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Once it's finally quiet and still again, no more royalty free music or strobing lights or people moving him around, William, awake at long last from his long sleep, takes stock. First, it is bright. He can't see individual specks of dust in the air, but he imagines if his eyes hadn't deteriorated as much as they seem to have done, he easily could. What a simple, singular pleasure. Just light. It's wonderful. Even like this, his rot taking up the insides of his own creation, it's as pleasant a thing as he could ask for. He simply stands still, basking in relative freedom.
Of course, he's still inside. What he wouldn't give to see the sky again, for more than the moment it took to be unceremoniously dumped in the back of a truck and delivered to his current location. Even he can appreciate the humor of that image, now that he's calmed down enough to take it in. Where has his dignity gone! Ha. No, he doesn't mind. He has been given a second chance. That's more than worth a bit of humor at his expense. No one will care to remember that, sooner or later. So. He's alright.
His location, however, is almost mocking. Children's drawings taped to the walls, mascot suit parts on barebones endoskeletons or nonfunctional wireframes. It's a nightmare's idea of a Freddy Fazbear's. In that way, William supposes, he's a perfect fit. He holds no delusions regarding how he must appear. It's a miracle no one has noticed his remains. Surely the bones, at least, would be visible? He suppresses a laugh. There might be someone watching, and he wouldn't want to give up the game just yet, would he? He carefully ignores the absence of any people. He's waiting until night.
Eventually, he deems it time, and starts moving. Walking proves to be a painful task. All the old and settled aches and pains suddenly give way to new ones as he sets his legs in exciting new positions, equally full of exciting new spikes. He'd have thought his nerve endings would have long since rotted away, but that was clearly a bit of wishful thinking. Well! He's more than used to the pain itself, if not where it's decided to show up, so he'll learn to live with it. Worse than the pain is the unnatural sensation of things being where they aren't meant to be in his flesh. Again, he'd have thought that would cease to be an issue after three decades in this state, but he's getting the full gamut of new experiences today, isn't he?
Once he's done being distracted by various new sensations, he looks around. There's an unusually red speck above a doorway, in cheerful and blaring contrast to the greens of the rest of the building. It takes him a long while, staring up at the light, to realize what it probably is. A camera, lighting up when looked through. So there is someone else in the building with him? William wonders who would want to. Then he considers the fact that this building and all its contents exist, and cedes ground to the idea that madmen are more prevalent in this day and age.
Keeping in mind the other occupant of the building, William continues to wander around. He feels unsteady as he goes, but that's fine. He's in no rush, here. There may be some sort of soft time limit on his time in this building that he doesn't expect, but he can't be expected to work around an invisible deadline, so he'll continue to act like there's not a threat, and right now, that means getting better at such unusual notions as perambulation. And, sure enough, he makes his way down the building at a growing clip, pausing every so often to take in his surroundings. There's vents big enough to fit even this old Spring Bonnie suit within, should he decide to make use of them. There's certainly no risk of reckless movement setting off the springlocks anymore! Small mercies.
The ambient noise of the building, all hums and whining air from the ducts, is abruptly joined by the sound of a child's laughter. He pauses, listening close. It fades away, but he turns around to find the source anyway, feeling odd as he does so. Even as he reaches the room he's sure held the noise, there's nothing there. No child, no adult, even. Just the same room he's already walked through. The night continues in this fashion, William descending into the building and being beckoned back by laughter in eternally empty rooms, until, abruptly, he ceases to be in the mood to move around.
In an odd mirror to being fished out of the saferoom, he is eventually found by the odd fellow who brought him here to begin with, and moved back to the far end of the building, where he started in. There's something odd about all of this, he thinks, even as the presumed owner of the building cheers at his theoretical "functionality." He can't put his finger on it, and eventually decides he'll have to come back to the idea later. So he whiles away the day, stock-still and mildly confused.
Night rolls around again, which he can feel as surely as someone flipping the lights on. He'll have to think about that later. As he begins wandering the building again, he falls into an easy rhythm with much less effort than the prior day. Unfortunately, the person with the cameras seems to have come to a similar familiarity with their situation, dragging him around the building with all manner of noise. It's irritating, having to inspect each sound. That pauses long enough for William to make good pace down the winding hall of the place, and he's sure to stay out of sight of the cameras as he goes.
His whole body tilts to the side, he notices. Very slightly, thankfully, but one of his arms rests lower than the other unless he actively forces it to stay level with the other. If his spine weren't definitely in several pieces, he'd worry about its health. There's a solid chance it's a piece of his spine making the endoskeleton's own spine line up improperly. If he could step out of the suit and take a look at it, he'd be able to fix the issue. But then, if he could step out of the suit, he wouldn't have been in that old building for years, would he? He'll live with it. Somehow, he suspects no one will much want to run repairs on him, even if they had the knowledge. It's fun to think about, though, even if the idea of letting anyone else mess with Spring Bonnie repulses him a little.
Pausing in his forward march, William takes a moment to inspect one of the massive ducts around the building. Surely there's nothing to stop him from...
It takes some doing, and he's sure he'll have an interesting time standing back up once he's out, but he gets in the vent. It's a short one, no turns at all, though there is a camera about halfway through, oddly enough. There is, unfortunately, another issue with the idea of crawling through vents, in that he doesn't actually know how to do that in the suit. It's slow going, limbs all ungainly until he accepts that he's going to have to sacrifice comfort for range of motion, ears bumping into the vent's walls with every inch forward he drags himself, but he makes it about halfway through the vent before a grate descends, closing off the rest of the passage. Huh.
Alright. He makes his way back out, painstakingly reversing until he's back on the grimy floor of the building. A familiar situation, by all accounts. William takes a long moment to mime breathing before getting his feet underneath the rest of his body and finally getting upright. A little oddly, his lower legs are a bit more numb than the rest of him. He'd grown used to the idea of feeling what the suit did, over time. It made a sort of sense, really. He's not just his body, he's also his own ghost, possessing all of this body. His one intact ear flicks, and he feels it do so. For an instant, he wonders if his victims felt all the food that inevitably ended up thrown at them. Kids. Irreverent little things, he fondly regards them.
Continuing down the hall, only to be repeatedly dragged into a prior room by laughter, he ponders the possession. Can he die again, like this? Maybe. He knows that dismantling the animatronics some of his victims resided in let them loose. What he doesn't know is if he'll be able to find another body, even if he is forced to abandon this one. And call him sentimental, but there's no beating the classics. This is his original body and his favourite one, proudly stuck together. He'd be loathe to leave it without good cause. It does have some disadvantages, he'll admit. It's painful to exist in, despite the strength he feels in all his limbs. It's ungainly and hard to use, a far cry from his old fluidity within Spring Bonnie. Altogether, though, he can't call himself entirely unhappy with it. Anything is better than being dead. Or, he supposes, moving on. He's aware enough of his own mortality to recognize when he's skipped across the line, he thinks.
He almost walks right past the massive glass pane in the side of the hallway, ignoring it entirely until he sees movement within. The person behind the cameras? He turns, resolving to get a good look. At this distance it's difficult. He can make out a largely-covered face, pale blue blocking darker skin from his view. Still, that's another person. A living one, even! William will say this isn't exactly news, not when the building's owner shows up every day to pin dusty streamers to the wall or what have you, but it's novel to see the person who has, presumably, been luring him around the building. They'll have to have a chat about that. It's a mite annoying.
Eventually, the eye contact between the both of them is broken as the nightguard (That's the word for what he is! William had forgotten for a bit.) turns aside, pulling up some sort of panel. William doesn't care what's on it, downright prancing down the rest of the hall and next to the door into the guard's office. He peers around the edge, pulling back out of sight as the guard turns, startled to see him. He'd grin wider if he could. Close, nightguard! Good effort all around! He'll admit, he's not sure what he'll do once the nightguard is dead and gone, but the haunted robot scare actor job doesn't appeal too much, so he'll put up with being between jobs, won't he?
He's halfway in the door when time runs out, and he's left, one hand on the doorframe, still as you please. His fingers tighten in irritation, but he makes no further movement, even as the guard tentatively stands up from his desk and approaches William. For a moment, he gets a good look at the guard. It's a brief one, though, as the guard runs past him and out of the exit door, right next to the office. And yet, it was long enough to find something familiar in his face. Very odd, William thinks, trying to remove his fingers from the doorframe, one at a time. Who would he know after all this time?
Day is a loud and raucous affair. The owner of the place arrives and, after moving William back to the front of the building, commenting on his movement as he does so ("I knew you could move, but man, you've gotta stay over here!"), does a couple walks down the length of the building with half the lights off. Not the darkness William's grown used to, but enough light to cast dramatic shadows over all the animatronic shells. It's all wonderfully theatrical. When the owner approaches him again at the end of the second lap of the place, William obligingly blinks. The strange man running the place, naturally, gets very excited over this. It's an incredible overreaction given how little effort William put into it, but he likes the attention. Still, the fawning tapers off as night arrives. He can almost hear the screech of tires as his slightly more present company in the building leaves, lights left where they are. Strange. A bit of a fire hazard, probably.
He gets moving as soon as he readily can. He's been getting better at managing even during the day, he thinks, but not enough to actually walk around, yet. Soon. Within the week, if he's stubborn, and anyone who has ever spoken to William Afton (oddly relieving to think the full name) for more than a moment can attest to his stubbornness. It's a family trait. Got it from his mother's side, he always said. But he's got better things to focus on than her, or anyone he'd tell about her. There is someone he might know in this building, if he had enough time to take them in. His plan is a rough one. Get to the guard's office, same as any other night here so far, and keep the guard from leaving. Hold him still, probably. He's quite sure he'll be able to. The Spring Bonnie suit was always sturdier than it really had need to be, and he suspects it will only serve him better in that regard now that he's lost all need for caution with it.
The first bout of laughter this night is one he's prepared for. He shakes it off and leaves, telling himself that he was hearing things. Odd noises abound in this building. That works, it lets him keep going. The next, a few minutes later, he can't shake the same way. A loud, curious "Hello?" He stops in his tracks, trying to ignore it. More laughter arrives, tinny and fake but still something he knows he can't ignore. That's a party, he thinks, hazy. He needs to be there. He turns, still hesitant. Takes a step closer to the noise. But he doesn't hear anything else. Just his own creaking movements. After a moment, he composes himself and turns back to the task at hand. It's beginning to be concerning, how easily he can be dragged from place to place. Just beginning to be, since he's proven that he can best the impulse, if he's creative. The issue, he thinks, is that there's only so many ways he can insist to a bone-deep insistence within his mind that he needs to be somewhere else that he's fine right where he is, actually. Laughter fills the room he's in, confusing him as he looks around. Then he blinks. Case in point for the concern, then?
William can see the guard's window. It's right there. When he takes more than a few steps out of the mockery of a party room he's in and towards the window, though, he's lured back. Frustrating. He holds still for a while, and nothing drags him further into the building. He stares up at the cameras, and realizes his mistake. He's been too hasty, hasn't he? He grins up at the camera. (He's always grinning, now, but this time there's intent to it.) It's out of his reach, he thinks, but he slinks into its blind spot anyways, and waits. Sure enough, a moment later, laughter fills the room. William adds his own, raspy and wet, to the chorus. He's already here. And, he realizes, there's a vent here. He's a bit quicker on his feet this time than he was during his last excursion into the vents, and is well past the little grate in the middle before it can drop. It tries, catching his foot for a moment, but it retracts easily enough. Is that all it takes? Pressure from below?
As William leaves the vent, taking a bit longer than he'd like to be back on his feet, he wonders why the nightguard hasn't run. There's clearly an understanding of the threat William could present, and yet as he stares down at the guard, taking him in, neither of them move. Does the guard recognize him too, or is this fear? Shock? There's no telling. William takes a step closer, and then, finally, gets a response. The guard tries to turn and run, but William grabs his shoulder before he can make more than a couple steps away, dragging him closer.
The guard's breath is cold on his face, what little of it makes it through the mask. At last, he's close enough to make out details of his company. It's the subtle things that finally clue him in, really. The eyes, pallid and grey, just like his. The sharp angles of a face eaten away by lack of care, yet familiar anyways. Almost William's spitting image, from when he was alive, even with half the face covered and the hair long and tied back. Of course the nightguard was familiar. This is Michael. Older, worse-off, but that can be said of both of them, can't it? In one way or another? Michael is panicking. William knows the signs. That rabbit-quick heartbeat isn't as easy to feel anymore, but the frantic breath? How unnaturally still he falls?
Pity wells up alongside old and dusty fondness. His son. His surviving child, the last of his family left. Oh, Michael. It's a shame that this is how they reunite. One of the few people who could know who he was, even like this! He lunges forward, unsure of what he intends to do once he makes contact, and then grinds to a halt. Morning again. He lets Michael pry his fingers loose, watching him the whole time.
When the owner of the building comes back around, he talks to William, in the way one might talk to anything human enough to anthropomorphize. He jokes about William looking "gnarly," about Michael messing around with the posing, about where William should be situated for the best scares. Any number of things he'd be a bit more interested in were he not so focused on Michael not only still being alive, but looking the same age he did before William died. Is that normal? It can't be. Surely he'd have aged, unless the time spent in the saferoom was just that much shorter than it felt. It was years, wasn't it? Had to have been. He feels claustrophobic.
There's no point pretending he isn't what he is, even with a witness, now. He practices moving in full view, ignoring the excited response of his current (less important) company. He manages a few steps without falling over. It's getting easier, despite the constant insistence from the back of his mind that this shouldn't be possible. He understands, he thinks, what's happened to him, here. He never noticed in the saferoom, because he never had any real need to move around or ignore the thing getting in his way, but this is almost certainly the suit's programming. It lines up. He can roam as he likes at night, but during the day, it's substantially harder to. His hand curls, almost an automatic response to the thought. Good.
This all makes sense. He understands that the animatronics that were haunted needed to be restricted to freeroam only at night, he just... Didn't realize Spring Bonnie had been changed, too. Would he have even objected, had he known? Likely not. Who could predict where he's ended up? He would have agreed because there could be no possible way to object, so why had someone..? Spring Bonnie was so rarely in use, by the end. So that's a mystery he can't solve like this, he thinks. Henry would know how, and very few others. William has to assume this is Henry's doing. He hasn't thought about Henry for a long time, now that he considers him.
He thinks he'll end up having to kill Michael and Henry. It seems inevitable. If Michael is at all in contact with Henry, then they'll both know he's still around, and will be looking for him if he manages to leave this place. Assuming, of course, that Michael recognized him. He has to have. William can't imagine a world where he's unrecognizable to his son. Even if he was, by some horrible stroke of luck, William knows Michael will come back. He's stubborn like that. No stiff scare will keep him away from something he, by all rights, shouldn't be near. The thought of killing Michael rests sour on his tongue, but if he wants any amount of peace in whatever he chooses to do, Michael has to go. Ever the rebellious child, there's little chance of a peaceful resolution here. Even moreso with Henry, who grew ever more intractable as the years spooled out, and would likely be entirely impossible to reason with now.
Once moving is easy again, give or take a bit of pain, he takes advantage of the blind spots of the cameras, making good pace, only sometimes being stalled by the lures. He tries to throw off where Michael might think he is by using one of the vents, but can't get far into one before it's blocked off. That's fine. He has time, and he's already roughly a third of the way down the length of the building. Still, it's a good sign that the vent was sealed. That does mean there's someone who's familiar with how to work the vents, and more likely than any other option, it's Michael. It almost has to be.
If anyone else is in that office, he'll be a bit surprised, but he doesn't mind killing them quite as much as cutting down his own flesh and blood. It wouldn't solve his dilemma, but it would be easier to be handling a stranger, tonight. There's no point in wondering. He'll find out soon enough, and he knows, really, that it will still be Michael in that office. For a moment, he entertains the idea of leaving this behind and letting everyone go their own ways. It would be nice. He laughs to himself at the idea of showing up to events in Michael's life looking like he does now. That's my father, Michael would say. The rabbit. William would have a new bow tie, even! Spring Bonnie lost hers ages ago, but it can't be that hard to find one in a fitting size. He'll make one if he has to.
Another loop of progressing into a new room and getting dragged back by laughter happens, and William admits to himself that no matter how much he would like to play nice with Michael, it's not that likely that they'd both manage civility. So, in the end, he'll have to live with the ideas of what could have been.
Soon enough, he can peer through that oddly large window, see that it is, in fact, still Michael in that chair, staring at a panel attached to the wall. Giving him a bit of notice, William reaches out and taps on the glass. Michael startles, shoving the panel to the side. William, a bit laboriously, opens the suit's jaw wider to convey a grin. He can't see the response, but he assumes there is one. The moment Michael looks away, William all but runs down the rest of the hall, rounding the corner and pausing at the threshold to the office. He's excited. He knows everything he needs to, he knows what he needs to do here. Everything makes sense. Wide grin plastered on his face, as it has been for forever, he crosses the rubicon, with plenty of time to spare.
Michael, across the room, is frozen still. William takes up the entirety of the doorway, and advances no further. On a whim, he tries to call Michael's name. Static, broken and vaguely in the shape of what he meant to say, pours from his ruined throat. Strangely, Michael seems to relax. He comes closer. William tilts his head to the side, confused. They both know where they stand, don't they? William can't remember how much Michael knew about everything he did. A lot, it had to have been. He reaches out, hesitant. Just one hand, barely held apart from his body.
And Michael takes it in both of his. William can feel it. That clammy hand (when did he get so cold?) against his fur. Michael, somehow, seems torn. Whatever he's thinking, William might be mirroring it. He knows what he has to do. He came to terms with it, was excited. But now, he can't bring himself to do the easy thing and kill Michael. He knows it would be easy. It always would have been. As he's distracted, Michael removes his hand from William's, and replaces it with both arms, around the whole of him in a hug.
Slowly, William closes his eyes. Almost unwittingly, he returns the gesture. He can't do it. Not like this, not yet. Michael is shaking. William's whole world is warm.