Chapter Text
Someone is kicking him.
"Hey," they grouse, placing another well-aimed kick at his ribcage. "Hey! Wake up already. I'm bored. Let's get going."
What the fuck? Where…where is he? What’s going on? This…doesn’t feel right. None of this feels right. What had happened?
"Dude, seriously?" Anastas groans, kicking him again. "Did you already forget?"
Anastas. What is she... William grimaces, hissing as he opens his eyes to bright neon lights. They flicker and spark in disrepair, illuminating the hallway in rainbow colors and instantly giving him a headache. This…this isn’t the office he’d spent the past several days (weeks? months? years?) in. He doesn’t recognize this place, but it feels far more sinister. Oh, he does not like that. "Anastas?"
"Yeah, it's me," she says, sounding a little calmer. "You remember the deal, right?"
Deal? Deal. That’s right… "Yes, I remember."
"Good. So let's get going, because you've been out for ten minutes and I'm already super bored."
William resists the urge to point out that she does not have to come with him. Best not to aggravate her. He's already insanely lucky that she'd even agreed to this. "Right. Where are we, exactly? I don't recognize this place."
Anastas huffs, but holds out a hand for him to take. After a moment's hesitation, he does so, using her as leverage to bring himself to his feet. "I don't know," she admits, looking around them. "I've never seen this place before, but I guess it's where we've been spending the past couple of...however long it's been. This place looks a lot different from when we were here before. I asked the others and they said they didn't know either, so they won’t be any help. All I know is we’re in the Pizzaplex. Henry gives us all the updates on the place. I’ve never been outside the basement."
"You've talked to the others?" he asks, looking down at himself and scowling in disappointment. Damn. He'd hoped that he would look at least somewhat like his old self, but no luck—instead, he's covered in springlock scars, all weeping with black blood and rippling every time he moves a limb. Great.
Anastas, for her part, looks far less terrifying than normal, looking much more like a normal child—big, bushy black curls are tied back into pigtails, revealing her small nose and rosy cheeks. Those disturbing black tear stains have disappeared, revealing high cheekbones and much more of her tiny, round face. Instead of inky black nothingness, he looks into her monolid eyes and sees a rich, dark brown that feels just as threatening. If he didn't know exactly what she was, he might have found her adorable. "Do they agree with this...bet?"
"They do," she says stiffly, suddenly guarded. You’re hiding something. “They don’t believe you either. They trust me to be able to take care of it, and I will. We’re all waiting for you to make good on your promise.” She doesn't seem eager to elaborate further, and William decides not to push it.
"Alright..." William turns to look around them, noting the disrepair of the posters on the hallway walls and the neon signs above them. "What year is it?"
"No clue," she shrugs, aiming another kick that he barely manages to dodge. "Are you gonna fix this or not?"
William glares at her. "You're going to have to be patient, Anastas. This is going to take a while."
Anastas glares right back. "I have a name, you know."
"I don't care."
"Well, I do," she snaps haughtily, crossing her arms. "Look, Afton. I hate you. You hate me. But, I have been advised by certain third parties that we should try to play nice so we can get this over with quicker." She sounds as bitter saying it as he feels hearing it. William has a feeling he knows exactly who that third party was, but now isn't the time to ask about it. "So, I'll make you another deal. I'll tolerate you if you tolerate me. You are a means to an end, nothing more, and we need to work together so we can all get out of here. Do you think you can do that?"
Playing nice with Anastas? William never thought he'd see the day. But he has to admit...she does have a point. Infuriating as it is, neither of them are getting out of here without the other's help. She needs him to bring them back, and he needs her to keep him out of that hell. If playing nice is going to get him his family back and back to his old life...that's a sacrifice he can make. "Very well. We have a deal, Cassidy."
"Wonderful." She claps her hands together, scowling at the man. "For the record, I'm not happy about it either."
"I can imagine. It was David, wasn't it?"
"No comment. And by the way, you can just call me Cass."
William rolls his eyes, but doesn't press further. If she can keep herself in check, he'll do the same. This goes both ways, after all. "I will not. What's our first order of business?"
Cassidy frowns, looking up at him. "What does that mean?"
"What do we do first?"
"Oh. Uhm...I don't know." She has the audacity to shift on her feet, looking around and tilting her head as if picking a random direction to walk in. "You were the one who said you could bring us back. I thought you had a plan."
William resists the urge to scream. "I don't."
"So you lied?"
"I never said I had a plan."
Cassidy opens her mouth to argue, but changes her mind. She nods, clearly not happy at having been wrong. "Okay...are you gonna have a plan?"
"Eventually, yes."
"Okay..." She looks up at him again, giving him a judgmental look. William narrows his eyes at her. "Well, you said there was some kind of cloning facility? What is cloning?"
William has to pause at that, blinking slowly. "You don't know what cloning is?"
"Look, I'm not a scientist—"
"No, I mean—" he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. Patience. Snapping at her is just as likely to get me sent back. How did this girl manage to outsmart me for fifty years? "If you didn't know what I was talking about, why did you agree to this?"
"Well—" Cassidy bites her lip, looking down at the ground in embarrassment. She folds her arms across her chest, huffing indignantly. "I thought it would be funny to watch you fail. So far I’m being proven right. What, were you lying?"
"Of course I wasn't," he says cautiously. He hadn't been—he really does believe he can bring them back and get this whole mess over with. It's just that he doesn't know how. But he'll figure it out. He always does. "I have an idea, but it needs...work."
Cassidy raises an eyebrow. "What kind of work?"
"Structure, mostly. You're right, there's supposed to be some cloning equipment somewhere—I'd imagine it's on the premises, considering it's not the kind of thing you'd want out in the open. If I can find out where it is, I can search the area for journals, blueprints, that sort of thing. It should have everything I need."
"Everything we need," she corrects.
"We?"
"Well, I'm helping you, aren't I?"
"You are?"
Cassidy has the audacity to snort. "More hands means quicker work, right? I'm not just gonna sit back and watch you do all the work. I’m helping."
"Why?"
She narrows her eyes, stepping back. She looks him up and down, pursing her lips, before staring down at her sneakers. "I want to make it up to them," she admits quietly, so softly he almost misses the words.
William doesn't need to ask what she means. So he doesn't, instead nodding and looking around the hallway once more. They could head either left or right—left leads to darkness, but if they head right, it looks like there's light at the end. Maybe a room? Oh, this is hopeless. They'll need a map to navigate this place... "I think we should find a map first."
"Huh?"
"A map," he repeats, far more patiently than he feels. "Neither of us knows the layout of this place, so we're going to have to find either some blueprints or a map."
"Uhm. Okay. I'll...follow your lead, I guess."
William tilts his head towards the end of the hallway and waits for her to move. “Come along, then. I imagine a map can’t be that hard to find around here.”
Cassidy gives him a sideways glare as she walks past, but doesn’t respond.
Good riddance to you too, he thinks as he follows her.
When they reach the end of the hallway, William has to stop for a moment to bask in the absolute confusion that hits him like a truck. Cassidy similarly stops, skidding to a halt and taking in the sight. Beyond the hallway lies a massive atrium, part dining room, part entertainment area, with a huge stage at the far end of the room and giant billboards advertising attractions at every corner of the place. In contrast to the hallway, this place looks relatively well-maintained. There’s neon everywhere, bathing the area in a mix of bright, overstimulating colors. Purple and yellow party carpet covers the floor in some areas and switches with black and white tile in others. Purple lights line the tops of the walls, adding to his migraine, and contrasting horribly with the sparse palm trees dotted around the arena.
“This place is massive,” Cassidy breathes, stepping out into the atrium. William instinctively pulls her back by the shoulder. She gives him a dirty look, but complies.
“Careful,” he warns. “We don’t know what’s waiting for us.”
“Does it matter if we’re already dead?”
“…Well—”
Cassidy grins, shoving his hand off her shoulder and stepping forward into the blinding light. William braces himself before following her, instantly regretting it when he accidentally steps right into the beam of a spotlight.
“Hurry up, old man,” she laughs, already rushing into the room and spinning around as she stops in the center.
So much for keeping an eye on me, he thinks as he watches her go. Well, he’s certainly not going to stop her. Once his eyes adjust to the brightness, he steps further into the room to join her, looking around for any indication of where they might be able to find a map. This must be the main area, given the absolute enormity of it all—surely the entrance isn’t too far away, and where there are entrances, there are likely also maps. A place this big has to have a map, even if it’s just on one wall. They just need to find it, and then…then they’ll go from there. That…shouldn’t be too difficult. Right.
“Hey,” Cassidy calls, throwing something his way. William barely manages to avoid it, looking down and seeing a toy car by his feet. “Ah, darn. I missed.”
“I’m glad you’re having fun,” he scowls, kicking the toy car away. “When you’re ready to be serious, let me know and we can continue.”
“Funsucker,” Cassidy groans, shuffling over to him.
“I am not a funsucker.”
“You are. You suck the fun out of everything. Fun. Sucker.”
“Can we focus?”
Cassidy laughs at his obvious annoyance. She beams up at him with a shit-eating grin. “Whatever you say, Peepaw.”
“Do not.”
“What’re you gonna do, kill me again?”
“Oh, if only,” he mutters quietly, closing his eyes and praying for patience.
“Alright, alright,” she cackles, punching him in the leg. “Funsucker. Okay, where are we going?”
“We need to find the entrance,” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. Focus, Afton, focus. One year. You’ve been dealing with her for fifty already—what’s one more? “Entrances to these types of places usually have maps, so we’ll start there.”
“Can’t we just follow all the signs?”
“Not likely. They’re not going to tell us where the basement is, which is where I’m assuming the cloning equipment is.”
“But we’ve been in the basement, haven’t we?” she frowns. “That’s where we’ve all been for who knows how long. I never saw any cloning equipment.”
“You’re partially correct,” he tells her, picking a direction and beginning to walk. “We were below this…entertainment center, I’m assuming this is—but we were in the remains of Michael’s pizza restaurant. That’s not quite the basement.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess that makes sense.”
“You guess?”
She shrugs, not bothering to turn around and face him. “I’m only eight years old.”
Elizabeth was four, he thinks unbidden, and then stops. He doesn’t want to think about his family right now. Especially not her. Focus, he urges himself again, moving forward. The sooner you deal with the brats, the sooner you can get your family back. That’s what you want, isn’t it?
Isn’t it?
“Hey, Peepaw,” Cassidy says, jolting him out of his musings. “I think I see the entrance over there. You know, the giant neon that says come back soon?”
“I see it. Don’t call me that.”
“Do you prefer Afton?”
“I prefer William.”
“Nah. Hm…” She gives him a critical once over before nodding. “Bill. Yeah, you look like a Bill. You’re Bill now.”
Henry called me Bill. “Not Bill.”
Cassidy shrugs, unconcerned with his quiet response. Stop shrugging so much. It’s improper. “It’s either Bill or Afton, if you don’t want to go by Peepaw. Your choice.”
Bitch. “…Bill.”
“Okay, Bill,” she grins, saccharine and fake, and she bows sarcastically before snapping to attention. “I don’t see any map stands over there, but maybe there’s, like, a wall map or something. I don’t know.”
“Lovely,” he grumbles, already doubting his own commitment. Is it too late to ask for the personal hell back? “Alright…damn. There’s got to be something around here. Let’s take a closer look.”
“You’re the boss,” she shrugs, tightening her bushy pigtails.
“You’d do well to remember that.”
“I can still drag you back to the others—”
“Quiet.”
William quickly makes his way towards the entrance, Cassidy faltering behind him as she struggles to keep up with his long strides. To his dismay, it doesn’t last long—within seconds she’s decided that sprinting at top speed to get ahead of him is the ideal solution, and he nearly trips over her as she slides underneath him. He hopes he’ll get lucky and get to watch her slam face first into the turnstiles ahead, but sadly she passes right through them. Damn.
“I win!” she shouts proudly, jumping up and down on the other side of the turnstiles. “I win! I win! I win!”
“We weren’t racing,” William scoffs, sounding far more insulted than he’d meant.
“Doesn’t matter! I won! You lost! You’re a loser!”
Play nice, he reminds himself with a grimace. “Alright,” he sighs, rolling his eyes and brushing past her. He doesn’t pay her any mind as he surveys the entrance area, looking for some sort of map kiosk, or information desk, or a wall map, or something to tell them where they are and where they need to go. Surely there has to be something here, even if it’s just a brochure or a pamphlet or—or—
“Ach!”
William whirls around, eyes landing on a terrified Cassidy as she backs away from…what is that thing? It looks like some kind of robot, but not anything he’s familiar with. It wears a hat, and holds something in its hand, repeating a phrase that’s too garbled by its speakers to decipher. Most noteworthy, William notes, is the piercing shriek it emits from its speakers, reminiscent of an alarm. Interesting. Whatever—or whoever—the alarm is meant to warn likely won’t be a concern for them, though, so he ignores it. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything!” she protests, glaring at him. “I was minding my business—”
“Bullshit—”
“I was! And then this—this thing snuck up behind me and—wait! Give me that,” she tells the robot, snatching the object out of its hand. She grins, looking up at him and waving it above her head. “Hey, I found one! I found a map! I found it first! See, I’m better than you—”
Don’t call the child a bitch. Don’t call the child a bitch. Don’t call the child a bitch. “Bitch.”
“Funsucker,” she laughs, unfettered. “Let’s see…” She opens the map—upside down, he notes with a small amount of amusement—and frowns when she can’t decipher it. “Holy shit. Uh…we have a problem.”
“You’re holding it upside down.”
“Not that.” She waves him off dismissively. That piques his curiosity more than anything. “We have a few problems, actually…first off, this place is massive. Bigger than I think either of us thought. It might take a while for us to find what we’re looking for.”
William walks over to her, grabbing the map and turning it right-side up. Shit. She isn’t wrong. Even simply looking at the map is giving him another headache—he spots at least ten different attractions on one level, all of them enormous in their own right but out of the way enough that they likely won’t have to bother with them. But upon further inspection, he sees what the second problem is. “Shit.”
“Did you notice what I did?”
“Yes.” There aren’t any indications of where the restricted areas are. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue for someone of his intellectual caliber—it always pays to look at what areas are mysteriously blank on a map such as this one. Unfortunately for them, every inch of this paper map is accounted for. “Dammit. We’ll have to do this the hard way.”
“There’s…another problem…”
Something about her tone of voice immediately raises suspicions. William looks up from the map to find Cassidy pointing at something in the distance, her tiny finger trembling in fear. He can’t tell what it is from here, but if it’s bad enough to make her afraid, he’s not going to argue with her. Just the sound of its heavy, rapidly approaching footsteps is enough to make him waver. Sure, they’re already dead, but do they really want to take their chances? “There’s an information kiosk over there.” He points to a booth over on the far side of the room. She doesn’t waste a second before bolting over to it, gesturing for him to be quiet as he follows her.
They’re barely situated behind the desk when it comes close enough to see clearly. “That must be what the alarm was meant for,” he whispers to Cassidy.
“Can you see what it is?”
“It…looks like a version of Freddy,” he notes with considerable surprise. “What the hell?”
“That makes sense,” Cassidy whispers back. “Henry said this place was owned by Fazbear Entertainment, which was your old company, right? So it would make sense that they would want to make Freddy again.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t look like any Freddy I’ve ever designed,” he frowns, noting its eighties-inspired look—an orange body with tan highlights, turquoise nails, and red and electric blue accents with a laughably small top hat and an honest to God earring in his left ear combine to create the silliest Freddy design he’s ever seen in his…life? Death? Does it matter? It looks ridiculous either way.
“I think it looks cool,” Cassidy breathes. “I kinda wanna pet him.”
“It’s a robot.”
“So?”
Freddy approaches the robot from before, and to his shock, begins to speak. “STAFF Bot, what is the emergency?”
The robot—STAFF Bot, apparently—tries to respond, but once again its meaning is lost behind the broken speaker.
“I don’t think there was one,” someone else says, sounding annoyed. Both William and Cassidy perk up at the new voice, sharing a confused glance before both try to peek out from behind the desk to get a better look. “These stupid STAFF Bots are always fucking broken and whining about something.”
“Gregory, watch your language! That is not a nice thing to say,” Freddy admonishes, looking down at an unseen person.
“What?” Gregory scoffs, stepping out from behind Freddy. William frowns, exchanging another glance with Cassidy before looking back at the boy. This must be the boy that Fritz had once told him about, the one wandering the Pizzaplex that was supposedly a clone of himself. Strange—had he really been that puny and pathetic-looking as a child? No wonder my father didn’t love me. “It’s true, and you know it. Whatever. Let’s get back to Vanessa. I’ll let you tell her we didn’t find anything…” His voice fades a bit as he walks away, leading Freddy back the way they came.
“We do not know that for sure,” Freddy says in a much more positive tone than is deserved. “We still have a bit of time before we have to report back. We can check Maizercise again—”
“If I have to go through that stupid maze one more time—”
“That is the most likely place. We are not likely to find a key card to the basement anywhere else.”
“Other than Mazercise?”
“That is where we have found other keys, yes.”
“…Fine. We’ll check one more time. But that’s it.”
“Okay, Gregory.”
“Can I ride in your stomach hatch?”
“No.”
“Boring,” and that’s the last thing they hear before the voices fade.
William and Cassidy wait behind the desk for a few seconds longer before Cassidy stumbles out and turns to him, eyes wide. “That was close,” she sighs, shaking her head. “Way too close.”
“We weren’t in danger.”
“We could have been,” she shrugs, but something about her response is…off. Oh, you’re hiding something. I don’t like that. “Better to be safe than sorry…”
“Alright…” William has to remind himself that even though they can physically interact, it would do him no good to strangle the brat here and now. That didn’t work out so well for him last time, did it?
“Anyway,” she says, interrupting his musings with a wave of her hand. “They’re looking for the basement, too. Do you think it’s for the same reason?”
“What, cloning a dead person and bringing them back to life?” He chuckles sharply. “I doubt it. Whatever they’re looking for likely has nothing to do with us. But, if their goal is to get into the basement…perhaps we could follow them—”
“No!” When William raises an eyebrow, she stammers out, “Uhm. What I mean is, we can find the basement on our own, and you already had a plan for us, so—”
“It’ll be easier if we follow them,” he points out, waving the map in front of her. “We’d hit a dead end seconds before they showed up, and it’s quite fucking lucky that they did.”
“We can’t.”
“Why not?”
Cassidy looks like a deer caught in the headlights. William narrows his eyes at her, placing his hands on his hips and giving her the look that had always worked on his own children. It often slips his mind that she is just a child, a little girl of eight years old with baby fat on her face and dimples in her cheeks, not unlike his own little girl. Elizabeth would have liked her, he thinks. For all of Cassidy’s scheming and threats, all her rage and her bitterness, she is still a child, and she is very much acting like one now that they’re out of the basement. William supposes he should be grateful for that. It beats the alternative.
“I…” is her only answer after a minute of silence. William frowns, and she breaks. “Okay! Fine!” Her hands twist the hem of her bright yellow sweater, nearly tearing the fabric in two with the force. “I…may have…possibly…lied. Just a little bit.”
“What.” ’
“So…” Cassidy wrings her hands together, looking very much like she’s actually sorry for whatever she’s about to admit to. “Okay, look. That Freddy—it’s part of a set of four, yeah? At least, that’s what Henry said. But he’s different, because…he’s possessed…”
“Possessed?” William raises an eyebrow, folding his arms across his chest. “Why is that surprising? You and I are ghosts and could likely possess the others if we wanted, too. What makes this one so special?”
“...Michael?”
William can feel his blood boil at the mere mention of his eldest. “You’re fucking joking.”
Cassidy winces. “Nope.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“No?”
“Oh mon Dieu, ça ne peut pas arriver. Cela ne peut pas arriver. Ce n'est pas réel. Rien de tout cela n’est réel. Oh mon Dieu…” William has to fight very, very hard not to pull out his own hair and scream into the void, for the fear of his own damned son coming back and—and—well, doing something, he’s sure. Just because he’s dead doesn’t mean he can’t suffer.
“I don’t…know what that means.”
“Nevermind,” he sighs, running a hand down his face and groaning. Think, Afton. Think. You’re a genius. You can think your way out of this. “Okay,” he sighs, placing a closed fist against his forehead. “So Freddy is possessed by Michael. Okay. That’s not a problem. You said you talked to everyone and they agreed that this whole plan was a good one, yes? So if we bump into him, it shouldn’t be an issue, right?”
Cassidy refuses to look him in the eye, twisting the toe of her light up sneaker against the ground. “Not exactly…”
Lord, if you’re still listening to me, give me patience. “What do you mean?” he asked through gritted teeth.
“That’s the part I lied about.”
She says it in such a rush, it takes William a few moments to process the words. “Excusez-moi?”
“Uh…so I…never actually told anyone that this was our plan?” She has the gall to laugh nervously, looking up at him with a pained expression. “I mean, I told David, and he told me to play nice, and gave me some advice, but I lied to him and told him that I’d already told the others, and I lied to you and said the same thing, so…yeah. Nobody except for me and you and David knows about our deal. Not even Henry, because I knew he would try to talk me out of it and I didn’t wanna listen to his lecture.”
“And…you agreed…why?”
Cassidy throws her hands up in exasperation. “I don’t know,” she snaps, and suddenly that fiery spirit is back with a vengeance. “Maybe I was tired of torturing the same guy for fifty fucking years and never feeling any better. Maybe I figured if anyone could fucking fix this mess and give us our lives back would be the guy who stole them, because he said he had a plan and knew exactly what to do. Maybe I just want to believe that there’s a way out of this for all of us that doesn't involve shutting up and passing on. Maybe I just want to see the fucking sun again.”
William tries to protest but quickly shuts his mouth. A tiny finger finds itself jammed in his chest as she advances, each step triggering her light up sneakers in a way that would be comical if she weren’t so terrifying. “You ever think of that? If you don’t fucking fix this, I will. I’ll figure out all this cloning stuff myself, and I’ll bring them back if you won’t. I am not giving up. You aren’t, either. You and I are stuck together until the very end. I will never let you go. I will never let you leave unless and until you fix this! Understood?”
“Perfectly,” he swallows, and dammit if it isn’t the truth. Never in his life—or his death—did he think the sight of a child, poking him and screaming in his face with a wrath to rival his own, would shake him so badly. She would have made a lovely assistant. “Shall we go, then?”
Cassidy glares up at him, her jaw setting before she delivers a swift punch to his stomach. It takes everything in him not to double over in pain, but he can’t hide the hiss of pain and the hand snapping to his stomach in defense. She scowls for good measure before she retreats, looking around the entrance. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here before Michael shows up again.”
“About that,” a squeaky little voice calls from the front of the room. They both turn to see the boy—Gregory—sitting proudly on Freddy’s shoulder’s, arms crossed and the smuggest little smirk on his very punchable face. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Cassidy says, waving. William lowers her hand. “Oh.”
“Father,” Michael says coldly, Freddy’s electric blue eyes now a neon purple. “What the fuck have you done now?”