,” Vanessa replies offhandedly as she switches on the TV.
“You sure?” Mike puts a hand to her forehead, which is brushed off.
“…Don’t worry about it, honey.”
Mike wants to worry about it. Instead, he gives in and puts an arm around her shoulders. He wants to bring up her brother, but doesn’t.
Later, he ends up spending the night. There are moments where he sees the real Vanessa shine through, and he knows none of this is like her. So, he resolves to find a way to Michael. He assumes they may not be on the best of terms since she’s only ever brought him up maybe twice, and they’ve never actually met, but Mike knows the only other person who would know Vanessa just as much as he does and then some would be her brother.
When Mike wakes up the next morning, Vanessa isn't there beside him. There's a note left on the pillow, saying she had errands to run. It doesn't ease the growing feeling that something is absolutely going on.
He knows he has to find Michael Afton, he just doesn't know how. He shouldn't bring him up to Vanessa and he can't sit around waiting for Michael to find him first. Maybe Michael doesn't even know what's going on.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
The concussion Charlotte gave Michael put him out of commission for a week. He's pissed he couldn't go after her sooner, but he can finally walk and he's only a little dizzy sometimes. Now, he has to get Mike on board.
He's not quite sure how to bring up the topic or how to even talk to the man in the first place—Michael's not even sure Mike knows he exists. Things between him and Vanessa had been a bit tense before, and they hadn't been on the best of terms.
Michael drives over to Mike's house again, but when he arrives, there's nobody home. No car in the driveway, no lights on inside, so he leaves a letter in the mailbox again. He's not even sure if Mike read the last one, but if he finally decides to heed Michael's warnings, he'll meet him at Freddy's.
And now, he waits.
⊱ʚɞ⊰
Mike checks his mailbox when he gets home from Vanessa's to find another unmarked envelope, just like the last. Inside, he opens it, and there's another note with the words “FREDDY'S. SUNSET,” scribbled out in that handwriting and signed with those same initials.
Sure, it's fishy to meet some stranger in the old closed-down pizzeria where those murders supposedly happened years and years ago, but this is all connected, Mike knows this now. He wants answers, and maybe he'll get them at Freddy's at sunset.
As the sun begins to set later that day, Mike gets in his car and drives off to Freddy Fazbear's pizzeria. He knows it has to be Michael doing all this.
Why does Vanessa hardly ever bring him up, anyway? He'd thought he would meet Michael at some point, but now they're engaged and she's avoided the topic the few times he's attempted to ask.
This whole thing is crazy. Mike is crazy, it has to all be in his head. He should turn around and just go home; he has work in the morning, anyway.
Before he can leave, he's already pulling in the parking lot. He gets out and stares up at the sign that once was bright and colorful and lit up. Now the place is falling apart with peeling paint and faded signs. There are no other cars, so Mike thinks he must be at the wrong place, but he walks up to the door nonetheless.
The door opens, to Mike’s surprise; he'd thought it would be locked. Cautiously, he takes a step inside. It occurs to him that he's completely unprepared—no weapons and no flashlight.
“Hello?” he calls, his voice echoing in the empty restaurant. Glass crunches under his feet, and he swears he hears children whispering.
Mike is about to just leave because God, is this place creepy—
There are footsteps approaching from some dark corner he can’t see and then a flashlight shining in his eyes. “Mike Schmidt,” says the man Mike is almost certain has to be Michael. “I wasn’t sure if you’d even show.”
Mike takes a step back, shielding his eyes. “What is this?”
He chuckles. “Allow me to properly introduce myself. I’m Michael… Michael Afton.”
Afton.
Afton…
Where has Mike heard that name before?
Like William Afton?
William Afton, the name he’d heard was behind those murders at the original Freddy Fazbear’s location? No, it can’t be—Mike is certain that this is the brother Vanessa had talked about maybe twice in their whole relationship, and Vanessa couldn’t be related to William Afton.
“But you—I thought you were…”
“Her brother? Gotta say, it took you a bit longer than I thought… But, I suppose she’s never really mentioned me before, has she?”
“What is this about?” Mike asks again, trying to get a better look at the rest of the restaurant behind Michael with the glow of his flashlight.
“For starters, Vanessa is in danger,” Michael begins, turning around and walking toward the stage with the broken-down animatronics still sitting idly on it. “You see, we had gone back to go back to the original Freddy’s to… tie up some loose ends, shall we say.” He pauses to look back at Mike. “There was a girl murdered there by my father back in 1983—Charlotte Emily. They were best friends. And Charlotte had stayed there, in the Marionette, which was her favorite, but…
“She took Vanessa’s body,” Michael continues, a glimmer of something in his eyes. “Possessed her, I think. And I need to get her back; we need to get her back.”
Mike doesn’t believe Michael’s whole story. He’s known that something was off with Vanessa, but possessed by her best friend who was killed by her father?
“…When did this happen?” Mike asks quietly instead of outright saying this is all insane.
“Almost a year ago.”
Mike doesn’t actually believe any of this, but he tells himself if he did… then he’s been engaged to a ghost, essentially. A vengeful one, at that.
It would all make sense. It would, and Mike could help Michael and get his fiancée back and everything would be perfect again—
“No.” He’s shaking his head, backing away. “No, this—this is insane, you’re crazy, you—”
“Mike,” Michael calls after him. “Mike! Vanessa needs us, she—”
He’s already gone.