Chapter Text
Finding out our friends were dead wasn’t the hard part.
It hurt, but when Freddy walked out of the back room with an old newspaper and Toy Freddy’s hat... when I found Blue’s guitar- and Foxy found Toy Foxy’s hook, and Chica found Toy Chica’s cupcake... It hurt, but it was easy.
The hard part was accepting it. The harder part was recognizing that they died in vain.
“Eyewitness reports show that the animatronics had been acting strange. According to one of the patrons, who wishes to remain anonymous, once the animatronics got off stage, they “zeroed in on this guard and just started walking towards him,” eventually backing him up to the entrance of Kid’s Cove.
““This should not have happened,” the manager insisted. “We will take appropriate action.”
““Jeremy Fitzgerald is a hero,” claims the guard in question. “The Mangle,” as the staff at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza call Toy Foxy, “leapt right for me, but he didn’t hesitate to jump in the way. I hope everything is alright in the end...”
“Frederick Fazbear, head of Fazbear Entertainment, has declared the Toy animatronics faulty. They will be immediately scrapped and Freddy Fazbear’s will not be reopening its doors once the missing children’s investigation has ended.”
They died for our cause- and still they failed. The children are still here with us. They got the wrong guy.
Some guy just had to play hero...
Harder still are the memories. Remembering the days we spent together, as short as it was. It wasn’t... all happy, but... once we sorted everything out, it was great. We were friends. And... maybe we could have been more.
Now we’ll never know. It’s hard- not knowing. Not knowing what could have been. What would have been... what should have been.
“Hey, Bonnie, look, I found it! Now we can get you fixed up enough to play guitar. Huh? Why are you lookin’ at me like that? Wha- hey, let me go! Bonnie! A simple thanks would suffice, y’know! Put me down before you break your arm and I have to fix that too! Geez! Heheh...”
“Bonnie! You startled me. The guard’s being tricky, he’s using that stupid mask again I think. Wanna tag-team him? They usually crack really fast when we do that!”
“H-hey, I just... made this for you... Um- you don’t, uh, it’s fine if, y’know, you don’t like it, but I made it anyway. Um- oh, I think Red is calling me, I’ll see you later, Bonnie! Bye!”
But... the hardest part... is that we never got to say goodbye.
I never got to say I’m sorry.
“Bonnie, wai-!”
“Shut. Up. You were supposed to be watching! You were supposed to protect them! But you didn’t. You’re a failure. You’re just... just a useless piece of plastic. Can’t even watch a few kids...”
“B-Bonnie, wait, please...!
I didn’t stop. I never knew what he was gonna say...
He was crying. I remember that much. He was crying and so was I. They were just children. Children. And someone had killed them... killed them during the day.
We blamed them. Or... Foxy and I did. Chica refused to speak of the matter and Freddy was... much more logical than I was about it.
They were on stage, locked in place. Of course they weren’t able to do anything- none of them knew how to bypass the programming. They were young... they were new. They understood, they saw, but they couldn’t move and they couldn’t figure out how to bypass the locks.
Just like they couldn’t bypass that stupid facial recognition crap.
“They messed with our facial scanners! Our facial scanners! Don’t they even care now we see every adult as a criminal?! I nearly tore a woman’s face off for getting near her own son! I don’t like this, what are we supposed to do?!”
“I feel like we’ve been doomed to fail.”
I close my eyes and listen to the sounds around me- the silence of the night. It’s been so long since we’ve seen them- so long... we’re back in business, but I doubt it’ll be for much longer. Too many nightguards, losing too much business, too much... everything.
We aren’t the same animatronics we were back then. Time and circumstance has weighed us down.
First we lost Fredbear, then we lost Spring Bonnie. Now we have Golden Freddy, an empty haunted suit with no memories of us or Spring Bonnie... Then we lost them. The Toys. It had been like we were rebuilding our family, making new friends and expanding. We had Red, we had Blue, we had Chii, we had Vix, we had Marion, we even had Balloon Boy...
And the last thing I ever said to any of them was that they were useless.
I said Blue was useless... and that just isn’t true.
It’s 1993.
“Freddy...? Where are we?”
“It looks like we’re on stage.”
“But where?”
“I’m... not sure. Maybe the Toys will know.”
“I have no interest in talking to them right now.”
“Bonnie, you can’t blame them. It was beyond their control.”
“Whatever. I’m gonna look around. We’re definitely in a Freddy Fazbear’s... Geez, how long were we off? Wait... why do we look different? Were we recommissioned?”
“Not a clue, laddie.”
“Guys...”
“Yeah, Freddy?”
“It’s a good thing, Bonnie, that you... you don’t want to... talk to the Toys.”
“Thanks for seeing it my way. Where are they, anyway? Out of curiosity.”
“They’re dead.”
I hadn’t even known that much time passed. We reopened in 1990.
Three years later.
Three years. Blue and the others had been dead for three years. And the proof was all in that newspaper article... in the parts we found in the backroom... in Blue’s guitar, in Red’s hat, Vix’s hook, Chii’s cupcake... Marion’s music box, BB’s balloon sign...
Holding his guitar is hard. It’s smaller than mine, but that isn’t what I mean. Just looking at it reminds me of everything that should have happened- everything that should not have happened.
They should be here. I should have apologized. We should have made up and worked together to bring down the murderer. We should have had so much more time- I should have told Blue the truth.
Better yet, I shouldn’t have said any of those things anyway. The murders shouldn’t have even happened... I shouldn’t have been so angry. They shouldn’t have died, and we shouldn’t have had to find out three years after the fact.
They shouldn’t have come up with some half-baked revenge scheme that would have gotten them killed... even if they had succeeded.
“What do you mean they’re dead?! Give me that newspaper!”
“Bonnie-”
“Bite of ‘87?! What does that even mean- Freddy, I don’t- what?!”
“I don’t know any more than you do, Bonnie... I thought maybe there was a mistake, maybe they weren’t scrapped and were simply put into storage, but... I also found this.”
“Oh no... Red’s hat... he never took that thing off...”
“The article suggests they were cornering someone... maybe they recognized the murderer. Maybe they targeted him.”
“You mean... they died trying to fix our mess.”
“They were young, they were emotional. They were new... they were still struggling to understand our children, how it could have happened the first time... it must have made them angry, it happening again under everyone’s noses...”
“But this... this... they would know better... right? If they... if they hadn’t tried, they’d still be here helping us find him. They-”
“Almost got him, lad. Lookie there- the nightguard saved the man they were cornering.”
“Even if they had gotten him instead, no one knows he was a murderer- Blue and the others would have died anyway! If that was their plan, it was a bad plan! They-”
“Cared more about the children than themselves... just as we do, Bonnie.”
“But now they’re gone... I... I didn’t... they...”
“I know, Bonnie... I know...”
It’s hard.
It hurts to remember even the happy times, because now they’re tainted by the sad- by the mad, by the bad. His smile replaced with tears- because of me- and his bright red guitar replaced with the dry blood-splattered thing I’m holding right now- because he was too close when Vix struck.
It hurts to remember the nights when there was no guard to hunt down. It’s hard to remember how he fixed my arm so he and I could play together- how we’d sit on the stage and play for hours until Freddy or Red finally snapped and chased us into a party room. It hurts to remember trying to teach him how to cook, how Chii and Chica nearly threw us in the garbage disposal when they saw the state of the kitchen after that disastrous lesson. It hurts to remember him dragging me along to play pirate with Foxy and Vix- it hurt to remember how we "betrayed" them to form our own crew and go head-on against the pirate foxes, and all the laughs we shared tripping around the "deck"...
They were all fun memories, but I wish I didn’t have them... because now I know how it all ends.
It ends in blood, tears, hurt, words I never meant... and me just walking away.
It ends with a bad plan that had only one outcome.
It ends with us losing our family.
Every smile, every laugh, every dance, every cheer, every song, every gentle, comforting word leading to one thing.
We were hurt and I hurt him more, and the next day he died.
I found out three years later.
“What date is it anyway? This newspaper looks too old to be recent...”
“Boys, I found a calendar on the wall. Looks like tomorrow’s opening day... wait... it’s August,1990. Guys...!”
“It’s been... three years...? Three years? We’ve... been down for three years... but then... they’ve been dead for...”
“Three years. Yes.”
Three years.
Six now, and frankly I’m just ready to shut down and never wake up again, but we haven’t found that... monster yet.
We’ll be closing soon, I’m sure. Business is bad, we’re in a bad state, and the constant death happening within these walls... it’s steadily driving people away.
I want them all to go away.
What was once something I loved so much is now tiring.
We’re old. We’re tired. We’re ready to die, too. We’re ready to join our friends.
I wonder if I can say sorry then. If that’s even how these things work... If we have souls, if we... “move on” too.
If I get to see them again, I think that’s the first thing I’d say. Several years too late, but still... I’d finally get to say it. I’d finally get to look at my friend... at my almost-more... I’d finally see him again, and I would finally be able to say it. Say those words I’ve been thinking for so long...
“I’m sorry.”
“I know... I am too.”