Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had been a year since he’d left the hospital. A full year since the stitches came out, since the bruises stopped blooming in fresh colours and since he’d walked away from the job he thought would anchor him for a chunk of his life. He hadn’t exactly quit, it was more that his co-worker had chosen to resolve a disagreement with claws instead of words and from there, things spiralled. The company didn’t fire him outright but the message was clear, damaged goods don’t make for good team synergy. Then came the harder part, cutting ties with the people he used to call his closest friends. Not because he wanted to but because it was easier that way. Cleaner. Safer for everyone involved.

At first it was like he lost a massive part of himself but after all the surgeries and the recovery... you’d think it would’ve affected him more. You’d think there’d be bitterness, grief or at least a lingering ache. But there wasn’t, not really. He told himself it was more inconvenient than anything else, like missing a bus or losing your keys. Nothing that couldn’t be worked around. Let the therapist dig into it, he was paying her enough for that after all. He’d perfected the art of detachment, like flicking a switch. Sometimes he thought he’d done it so well that he couldn’t remember what genuine connection even felt like.

Currently, he was driving down what might very well be the dustiest road on earth, the kind that rattled your bones and made you feel like your teeth were trying to escape your skull. Each bump in the dirt seemed to hum through the metal buried deep in his ribs, a not-so-gentle reminder of what he’d survived and what he couldn’t quite leave behind. He could’ve flown sure. A normal person would have booked a ticket, suffered through airplane coffee and recycled cabin air. But normal people didn’t set off airport security six times before even making it to the gate. His ribs were basically a walking red flag to TSA. He could still picture the looks, the pat-downs, the cold, sterile rooms where he had to explain again and again why half his skeleton lit up under a scanner. His face scrunched involuntarily at the memory. Just thinking about it made his shoulders tighten and his foot press a little harder on the gas.

Out here, on the open road there were no alarms, no sterile rooms, no one judging the way he moved or how long it took him to pull himself out of a car. The road didn’t ask questions. It didn’t care how many times he’d fucked up or how many people he’d ghosted. It just unspooled endlessly in front of him, promising some kind of forward momentum even if he had no idea where it was taking him. There were no rules out here, no mandatory meetings, no group dinners with forced laughter or familiar faces that twisted with pity when they looked at his hands. Metal plating embedded into the dorsal side of his hands with heavy scars climbing up his wrists and fingers. 

Sometimes, when the sun hit right and the music in the car wasn’t too loud, he'd let himself remember the good times. The small ones like band practice in his friend's basement, greasy late-night diner runs, laughter so real it made his stomach hurt. But those memories were slippery because if he held onto them too long, they’d always sour. They reminded him of what he’d lost. Of how he couldn’t play his bass anymore without strapping his mangled left hand into a custom glove that looked more like a medical brace than an instrument of art. His fingers once nimble and precise were now clumsy strangers, more decoration than utility. It had taken months just to regain enough grip strength to hold a steering wheel. Bass strings? That was another mountain entirely.

Fun things like that.

He needed new friends too, though that word had started to feel foreign in his mouth. The ones he’d met in his last town barely qualified. They were more like placeholders, people he talked to so he didn’t lose the ability to speak entirely. Conversations with them were about as meaningful as the arguments he had with shampoo bottles in the shower. Momentary distractions. Background noise. They served a purpose, but only for a little while, like painkillers that stopped working after a few hours. Eventually, he’d realized it wasn’t fair to them or to himself. It wasn’t healthy to keep treating people like paper towels, to use them up and toss them away before they got too close. He knew that. Or at least... he was starting to. But knowing a thing and changing it were two very different beasts.

Jeremy’s uncle lived in the city and had offered him a place to stay, somewhere safe, quiet and off the radar while he figured out what came next. The man wasn’t clueless he understood Jeremy was still drifting, weighed down by a loss of purpose after the incident. He didn’t ask for details and just nodded like he’d seen this kind of fallout before. He probably had. The guy had worn the suit too, back in the day. Probably still had it, collecting dust in a closet or boxed up in the garage. The company didn’t care much for the older models anymore, too much bad press and too many accidents. When the Glamrocks came out the entire approach changed. These new suits were top-tier Springlock tech, full-body protection, moisture-resistant metals and advanced safety systems that actually worked. You could get hit by a car in one of those things and still have time to eject before the endoskeleton snapped into place. A far cry from the original designs.

The old suits? Completely unforgiving. Twist the wrong way and SNAP! you’d meet God while dressed like a knockoff furry. No buffer. No forgiveness. One mistake and the mechanism would clamp shut like a bear trap, crushing bones and nerves in seconds. How any of the early performers made it out intact was a miracle. What baffled Jeremy most was how many of the older actors still kept their suits, his uncle included. Maybe it was nostalgia. Maybe obsession. Some of them had practically sold their souls to wear those characters to be those characters. After all those years maybe they didn’t know who they were without the mask. It didn’t help that the original creator, aka the twisted genius or paranoid lunatic, take your pick, had baked in a legal clause allowing performers to keep their suits if the company ever went under or investigations got too close. A little escape hatch. Just in case. The contract was airtight, almost like the man knew what he was creating was dangerous. Like he planned for it to fall apart and made sure the worst pieces would stay with the people who wore them.

After a few gruelling hours, he finally escaped the stifling oven that was his car. The air inside had turned thick and oppressive, the kind that clung to skin and soured tempers. He really needed to get the A/C fixed before summer hit full force, any more of this nonstop driving and he’d end up slow-roasted in his seat. Adding to his growing list of mechanical woes, the battered road rattled the rusty springs hard enough to jolt his spine, each jounce setting off a chorus of aches in muscles that hadn't been right for months. He’d pulled into the cracked lot of a small convenience store on the edge of Hurricane, Utah, a sun-baked outpost that looked as tired as he felt. While the engine ticked and cooled, he took a slow walk around the Cadillac, a 1979 Fleetwood Brougham dressed in a striking, if slightly faded, purple paint job. A beautiful beast even now. He’d picked it up dirt cheap from old man Sam, the guy who used to play Spring Bonnie in the past Diner location before rehab and a rough fall from grace.

Sam had been clean for a while now, but the whispers never quite stopped. Everyone still talked about how that bastard Afton had gotten him hooked on something nasty back in the '80s, a poison so dark it left scars deeper than the body could show. Sam was a better man since getting help but the shadow of those years lingered. Being linked to fucked-up murders wasn’t exactly a good look, no matter how far he'd come. Still, Jeremy saw past the rumours. He knew Sam was more than his past mistakes and it was that quiet kindness, something rare and real that got Jeremy his first temporary home after he was discharged.

The diner brothers understood pain because they’d carried it too, in their bones and blood. From the moment Jeremy arrived, broken and fragile from the damage springlock suits had inflicted, Fred and Sam didn’t flinch. They looked him in the eye, the way people who’ve stared down the abyss tend to do and something unspoken passed between them. Fred was the elder of the two, his face lined with the kind of scars only time and trauma could carve. His voice was rough but steady when he recounted the old days, telling Jeremy about how his jaw had been torn off during one of those infamous springlock failures.

“The owners didn’t care,” Fred had said bitterly once, “as long as the characters looked lifelike, it didn’t matter if the actors ended up in the hospital or worse.” That grim history was a constant shadow, a reminder of how little they’d been valued beyond their roles as walking costumes.

But it was more than just stories and sympathy. They took Jeremy in like family and they understood what it meant to wake up every day with pain that didn’t fade, physical, emotional. Their shared knowledge of springlock injuries wasn’t just clinical, they knew the fear of feeling your own body betray you, the terror of reliving trauma in every unexpected snap or click. Neither judged Jeremy for his pain, their home was a refuge built on understanding rather than pity. Meals were shared quietly, sometimes littered with occasional chatter, but always sincerely. When Jeremy couldn’t find the strength to move, Fred or Sam would sit with him, their presence steady and unwavering. There were nights when the nightmares clawed at Jeremy’s mind, and Fred would gently place a large hand on his shoulder, grounding him with simple human contact. No grand speeches, no forced encouragement, just steady, patient care.

Despite the grisly tales from the sixty-something actors who’d lived through the worst of those brutal years, the place felt like home. It was a space where Jeremy could breathe, where the weight of his new reality didn’t have to crush him all at once. The brothers didn’t rush him. They let him find his footing in his own time, offering support without strings. Fred and Sam were retired, living in a quiet peace that few believed possible. Rumours still floated around about Fred being a “nightmare” back in the day, someone fierce, relentless and maybe even terrifying. But time had softened him. The edges worn down by age and the steady rhythm of simpler days. He smiled more now, his gruffness softened into something almost tender. Together they gave Jeremy something priceless, a sense of belonging. They saw him not as a broken headline or a tragic case, but as a man fighting to reclaim his life step by painful step. In their quiet companionship, Jeremy found a fragile kind of strength, the kind that comes from being truly seen and accepted. But he couldn't stay forever, he had to keep moving but not before Sam made sure he had a way to leave safely. 

And thus, the reliable purple Cadillac that loved to bake him in the hot sun. Jeremy had started calling it the “oven on wheels,” but he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of it. The leather seats stuck to his thighs if he wasn’t careful, and the AC barely coughed out anything colder than a sigh, but it was his. Sort of. Sam said he could use it indefinitely, which was just old-man code for "take care of it better than I did." ...What was he doing again? The store. He was parked outside the store, standing for God knows how long in that heat. All he’d meant to do was run in, grab a cold drink, preferably something from the back of the fridge where it hadn’t been fondled by ten sweaty hands and leave. In and out. Quick. Efficient. That was the plan. But as soon as he stepped through those motion-sensor doors and the cold, crisp slap of air conditioning hit the sweat-slicked back of his neck his entire brain melted. He stopped moving and closed his eyes for just a second, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. The chill raced across his spine like a wave, turning sticky heat into goose-bumps. The humming buzz of the fluorescent lights above, the soft murmur of piped-in pop music, cheap, familiar and oddly comforting. He decided to linger. Just for a bit. Just until it became too much.

His legs carried him down the aisle with the freezers on instinct. He adjusted the collar of his faded teal bowling shirt, running his fingers across the worn stitching on the embroidered name patch- “Ricky,” even though his name was Jeremy. He never bothered to change it. The shirt was part of a thrift store bundle and after everything he’d been through, something as small as an identity mismatch on his clothes felt... fitting. He caught his reflection in the glass doors as he passed. Not bad. Eyeliner: intact. Sharp, even. Eyes less tired than usual, a small win. Teeth still white, even with the gap- his dad always said it added character. His shirt was fixed, tucked in just enough to look presentable, untucked enough to look casual. The black trousers were his go-to. They worked with anything, and they held up well after dozens of reluctant laundromat visits. He tugged on the hem, straightening them out a bit.

Hair though? His hair refused to behave. No matter how much he tried to slick it back or style it into something purposeful, it always flopped forward in that one rebellious lock that made him look like a dramatic teenager trying too hard. He sighed. A small part of him appreciated the chaos of it, though. He was allowed some weirdness, wasn’t he? Still, the idea of applying for a job here made his skin itch. The second-hand polos, the forced smiles, the soul-eating obligation to please every over-caffeinated Karen who threatened to call corporate over coupon discrepancies. Not again. Not for minimum wage and a headset that beeped every five minutes. He wasn't strong enough to fake that kind of cheer anymore.

Right. What was he here for?

A drink.

Right, a drink.

Walking past the ice creams and frozen dinners, Jeremy tried to ignore the mechanical hum of the freezers that reminded him too much of the sound those suits used to make, metal whining, locks shifting, the dull grind that still haunted the back of his skull. The frosted glass doors gleamed under the artificial lights, each one catching a ghostly version of his reflection as he passed. It felt like there were too many of him in this aisle each reflection slightly warped, slightly wrong. He turned the corner and found the drinks shelf. Relief didn’t last long. Much to Jeremy’s horror, the entire section was stocked to the brim with that cursed liquid nicotine of nostalgia, Fizzy Faz. Every row, every shelf glowed like a neon shrine to his personal hell. The bottles gleamed in sickly cheerfulness under the lights, bright reds and electric oranges shouting FUN! FAMILY! FIZZY! at him like a corporate mantra and there it was, that mascot. The one with the painted-on smile and the lifeless, cartoon eyes. That cheerful orange face with electric blue markings that once seemed harmless, even friendly, but now sent a chill crawling down his spine every time he saw it.

He froze, the breath catching in his throat.
No. He couldn’t think about him. Not here. Not now.

That line of thought was a steep cliff, one glance over the edge and he’d tumble right down it. Thinking about him made the “normal life” thing impossible. Pretending to be fine, pretending that all of it was over? it all crumbled the second those memories surfaced. Leaving him behind had shattered something inside Jeremy that he still couldn’t name. It wasn’t just loss, it was guilt stitched together with fear and love and the aching absence of closure. Did he really have to skip the whole damn continent just to outrun the ghosts in his head? Maybe. He’d heard whispers that the UK didn’t have much Fazbear stuff, that the company never really sank its claws into Europe the way it did the States. Free healthcare too apparently. A dark joke crossed his mind, maybe he could finally get proper therapy that didn’t cost a month’s rent. The idea felt ridiculous and a little tempting all at once but before he could spiral any further down that train of thought, a word cut through the white noise of humming refrigerators and the pop music droning over the speakers.

“-Pizzaplex-”

Jeremy stopped dead. The word was enough to freeze him where he stood, fingers tightening on the edge of his belt until his knuckles turned white. Seriously? He’d only been out of his car for three minutes. Three minutes of pretending he was normal and already the universe decided to twist the knife. It had become horribly embarrassing how a single mention of the Pizzaplex could send him into a full-body shutdown. Once upon a time, he could have heard that word and felt... what? Pride? Nostalgia? Something complicated, maybe even warmth. Now it only brought nausea.

He thought of last week, being laughed out of an arcade because a cheap knockoff Monty plush had triggered a panic attack so bad he couldn’t breathe. His half-brother had to drive him home while he sat in the passenger seat, hands trembling, trying to explain between gasps that it wasn’t just a toy. How do you tell someone that a bit of fabric and stuffing can smell like blood and static? That was the real problem, seeing Fazbear stuff outside... out in the open where it didn’t belong.
When he was on the property it was different, he could compartmentalize. He could brace himself and make peace with the ghosts because he expected them there. But out here? When they crept into grocery aisles and children’s backpacks, when they smiled from soda bottles and cereal boxes, it felt like the company was following him, like it still had eyes.

If he was only ever on high alert, he could manage. Keep the fear contained, sharpened into something useful. But when the hours stretched on when he stayed wired, tense, waiting for something that never came, it wore him down. Made him twitchy. Paranoid. He swallowed hard and tried to breathe through it. Despite the good reason to turn and walk out right then, a morbid curiosity rooted him in place. His brain whispered that he should not get involved, that should just grab some other drink and leave. But the other part, the one that couldn’t look away from a slow-motion car crash urged him forward. He moved a few cautious steps down the drinks aisle, heart hammering, half-convinced that if he looked up, he’d see a pair of too-familiar eyes staring back from between the shelves. Maybe he was just on the edge of some harmless gossip. Or maybe the past wasn’t quite done haunting him yet.

“Yeah, my brother works as a security guard out there,” one woman chirped brightly, her voice bouncing off the sterile tile floors and too-clean shelves. Jeremy’s ears perked up before his brain could stop them. “He told me there’ve been signs of a child after hours, which is freaking out the staff!”

The sentence hit Jeremy like a slap. He didn’t even see which woman had said it, just heard her somewhere near the corner of the aisle, hidden behind stacks of promo boxes and endcap displays. Her tone was casual gossip-laced and amused. It made his skin crawl.

“Tammy, that’s so BS,” came the immediate snapback, sharper and more grounded, probably the friend. “Your brother’s crazy if he thinks some kid is just hanging out after hours with those creepy robots running around all the time.”

Her words cut through the air like a wire. Creepy robots. After hours. Child. Each word felt like a stone added to the weight pressing against Jeremy’s chest. He didn’t need to see them to picture them, probably two women in their early twenties, half-distracted by their phones, carts half-filled with snacks and overpriced cereal, talking like the Pizzaplex was just another strange rumour mill. A curiosity. A ghost story to laugh about while grabbing discount wine and frozen pizza. The rude friend wasn’t wrong, though, not entirely. The actors wouldn’t just let a child wander around after hours. They couldn’t. That would be an instant way to lose a job and more than that, it’d be dangerous. A kid unsupervised in that place after dark? That was a death sentence. Or worse.

Even now, Jeremy’s mind tried to shut the thought down before it bloomed. He gritted his teeth and took a slow, careful breath through his nose, focusing on the way the cold air from the open drink cooler brushed his skin. Focus. Ground. Get out. But his legs didn’t move. Why was he still standing here? Ugh. He could not let himself get pulled into this mess again. Not now. Not ever.

Not his circus, not his monkeys.

That had become something of a mantra lately, half a joke, half a prayer. He wasn’t their 'handler' anymore. He wasn’t the clean-up crew. He didn’t owe that company a single drop of sweat or blood, not after everything it had taken from him. Stolen from him. Fazbear’s shitty reputation was finally behind him, even if the name still popped up everywhere like a virus with too many strains to contain. Their questionable business practices were practically urban legend status now, cursed animatronics, missing persons, fire after fire always “under investigation.” and yet the stores were still stocked with Fazbear merchandise. The kids still wore their Freddy shirts. The parents still paid to dump their children into that manufactured funhouse every weekend.

He tightened his grip on the drink in his hand, something generic, something blessedly unbranded and forced his eyes to focus on the label. The cold plastic helped anchor him. Just fizzy water. No bear, no bunny, no fucking crocodile. Safe and still, a sick curiosity gnawed at him. What if it was true? What if someone was seeing signs of a kid? What if someone else was trapped in that place or worse, lured in? He shook the thought from his head like a dog flinging off water. That wasn’t his responsibility anymore. He’d pulled himself out of that nightmare, piece by broken piece. He’d done the work. Gotten help. Survived. He didn’t have to go back. He didn’t have to care. But even as he told himself that, his heart beat just a little faster. Because deep down, he knew that caring was exactly what had always gotten him into trouble.

“He hasn’t seen the kid for a while, though. Who knows? Maybe it was a ghost~”

The first woman’s voice lifted playfully at the end, teasing and conspiratorial, like it was a game or some harmless urban legend to pass the time while choosing between soft drinks and overpriced seltzers. Jeremy felt his stomach twist. His fingers tightened around the cold bottle in his hand as the words sank in. A ghost. Cute. Real cute. He was just thankful they couldn’t see him from where he stood, hidden behind a rack of energy drinks and promotional nonsense. Because if they had seen him, they would’ve witnessed something far less amusing—his face draining of colour, pupils narrowing, mouth going dry. His body reacting before his brain could even piece the rest together. Oh God. If there really had been a kid and now the kid wasn’t being seen anymore? That only meant one of two things.

Option one: the kid was dead.
Option two: the kid had gotten the hell out of there before something could make them dead.

Neither thought brought comfort. But the first possibility made Jeremy’s throat close up. He stared down at the drink in his hands, no longer cold or at least he couldn’t feel it anymore. His skin had gone numb. His thoughts were crashing over one another like waves during a storm surge, dragging him under before he could breathe. If a child really went missing inside the Pizzaplex- again, someone would have to take the blame. A staff member. An actor. A night guard, maybe. Or...

No.

No. No, no, no, don’t go there.

He clenched his jaw and tried to shake the thought loose, but it rooted itself firmly in the pit of his gut. What if it was Frederick? Or Susie? What if they were still active, still involved in that nightmare of a building? What if they’d seen something? Done something? Were made to do something? He could feel his heart sinking like a stone at the idea. They weren’t monsters. None of them were. They were just... very dedicated, twisted by corporate greed, unspeakable mistakes and whatever the hell his accident might have done to them. What had been done through him. The thought of Frederick, tall and polite with that weirdly old-fashioned voice, being anywhere near a missing child made Jeremy nauseous. Susie, God, sweet Susie, with her ribbons and her nervous laugh, she didn’t deserve to be looped into this kind of trauma and Roxanne was fierce but she was a very broken person under that suit, she’d been trying so hard to keep her head on straight. He could still remember her pacing, pacing, pacing like she was trying to wear a groove into the floor. Trying to stay human after she suffered a wave of suit psychosis after a 14 hour day.

If it was Monty, though... Jeremy’s expression soured for a moment. If he had something to do with this, then maybe it was the universe correcting a mistake. Let the gator reap what he’d sown. Jeremy had tried, back then, to believe that Monty was just another victim. But the way he’d smiled sometimes, that smile it made it hard to believe there wasn’t something deeper, darker swimming beneath those flickering lenses. Still, none of this helped. None of it changed the fact that a child might be gone. Again. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to break the loop.

He’s not there anymore.
It’s not his job.
Not his responsibility.

He had left that place behind. He’d dragged himself out of that hellhole, one trembling step at a time. He was supposed to be free yet here he was, frozen in a grocery store aisle, spiralling again. Haunted by second-hand gossip and the sudden shock of Fazbear products.

"Focus, Jeremy." He muttered before taking a breath. Then another.

He just needed to buy a drink.
Get to the car.
Go to Uncle Benjamin’s.

One step at a time. Just keep moving. Don’t think. Just move. If he let himself think he might start wondering how many more kids were still slipping through the cracks. How many ghosts the company was hiding this time and tonight? Yeah. He probably wasn’t going to sleep well.

Jeremy stormed past the women and went straight to the fridge with the chilled drinks. His vision tunneled, the edges of the fluorescent-lit store blurring into a haze. He didn’t care what he grabbed—three bottles, whatever they were, clutched tightly in his trembling hands as he beelined to the self-checkout. His pulse was hammering in his ears now, fast and erratic, drowning out the gentle, robotic beeps of other scanners and the low murmur of idle conversations. His palms were slick with sweat, and every breath came shallow, rapid, like he’d just sprinted across a battlefield.

He couldn’t afford another episode. Not here. Not now.

Thankfully, the self-checkout blessed him with rare mercy. No blinking red light, no condescending voice announcing an “unexpected item,” no need for a cashier’s intervention. Just a clean, robotic process. Beep. Swipe. Beep. Swipe. Done.

He left quickly, too quickly—nearly bumping into someone on the way out. He didn’t say sorry. He couldn't form the word.

The sunlight outside should have calmed him, but it didn’t. The world beyond the automatic doors suddenly felt overwhelming—every color too bright, every sound too sharp. People were everywhere, it seemed, and somehow they all had their eyes on him. Watching. Judging. Smiling too wide. Moving too slow.

He looked down at the bottles in his arms—and froze.

They weren’t bottles anymore.

At least, not exactly.

What he saw instead made his heart lurch violently against his ribs. His hands—his hands were not his own. His pale, scarred skin was gone, replaced with a glossy, electric-blue hue that shimmered unnaturally in the sunlight. Thick, black spikes jutted from bracelets that circled each wrist and his fingers... no, his paws were encased in tight, fingerless gloves, dark blue in colour and they felt too real. 

It wasn’t just his hands.

For a terrifying second, he wasn’t standing outside a grocery store at all.

He was somewhere else, somewhere louder, darker and chaotic. Shouts echoed in his ears, the sound of bellowing below him as he stood on a shaky floor. A neon sky pulsed overhead like a living heartbeat. The bottles in his arms had become strange, metallic canisters with plastic balls inside, as if he was in the middle of restocking something. He heard a scream... w-was it his own or someone else's? he couldn't tell. The illusion shattered when a car horn blared nearby. Just like that, the hallucination flickered, stuttered and faded like static from a broken screen. He blinked rapidly, heart still racing and saw the familiar labels of the drinks return. His skin was his again, pale, scarred, human. The bracelets were gone. No gloves. No blue.

He nearly dropped everything as he staggered to his car, fumbled the keys and practically ripped the door open before collapsing inside. He slammed it shut and let the muffled silence of the cabin wrap around him. Only then did he set the bottles on the passenger seat, where they rolled gently against each other, back to being nothing more than overpriced drinks. His hands were still shaking.

Breath in

Hold

Breath out 

Then he started counting backward from ten, trying to suppress the rising tide of panic. Ten. Nine. Eight... But the numbers slid around in his mind, refusing to stay in place. So instead, he gripped the steering wheel hard. The smooth, cool texture grounded him, gave him something real to hold onto. He pressed his forehead to it, let his breath fog up the finish. He didn’t know what the hell that had been. But it wasn’t the first time.

Breath in

Hold

Breath out 

Okay, he should be fine, right? Now that the worst of the panic had passed, he could at least pretend to be normal again. Time to start the last leg of the journey before the sky dimmed too far and made everything feel even more haunted than it already did.

He opened his eyes and stared at the store. Just a store. Nothing special. The familiar grounding trick—three deep breaths, then name five things he could see, four he could touch, three he could hear… whatever—was starting to work faster. That was something. A win, maybe.

But even as his chest stopped fluttering and his limbs uncoiled from the fight-or-flight lock, the root of the problem throbbed beneath it all. That same rot, always spreading under the surface: this creeping, splintered unease every time anything Fazbear came up. His heart didn’t race anymore—at least not always—but his brain still jumped straight into war mode, cycling through memories and made-up threats and half-lost images until he forgot what was real.

The hallucination had been a new twist. Sitting there, sweating and hyperventilating, seeing himself in the old security suit again? Feeling the weight of it, the heat, the smell of grease and plastic fur? That wasn’t just anxiety. That was something else.

He’d developed these strange rituals over the years, little ticks that had gone from quirky to concerning. Tapping twice on door handles before opening them. Counting light flickers. Listening to old Pizzaplex background loops on low volume while he slept, like white noise—but worse. Stuff that made other people squint at him, but he couldn't stop. He told himself it helped, and honestly, sometimes it did.

And then there were the moments like the one at the arcade. When his cousin said he’d gone “Glamrock” again—acting all peppy and smooth, like a face-swapped animatronic parody of himself. It was like watching his own body from a few steps back. Like something else was wearing him, just trying to pass as normal until the world stopped asking questions.

Maybe it was some mental thing. Something his brain cooked up to patch over the rips in his mind. A synthetic personality, complete with fake smiles and a bouncy voice, designed to shove all the fear into the background. A creepy coping mechanism disguised as charisma.

His dad never had the patience for any of it. Said Jeremy was too "dramatic," that he was just digging a hole in his own head—a phrase Jeremy used to think meant nothing but now stung with hindsight. When he turned eighteen, Toby wasted no time. College of Jeremy’s choice, all paid for in full. New phone. New laptop. A used car parked out front with a bow like it was some generous send-off. But all of it came with a single condition:

"Don’t come back here."

No calls. No visits. No chance to fail in front of him. Not even when Jeremy dropped out. Not even when he took the job at the Pizzaplex and stopped pretending he had a five-year plan. The silence was complete, final. And at the time, it felt cruel. It felt like being exiled for the crime of not holding it together.

Jeremy thought his father just didn’t want a son who struggled. Who cracked under pressure. Who couldn’t sleep without checking the locks four times. It wasn’t until years later, after a visit with an old family acquaintance—someone who used to talk about Toby in past tense even though he wasn’t dead—that Jeremy began to understand.

Toby didn’t walk away out of spite. He walked away because he was afraid Jeremy would find out the truth.

Not just that he was broken, but how badly. The memory problems. The violent mood swings. The glassy look in his eyes during conversation. The carefully avoided questions. There was brain damage—real, diagnosed, and never spoken of again after the first time. From an accident no one wanted to talk about. Something Fazbear-adjacent, Jeremy suspected, though no one ever said it outright. Whatever happened, it rewired Toby permanently. Left him living half in the present and half in a looping reel of the past.

Jeremy hadn’t realized, back then, that his father couldn’t even live alone. That he forgot things—big things. Names. Dates. Sometimes where he was. That there were post-its on every wall of the house after he left, just to remind Toby who he was without his son around to hold the pieces together. But that’s the thing, Toby didn’t want Jeremy to be his caretaker. He didn’t want his son to grow up watching him dissolve one day and forget what happened the next. He didn’t want Jeremy to notice how often he repeated himself, how long he could stare at the microwave and forget what it was. He didn’t want his condition to become a mirror Jeremy couldn’t look away from.

So he sent him away. Hard and fast. Made himself the villain so Jeremy wouldn’t feel guilty leaving. So Jeremy could move on, even if it meant hating him for a while or even forever. He cut his son off to keep him from getting stuck. Maybe it worked. Maybe Jeremy did get free but here he was anyway, stuck in the same mental loops. Hiding symptoms with jokes. Writing off panic attacks as “just being weird again.” Sitting in a car with cold bottles sweating onto the leather seats, asking himself if he was already halfway to being the next unfortunate soul who lost himself to a bunny suit. Jeremy found out through an old friend of the family, Finn, someone who still talked like Toby wasn’t the ghost he’d become. The truth came out in a passing comment, something about “y'dad not wanting you t'see too much.” And then it clicked.

It was... hard to learn his dad was a man who barely functioned. Who couldn’t live alone without forgetting to eat, who slept with the TV on just to drown out the thoughts. Who cracked under pressure and stitched himself back together with long walks in the dark and silence. So he let Jeremy believe he was being abandoned. That it was his fault. That he wasn't good enough, strong enough, normal enough. He didn’t want his son to watch him rot and think it was destiny. So he cut the cord and walked away. Not because he didn’t care but because he cared too much. It didn’t make the silence any easier. But it did make it make sense

If Toby could see him now... maybe he'd say something like "I didn’t raise his son to be another victim" Maybe his dad was right about this job, yet now he'd give nothing more then to see the man again and just... try to fix things.

Chapter Text

Benjamin p.o.v. 

Benjamin Bennett was the original Bonnie, the mystery man with purple hair that faded into silver too early and those unmistakable red eyes that people used to say glowed under stage lights. Back then, he liked the attention. Fed off it even. He had a mouth that didn’t know fear and a sharp tongue that left managers sweating and co-workers crying from laughter. He was the only man who would stand toe-to-toe with Freddy Fazbear himself, Gabriel, when the suits came off and call him a corporate mascot with a god complex and somehow, they made it work.

The rabbit-and-bear act had chemistry. The kind people remembered, even now. He and Gabe used to be thick as thieves, always on the same wavelength. Trouble found them, sure but they invited it. Every night they’d close up shop, throw off the fur and foam and hit the roof with half a pack of smokes and stories they weren’t brave enough to tell anyone else. But that was all before life started sticking its hands into the cracks. Gabriel became a dad and something changed. His eyes softened and his temper cooled. He started noticing things and paying attention. How unsafe the suits were. How weird the rules had gotten. The accidents no one ever talked about. He started asking questions. The wrong ones. Stopped laughing when the Fazbear higher-ups made their usual jokes about "occupational hazards."

Benji didn’t blame him. He just missed the old days. Now, they were weekend friends. Pleasant. Surface-level. Laughing with the others around greasy diner tables in Hurricane, sipping lukewarm coffee and swapping stories that ended before the real parts started. Gabriel always gave him that look, half worry, half guilt but never said what he wanted to say. None of them did. Benji could feel the weight of it hanging in the air every time he opened his mouth. Don’t let him spiral. Don’t bring up the suits. Don’t say the word Fazbear.

It was exhausting being handled like glass. He didn’t mean to become this person. Didn’t plan to slide down into paranoia. It just… happened. Slowly, then all at once. When they all got laid off, everyone took their own paths. Some bounced back. Some moved on. Benji sank. No more insurance. No more prescriptions and the therapy? Useless. Empty words that meant nothing when the nightmares still came and he still woke up convinced there was something in the hallway that didn't want him to leave.

It wasn’t dramatic. It was survival.

So he stayed in. Locked up tight. Triple-locked doors, blackout curtains, and a security system wired so tight it scared delivery guys. He kept a big dog, too, his precious Sparky a lumbering mix who growled at shadows but licked Benji’s hands when they shook too much. He trusted her more than people most days. Dogs didn’t lie. Dogs didn’t wear suits and pretend to be your friend before reporting you to management. Grace and Finn were still in his corner at least. Even when he started twitching at every unfamiliar car on the street. Even when his hands shook during dinner. Grace was the only one who knew about the worst of it like the recordings, the way he sometimes whispered to the cameras just in case someone was watching. She never called him crazy. Just brought him tea, rubbed Sparky's ears and stayed long enough for him to remember how to breathe.

But still... it was lonely.

Which is why the idea of Jeremy coming back set off something half-dead inside Benji’s chest. Hope, maybe. Or guilt. Or both. He hadn’t seen his nephew in too long. The last time, Jeremy was all shaky smiles and anxious hands, barely out of the Pizzaplex and already looking like he’d aged ten years. They didn’t talk about what happened. Just sat on the porch and watched Sparky chase flies. But Benji saw it, the tremor in his laugh. The way he scanned the yard like he expected to see something in the trees.

Fazbear didn’t let people go. Not really. It just found quieter ways to haunt them. Still, having Jeremy nearby again might help. Might drag Benji out of this rut if only a little. He could teach him how to set up better security. Take him to the weekend meetups, try to make it feel normal. Maybe even get him to trust Sparky, dogs were good therapy. More than pills, at least. He knew it wasn’t fair, pinning that kind of hope on someone who was probably just as cracked and fraying as he was. But hell maybe they could be broken together. Maybe that was enough. Or maybe he’d just scare Jeremy off again.

That reminds him... Toby said that Jeremy had been in an accident, but he had been told to keep it under wraps. It was strange. He saw on TV that Glamrock Bonnie had been replaced by Montgomery Gator last year but Benji put it down to Jeremy getting tired of the kids. Jeremy has a dry sense of humour and is uncomfortable with children getting close to him, even when he's in the suit. In fact, Benji saw it himself when he visited his nephew on his first day! As funny as it was to see a bright blue bunny dancing around the kids in an attempt to escape, he knew that he wouldn't be able to continue in the long term if he couldn't get over it. Benji even remembers from back in the day when a child ripped his tail off the original Bonnie suit, yanking a few wires clean out as well. It happened so many times that he just left the tail off to prevent a child from setting off a lock or pulling at his clothes underneath. Seeing Jeremy pull up in that damn purple car was enough to ground Benji's mind, and unlocking all seven contraptions on his front door to let the blue-haired scamp in made his day! Even Sparky got up off her old bed to greet the new arrival... poor girl, her hips are starting to get to her. 

Jeremy p.o.v.

Seeing his uncle was a breath of fresh air—if that air came from an old, dusty vent and still carried the faint smell of worn carpet and nostalgia. Still, it was comforting. Familiar. Jeremy hadn't realized how tightly his chest had been wound until the front door creaked open and Benji stood there, squinting into the sunlight like it offended him.

Benji was in his fifties now, and it showed, but not in the usual way. Agoraphobia had kept him out of the sun for so long his skin had gone pale and thin, almost paper-like—like someone had printed a person on aging receipt paper. But despite that, the man somehow still looked good. His face hadn’t collapsed in the way Jeremy’s dad’s had—no sunken features, no deep stress lines or bloated puffiness from alcohol and bitterness. If anything, Benji looked preserved. Like time had slowed down just enough to let him exist in a weird limbo of eternal late-30s. Unsettling, but kind of impressive.

It was funny, in a dark way. Jeremy’s dad had played Toy Bonnie, sleek, plastic, glittering in the spotlight. And his eventual spiral into midlife irrelevance had been spectacular. Jeremy had once called it a “twink death” during a very inappropriate therapy session and he stood by that. Toby had aged like milk in a microwave, fast, loud and a little bit sour. Benji, on the other hand, had barely changed. His posture was stiffer, sure. Eyes a lot more tired but that sharp, snide smirk still lurked just beneath the surface. It was like seeing Bonnie himself in retirement, rabbit ears traded for a hoodie and slippers, still wired for fight-or-flight.

The house looked the same as always. Maybe even exactly the same. Jeremy wasn’t sure if Benji had redecorated in the last fifteen years or just never moved anything since 2010. In the corner of the room sat a dusty pile of Bonnie-themed merchandise, quietly judging the rest of the living space. Old lunchboxes, keychains, and those oversized novelty cups from the 1990's birthday bundle set. A massive Bonnie plush toy, too big for any reasonable room, poor thing was half-crushed between the sofa and the wall, its ears bent at awkward angles like they were trying to escape. Above it, the posters hung in a near-religious display. One showed the original Bonnie, Chica, and Freddy from the earliest days, when everything still had a vaguely gritty, animatronic charm. Right next to it, a second poster from the mid-reboot era, where the characters had been redesigned to be more “family-friendly” which really just meant brighter colours, bigger eyes and less sharp edges. It was like a shrine to a franchise that wouldn’t die, built by a man who couldn’t forget. Benji hadn’t said anything yet. Just looked at him for a long moment. Like he was taking inventory. Making sure Jeremy hadn’t brought the outside world with him.

Jeremy cleared his throat and stepped inside. “Still got the plush, huh?” he said, nodding toward the Bonnie crammed behind the couch.

Benji snorted. “You try throwing that thing out. It screams.”

Apparently, his uncle Benji had always insisted that Bonnie looked bored in the posters. Not scary. Not excited. Just over it. That deadpan expression in the old promotional artwork? All Benji. He’d said it was more “punk rock” that way, like Bonnie was in on the joke and didn’t care if the audience got it or not. Jeremy used to laugh at that. Now, standing in front of the posters again, he wondered if that look was less of a performance and more of a self-portrait.

Above the fireplace hung an old bass, Bonnie’s bass. Real wood, chipped paint and strings that hadn’t been changed in at least a decade. It wasn’t just a prop. Benji used to play, used to lose himself in those chords during off-hours, giving impromptu solos while half-dressed animatronics clapped along in the breakroom. But those days were long behind him. The way his fingers curled now, stiff and uncooperative, said everything. Carpal tunnel. A cursed side effect of strapping a heavy instrument to your chest while sealed inside a foam suit for hours at a time. Common among the old performers. Even the “lucky” ones. Jeremy reached out and gently brushed the neck of the bass, like it might respond. The strings gave a tired hum, barely audible. Maybe... maybe he could play a little. Every now and then. Nothing dramatic, just a few songs, he brought his special glove after all. Something soft. Familiar. It wouldn’t fix anything, but maybe it’d light something up in Benji again. Shake the dust off. Give the room a heartbeat that wasn’t coming from the old fridge compressor.

Sparky’s claws clicked across the hardwood behind him, slow and deliberate. The dog, if you could still call her that, was massive, all thick fur and muscle that had slouched into age. She used to be a bear with a personality to match, charging across the living room like a security system with a tail. Now she moved like she was dragging the weight of the years with her, one laboured step at a time. She gave Jeremy a once-over with those cloudy brown eyes, gave a brief wag of the tail, then huffed and flopped down near the radiator with all the dramatic flair of someone who’d just walked a marathon. Her hips made a soft pop as she settled. Jeremy winced.

“Still kicking, huh?” he muttered gently, crouching to give her a scratch behind the ears. Her tail thumped once in appreciation, slow but steady. Benji claimed she was fine. The vets backed it up. Apparently, she was happy. Healthy even, considering her size and age. Just had a bad hip, nothing to worry about. But watching her move like that, Jeremy couldn’t help feeling the metaphor pressing down on the room. Everything here was old. Stiff. Worn-in and slowing down. The posters. The bass. The dog. Benji. Even himself in a way, young sure, but weathered from the inside out. Like he’d stepped into a house frozen in time and found out he matched the decor a little too well. He stood up slowly, glancing back toward the hall where Benji had disappeared to make tea or coffee or whatever comfort drink he clung to these days.

Jeremy moved through the hallway, low light, quiet air and that old, dull red wallpaper peeling slightly at the corners. The faded pattern looked like something out of a vintage diner '80s for sure. A little tacky, a little warm. The kind of thing that didn’t get replaced because it belonged there, like the house had grown around it. He passed more relics of the era, sun-bleached posters for forgotten movies, mismatched light switches, dusty plastic bead curtains on the laundry room door. It was all miscellaneous and outdated, but comforting in a weird way. Like nothing in this house had ever rushed forward to catch up with the rest of the world and now, neither had he.

The room at the end of the hall was his now. For how long? He didn’t know. “As long as you need,” Benji had said, with a casual wave like that wasn’t the most serious thing anyone had said to him in months.

He pushed open the door.

It was nice, new even. Which stood out like a fresh coat of paint in a museum and in this case, it was. The walls were a soft, calm blue, not that clinical pastel that doctors' offices used. The carpet was plush, clean. The bed looked like it had never been used. Firm mattress, new sheets. There was even a little stack of towels and a water bottle on the nightstand. Benji had tried. Really tried. And it hit Jeremy harder than expected.

But the room still had pieces of the past in it, like ghosts that had been politely asked to stay in the corners. The old wooden dresser, with drawer handles shaped like seashells. The sliding closet doors with mirrors warped slightly with age. And on top of the dresser, the little box TV. The kind with a curved screen and knobs that clicked loud when you turned them. He remembered watching late-night horror flicks on a set just like this when he was a kid, half-hiding behind a blanket like it made a difference. Those old things, they felt right. Solid. Real. Even if the colours were faded and the static buzzed louder than the picture. He didn’t need to explain why he liked them. He just did. And that was enough.

But then his eyes found the poster on the wall.

Glamrock Bonnie. Posed in bright neon blues and pinks, mid-jump with an orange bass and a perfect smile. It was creased at the corners but still bold, still loud. Still him or, at least, the version of him the Pizzaplex wanted to sell. He stared at it for a long time. Of course Benji didn’t mean anything by putting it there. He probably thought it was nostalgic. A nod to his old job. Maybe even a compliment. There was no way his uncle knew what really happened—how Jeremy left, or why. Not really. Not with the airtight, fireproof NDA they'd shoved under his nose while he was still in the hospital. He hadn’t even been fully conscious yet and they were already talking contracts, image rights, recovery clauses.

A fall from the catwalk. Springlock failure. Cracked ribs. Crushed limbs. Concussion. Surgery and silence. Signed, sealed, buried like the metal in his bones.

He blinked, slowly and looked away. The poster could stay. It wasn’t Glamrock Bonnie’s fault after all. He liked playing the character when it was still fun. Before things got weird. Besides he’d never known what happened to the suit after the fall. They never said anything and locked doors before he could even walk again. Sometimes late at night, he wondered if it was still there, somewhere deep under the Pizzaplex. Gathering dust in a service room no one ever entered. Still wearing his scent. Still bent at the legs where it hit the railing. Still waiting for the stage lights. He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled through his nose but another memory crawled through the gaps still fresh from the earlier breakdown. 

There were footsteps.

Heavy ones, stalking.

Echoes off the metal catwalk like a countdown.

The groan of a voice box followed. Warped. Glitching.

A flash of green.

A glint of teeth. 

Then the railing disappeared.

Then the air.

The floor of Gator Golf came screaming up to meet him.

Jeremy just shook his head.

Now wasn’t the time to think about it. Not the fall. Not the screaming metal. Not the fact that, as far as the world was concerned, he didn’t exist anymore.

He was alive, wasn’t he?

Who cares if the staff at the Pizzaplex thought otherwise? Who cares if the character he played—Glamrock Bonnie, version 3.1, subroutine-compliant and child-safe™—was dead and gone? That persona had been put to rest in a memo and scrubbed from the rotation like a bug fix. No announcement. No memorial. Just a quiet erasure. Some poor manager probably sent a mass email: “Bonnie will no longer be performing due to safety protocol adjustments.” And that was that.

But he was still here.

Here with his uncle. In a house that smelled like old tea and dog fur. In a freshly painted room, under a roof that didn’t hum with neon lights or security cams. Sparky was still around, too, old as she was. That dog had seen things. Probably knew more about Fazbear's legacy than most of the regional managers.

This was a fresh start.

A new beginning and if he really needed a chicken, a bear and a canine in his life, well Benji’s friends were only a short walk away. Ten, maybe thirty minutes depending on how cooked his sense of direction was that day. The old crew. Retired actors with pension plans and chronic injuries. Sure they were older. Weathered. Jaded. But still standing. Gabriel was rough around the edges, gruff, a little too serious, probably never learned to smile with his eyes. But he'd been through it. He understood and... offered massive discounts if you wanted to sue Fazbear Entertainment, man barely laughed but he was a little kid when it came to punching a massive company below the belt. Grace? Grace was practically a second mom. The kind who wouldn’t let you leave her house without at least three tupper-ware containers and a hand-knit scarf. She texted in all caps and made weird casseroles and told the truth even when it hurt.

And then there was Finn, laid-back, dry-humoured and completely unbothered by the existential dread everyone else carried. He had that funny accent, some mix of Scottish and pirate, heck he’d agree to just about any plan so long as it wasn’t boring. You needed someone to prank the HOA or fake a wedding? Finn was already halfway through the idea before you finished the sentence. Jeremy should be happy. These were people who got it. Who saw through the corporate gloss and knew exactly what Fazbear Entertainment was and more importantly, what it did to you. That alone should make this place feel like home. Like safety.

So why the hell did the Pizzaplex still have such a hold on him?

Even a year later, the sound of automated greetings still rang in his head sometimes. That chipper “Welcome back, Superstars!” grated against his nerves like a splinter under the skin. He couldn’t see neon colours without flinching and sometimes, in that liminal space between sleep and waking, he’d hear footsteps pacing the hallway outside his bedroom. He told himself it was trauma. A bad pattern burned into his subconscious like screen glare. But deep down he wondered if it was something else. If maybe the Plex had taken more than his time, more than his blood. If maybe it had kept something. Maybe a chat with his uncle would help. Benji knew more than he let on, even if he acted like an old conspiracy nut with a dog for a therapist. After dinner. After he grounded himself.

For now, he pulled out his phone and opened the job search app. That was something he could control. Something practical. Logical. He needed work, something part-time, low stress. No heavy lifting. Nothing that would ping too hard on a background check. Not after that incident. Honestly he wasn’t even sure what the NDA fully covered. There were whole sections he’d signed while still hooked to a morphine drip. He could’ve signed away his spleen for all he knew. Hopefully if anything came up, it would just show "mascot bass player" on his résumé. Maybe he could spin it into something harmless. Entertainer. Youth engagement facilitator. Something that didn’t scream former animatronic survivor. He tapped in his zip code. Typed the words "no nights." Then paused. Added "no costumes."

Better safe than sorry.

“Hey Bonnie, can you sign my kid’s poster?”

“Hey Bonnie, can you teach me how to play bass?”

“Hey Bonnie, can you put the suit on? Some birthday boy wants to see you, even though you’ve just been walking around in the same heavy suit for eight hours straight.”

God. He did not miss those moments. The blur of faces. The crowding. The sticky little fingers tugging at his paws. The managers watching like hawks from behind the security glass, making sure he hit all the right “engagement” markers for the day. Glamrock Bonnie never got to just be. He was always on. Always smiling. Always saying the right lines. “Rock on!” “Heya Hopstar!” “You’re my favourite!”

He wasn’t allowed to sit for too long. Wasn’t allowed to take off the head unless he was in a blackout zone. Wasn’t allowed to even look tired and yet it was so hard to let go. Those moments stuck with him. Not just the bad ones. Not just the falls, or the glitches, or the flickering lights in the back halls. The other moments. The ones where a kid would hug him like they truly believed he was real. When someone would smile with that wide, innocent joy that wasn’t about money or branding. It felt like he’d mattered. Even if it was all scripted.

Now, all that was behind him. Gone. Or maybe just buried.

He blinked down at his phone, thumb dragging listlessly across the job app. Nothing helpful. Nothing inspiring.

Retail clerk. Intern. Warehouse worker. Cab driver.

It was like the app had looked at his resume and gone, “Okay, so... this guy used to be a walking children’s icon in a high-tech nightmare suit. Let’s give him the most emotionally numbing jobs possible.”

Retail was off the table. He couldn’t do fluorescent lights and piped-in music anymore, not without feeling like he was still inside the Plex. Intern? Not unless they were hiring for someone with multiple injuries and a fear of printers. Warehouse? That required lifting and Jeremy had learned the hard way that his shoulder still popped when he reached too far behind his back or the way metal in his hand would struggle to hold a human shape and snap back to Glamrock endo after too much stress.

Which left... cab driver which honestly, it was the only one that made even a shred of sense. Quiet. Isolated. Sit, drive, drop off. No team meetings. No mascots. No “corporate culture.” Just roads and silence, maybe the occasional awkward small talk. That he could handle. He could already picture it, rolling up in the notorious Afton Cadillac like a serial killer, maybe a pine tree air freshener swinging from the mirror. A little sticker that said “Please don’t slam the door.” Late-night drives through Hurricane when the streets were empty and everything felt distant enough to be peaceful.

Still, he hesitated on the “Apply” button. He’d only just arrived. The streets were unfamiliar. He didn’t even know if the local cab companies still used real people or if everything had been eaten by rideshare apps and besides, summer was coming. More people, more events, more seasonal jobs. Once school let out, this town would probably flood with kids again, kids and tourists and all the chaos that came with them. Someone would need help managing it. Staffing booths. Serving snacks. Keeping the crowds moving. Maybe he could find something weird and temporary. Something simple. He didn’t have to decide right now but if it came down to it... yeah. He’d drive.

It was the only thing he still felt good at, being alone in motion. His gaze wandered back to the Glamrock Bonnie poster on the wall. The smile in it was too perfect. Too plastic. It stared just over Jeremy’s head like it was avoiding eye contact. Still performing. He was about to get up, go make himself useful, maybe see if Benji needed help with dinner when a soft knock came at the door. Barely a tap.

“Hey, kid,” came Benji’s voice. Raspy and low, like he hadn’t used it in a while. “Food’s ready.”

Jeremy hesitated. “Coming.”

Benji didn’t say anything else, just shuffled away, the sound of his slippers whispering across the old floorboards. Sparky’s claws clicked faintly behind him, slow and dragging. Probably making her rounds, checking that all the people she loved were still where she left them. Jeremy stood, stretching his back until something popped. The muscles around his shoulder blade still ached when he moved too quickly, oh those lovely souvenirs from the fall. He rolled it out and winced through the sting before it clicked back into place. As he stepped out into the hallway, the smell of roasted vegetables and something starchy, maybe potatoes hit him like a blanket. It was comforting in a way that made his throat tighten.

The house was dimly lit, the wallpaper still the same tired red and the décor slowly growing on him. As he passed the living room, the oversized Bonnie plush caught his eye again, one floppy ear hanging sideways like it had given up trying to stand tall. Benji was already at the kitchen table when Jeremy walked in. Two plates were set. No fanfare. No awkward attempt at a conversation starter. Just food, space and a kind of silent offering that only came from someone who knew how hard it was to ask for help. Sparky lay curled by the fridge, tail thumping once when she saw Jeremy. She didn’t get up. She didn’t have to. That single thump said it all.

Jeremy slid into his seat and gave his uncle a small nod of thanks. “This looks good,” he said quietly.

Benji grunted in response, but Jeremy didn’t miss the way the corner of his mouth twitched upward. It wasn’t much, but it was real. As Jeremy picked up his fork, his phone buzzed against the table. A soft, almost guilty sound. He flipped it over to see it was a notification from the job app.

New opportunity: Children’s Entertainment Assistant 

"Oh come on"

Chapter Text

After a whole week of settling in, Jeremy finally found the motivation to head out and explore the local area. The unpacking was done, the novelty of moving into Uncle Benji’s place had worn off, and a restlessness had begun to itch at the edges of his days. When Uncle Benji casually mentioned there was a bowling alley just ten minutes down the road, Jeremy’s eyes lit up with genuine excitement, like a kid hearing the ice cream truck’s jingle on a hot summer day.

He loved bowling, not just the game but the whole experience. The feel of a heavy, polished ball in his hands and the squeak of rental shoes on worn flooring, the soundscape of strikes and spares echoing through dimly lit lanes. Oh how he missed the wooden lanes with their scuffed gutters and worn-in feel, each one a battleground for endless friendly rivalries and childhood birthday parties. The faint scent of oil still lived in his memory, clinging to the waxed surfaces like ghosts of games past with outdated monitors suspended above each lane, displaying blocky, pixelated animations, little explosions for strikes and cartoon pins doing victory dances for spares. The ball return system was always a bit too loud, groaning and clanking before delivering the next ball with a satisfying ‘thunk’ a sound that somehow belonged in the background like a drumbeat in a favourite song.

There was a rhythm to the place. The constant thunder of balls hurtling down the lanes, the sharp clatter of pins scattering, the occasional frustrated grunt or elated cheer. It was a symphony of chaos and joy that never failed to stir something in him. Around the corner from the lanes there was always a snack bar, greasy pizza under heat lamps, nachos buried in an unnatural shade of orange cheese, soft pretzels that somehow managed to be both overcooked and microwaved, the ever-present pitchers of soda and cheap beer. It was in every way, comfort food for the soul.

But more than the food, the sounds or even the game itself, a classic bowling alley was a time capsule and a place where the clock ticked a little slower, where people from all walks of life came together for a few hours of light-hearted competition and shared laughter. Families, teenagers, retirees, league players, it didn’t matter because everyone belonged. That kind of easy community had become rare in his life and the thought of slipping back into it filled him with a quiet kind of happiness. Truth be told, if his old job had allowed for it he might have left the stage behind for good and taken a job at a place like Bonnie Bowl. Cleaning lanes, handing out shoes, fixing jammed machines it wouldn’t have mattered. There was something deeply appealing about the idea of being a part of that world, however small his role.

It would have been awesome...

The journey there was a nightmare, though. He ended up having to call Finn so that he would have someone with him who wasn't too terrified to leave the house or grumpy to ruin his day out. Finn was certainly an interesting character and you'd have to be blind not to recognise him as an actor from Foxy. The eyepatch and messy red hair were a dead giveaway, and Jeremy sometimes swears that his one good eye is yellow, though everyone insists that it's just a rare shade of amber. He thinks the man was born to be a pirate. Thankfully, Finn was up for bowling but he hated Jeremy's car. Jeremy insists he doesn't want to replace it, he once heard Finn call it a "bloody druggy mobile", but he wasn't having that kind of talk around his precious vehicle. Besides he had already sunk a lot of his savings into keeping it going. Yeah, Fazbear paid well, but if he doesn't get a job soon, he'll be mooching off his uncle in no time. All he needs right now is just one good day out, so if Finn could stop pointing out the 'fine booty' on the streets that'd be great. 

3 hours later

Finn was basically asleep in his seat. Slouched back in the stiff plastic bench, arms crossed over his chest, cap tugged low enough to cast a full shadow over his face, he looked entirely unbothered by the noise around him. The clatter of pins, the occasional cheer, the digital jingles from the nearby arcade, all of it had melted into a kind of background hum, white noise perfectly suited for an old-timer power nap. He didn’t even flinch when a rogue bowling ball thudded into the gutter with a heavy ka-thunk two lanes over. Jeremy on the other hand was dialled in. Locked into a rhythm, eyes sharp, shoulders loose, he was racking up strikes like it was second nature. Frame after frame, the pins fell in clean explosions. God, he needed this. After everything, the move, the injury, the months of feeling half-functional just focusing on the precise swing of his arm, the turn of his wrist, the satisfying arc of the ball, it grounded him.

Bowling for Jeremy, had always been a quiet kind of therapy. There was something meditative about the repetition. The walk-up, the release and the momentary silence as the ball curved toward its target. Most people didn’t realize the subtlety involved. The secret to bowling the perfect strike wasn’t power, it was precision. Hitting the strike pocket, that narrow sweet spot between the 1 and 3 pins for a right-hander with the right blend of spin, speed, and angle, that’s where the magic happened. When done right, the pins didn’t just fall- they imploded, toppling each other like dominoes. He watched another perfect hit scatter the pins into a neat explosion and smiled, just a little. Funny. He couldn’t play bass the way he used to, his wrist still flared up if he tried too hard but this? This still felt easy. Like riding a bike or breathing. Some things didn’t leave you. Maybe this place was hiring? He could already picture it, late-night shifts, fixing lanes and handing out shoes, maybe even running the front desk. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was honest work and the perfect way to start fresh. Move past the wreckage of what had been.

He was halfway through his next step toward the lane when Finn mumbled something under his breath. “...Pizzaplex?”

Jeremy paused mid-stride, one eyebrow raised. That wasn’t exactly a word you expected to hear in a bowling alley.

“What’s that about the Pizzaplex?” he asked, curiosity sliding into his voice. He set his ball down in the return and wandered over, dropping down onto the seat beside Finn.

The ex-fox cracked one eye open, still looking like he’d just woken up from a nap he didn’t plan to take. “Oh, er... Roxy texted me. Said some brat’s runnin’ around her green room.”

He tilted his phone lazily toward Jeremy. Sure enough, there was a message from the wolf, short, a bit annoyed and a photo attached. Jeremy leaned in. The image was grainy, clearly snapped in a hurry. The lighting in the room was dim but even so, the kid stood out. Scruffy-looking, maybe eight or nine years old, with tangled brown hair and pale skin that seemed to catch the light. A thin cut ran down one cheek. They were wearing dark ill-fitting clothes, it seemed like the kid had just thrown on whatever they could find. Torn sleeves and scuffed shoes. Hard to tell exactly but what caught Jeremy off guard wasn’t the state of the kid, it was the strange familiarity.

He narrowed his eyes. “...I think I've heard of this kid.”

Finn looked over at him, brow raised.

“Well... maybe I was at the corner store earlier this week. There were a couple of women near the freezer section, talking about some kid hanging around outside. Said he looked ‘half-feral,’ that was the word they used.” Jeremy frowned. “I didn’t think much of it at the time.”

Finn grunted, shifting to sit up straighter. “Well, if it is the same brat, what’s he doin’ showin’ up at the Pizzaplex?”

Jeremy didn’t answer right away. He just kept staring at the photo.

The kid looked... scared. Not in the moment the photo was taken, necessarily but in general. There was a haunted look in his eyes, the kind you didn’t get from sneaking into dressing rooms or causing mischief. Something was off.

“Do we know how he got in?” Jeremy asked.

Finn shrugged. “Roxy didn’t say. Just that she found him hiding behind the curtains, chewing on a pack of jerky she’s pretty sure wasn’t hers.”

Jeremy exhaled slowly. He suddenly had that tight feeling in his chest—the one he used to get just before walking onstage. Not fear, exactly, but a kind of tension. Like something was about to happen.

“Y’know,” Jeremy said, trying to sound casual as he leaned back beside Finn, “that’s funny. I heard earlier about rumours of a kid in that place.”

He threw it out there lightly, just to test the waters—to see how Finn would react. No pressure in his tone, just a passing observation. But inside, his stomach was starting to twist.

Finn didn’t flinch.

“Aye, yeah,” the ex-fox said with a grunt, not even looking up from his phone. “’E’s been there for ’bout a week or two, me thinks.”

He scowled slightly as he spoke, but there was no real concern behind it—more irritation than anything else. Like someone dealing with a leaky faucet or a gnat buzzing in their ear.

From what Jeremy could tell, Finn thought the whole thing was just a nuisance—an annoying brat sneaking around the green rooms, probably belonging to one of the guests or staff. Nothing sinister. Nothing serious. Just a kid with too much time and not enough boundaries. Finn had been around long enough to have dealt with his fair share of “problem children”—he’d told stories before, back when he was still performing regularly, about kids who liked to sabotage shows, unplug cables, mess with props, throw tantrums during meet-and-greets. He treated it like an occupational hazard.

But Jeremy wasn’t so calm.

Oh, for fuck’s sake! he screamed internally, his jaw tightening as he turned away slightly, trying to keep his reaction in check.

If Finn had been getting messages from Roxy about this kid for weeks—not just tonight—then what the hell was going on? Why was no one doing anything? Where were the parents? Why hadn’t security removed the kid?

The sickly churn in his gut grew worse by the second, a familiar creeping sensation he hadn’t felt in years. Like bile but colder. More ancient. It reminded him of childhood nights huddled under blankets while his dad told him those grim bedtime stories, half-whispered recollections of things that had happened before. Murders. Disappearances. Strange sightings in places that should’ve been filled with laughter and music. He’d always thought his dad exaggerated. That the paranoia was just something passed down from Uncle Benji, half-fact, half-urban legend, shaped by trauma and grief. But now? Sitting here, staring at a grainy photo of a kid who didn’t look like they belonged anywhere and hearing that no one had really dealt with it... The unease was crawling up his spine like ice.

Was the cycle repeating itself?

Was someone hiding kids in that place again?

Jeremy swallowed hard. He didn’t want to jump to conclusions but his brain was racing ahead of him anyway, conjuring the worst-case scenarios like it always did when the past started clawing its way into the present. What if the kid wasn’t just lost? What if they weren’t just playing? if Finn wasn’t bothered... did that mean the child belonged to someone on staff? Was that why no one had reported anything officially? But even that didn’t sit right. Jeremy knew the his old crew well enough... at least, he used to. None of them had a kid that looked like that. That pale skin, that haunted look in their eyes, that cut on their cheek, it didn’t feel like something a regular staff kid would walk around with for weeks. 

He turned to Finn again, who was still lazily scrolling, tapping out a vague reply to Roxy like this was all just some minor backstage drama. “Finn,” Jeremy said, more serious this time. “Have you seen the kid in person?”

Finn looked over at him, eyes narrowing slightly. “Nope. Roxy’s the only one who’s really mentioned ’im. Says he only ever shows up when no one’s lookin’. Like he’s tryin’ not to be seen. She’s the only one who’s caught ’im clear.”

Jeremy stared down at the photo again, a cold weight settling in his chest.

Then who was he?

"Hey, Finn. Are you worried at all about what that kid could be doing there? I mean... Fazbear Entertainment isn't exactly known for its child safety," Jeremy rambled, his voice shaky with that all-too-familiar edge of unease. He shifted anxiously where he stood, eyes darting toward the monitors like they might suddenly erupt with sirens and flashing lights. “The actors aren't exactly stable people once they drop character in their green rooms. Monty was always angry, and it’s no secret he uses his suit to wreck his own room. Freddy and Chica—sure, they're gentle, but... not exactly the confrontational type. And Roxy? She’s just loud. Always yelling about how she’s not a babysitter. But if that gator finds the kid...”

Jeremy trailed off, chewing his nails without realizing how rough he was being until Finn reached out and grabbed his wrist, firm but not unkind.

"Ey, lad," Finn muttered with a small shake of his head. "Better cut that habit out before ya mek 'em bleed. I know yer worried about the kid, but Roxy’ll make sure nothin’ happens. She barks louder than she bites. 'Sides, if yer really that worried, you could go down there yerself. No one’s stoppin’ ya."

Jeremy didn’t answer right away. His shoulders were hunched like he was carrying something too heavy, Finn had seen that weight before. Many times. This wasn't Finn's first Fazbear rodeo. He’d worked with at least three different casts over the years even if he wasn't on stage for all of it, seen actors come and go like parts being swapped out of faulty animatronics and every time, despite the faces changing, the dynamic stayed eerily similar like some unspoken code of behaviour got passed down through the suits themselves.

Freddy actors were always the leaders. Steady, kind, overly responsible types who would rather smother a problem in politeness than deal with the mess directly. They played "Dad" to everyone and rarely let their own cracks show. Chicas? Always sweet, always smiling, always sugar coating the rot. They tried to keep morale high but refused to confront the real issues festering beneath the surface. The Bonnies like Jeremy, were the thinkers, the worriers, the ones who spiralled deep when something didn’t feel right. They were sensitive in ways the others weren't. Always digging and always second-guessing. It usually took a fox to snap them out of it. They were the wild cards. Not unhinged necessarily but sharp. Blunt when others danced around things. They saw the angles the others ignored. In every group Finn had worked with, the Fox had been the one to keep things grounded when emotions ran high. The glue that held the team together when the happy masks started to slip even if they were annoying as shit sometimes.

But this generation? It was different. Imbalanced.

That gator was a problem all his own. Aggressive, destructive, and far too comfortable crossing lines. He didn’t play off the others the way he should’ve. Freddy was still the same old soft-spoken leader type but he was getting tired, burned out maybe. Chica had her sweetness dialled up to eleven but there was something fragile under it and Roxy? She was louder, angrier, more reactive. There was no patience in her, no subtlety and constant friction.

There was no real Fox in the group anymore. No one who could see the cracks and hold the walls together. That left Finn as the unofficial balance, a retired Foxy in all but name still stuck putting out fires from backstage. He sighed through his nose, scratching his chin as he looked back at Jeremy. “Listen, kid. This ain’t the worst cast I’ve seen, but they ain’t exactly... harmonious. Used to be, you could count on the others to step in when someone slipped. Freddy’d calm the storm, Chica would smooth things over, Bonnie would ask the hard questions and Foxy... well, Foxy saw through the games and said what needed sayin’. But now?”

He gestured vaguely “Now, it’s like everyone’s playin’ a solo and forgettin’ they’re in a band. Freddy’s tryin’ too hard to keep things together, Chica’s smilin’ herself into a breakdown, and Roxy’s barkin’ at shadows and that Monty? He ain’t part of the act—he’s a liability. No Bonnie."

Jeremy nodded slowly, eyes a little wider now. He didn’t speak, but Finn saw the understanding creeping in.

“Thing is,” Finn continued, more gently now, “We see what the suits don’t. That kid’s probably just wanderin’, pokin’ around where he shouldn't be and It ain't the first time some little gremlin's slipped past protocol. But if we start panicin’ every time somethin’ feels off we’ll never make it through a shift.”

Jeremy exhaled, deep and shaky. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. It’s just feels different this time.”

“Maybe it is,” Finn said, eyes narrowing thoughtfully.

“God N-no, I can't go back there. How could I possibly head down there after all the work I put into moving here?” Jeremy shot back, his voice sharp and defensive but hollow. He crossed his arms tightly, trying to anchor himself in the present moment, but his thoughts were already unravelling. The fox was right and worse of all Jeremy knew he was right. If it was bothering him this much, if the mere idea of some kid trapped in that cursed building kept scraping at his nerves like broken metal on glass, then why hadn’t he already gotten up and done something about it?

Make sure the child was okay. Make sure they were being handled by the right people if there were any left and if it turned out things were as bad as his gut was screaming? He could just take the kid. Pack them in the car, drop them off at the nearest station, make sure someone with an actual moral compass stepped in. Easy. Clean. One-and-done. But Jeremy knew there was nothing clean about it. There never had been. His hand drifted unconsciously just under the sternum of his chest pressing lightly over old scar tissue like it might still be warm. That key-card. That had once been embedded beneath his skin. The medics had struggled to remove it after the accident, then for some reason gave him the option to keep it. He said yes and didn’t have a good reason why.

It was a badge of survival. A morbid artefact of what Fazbear Entertainment had done to him, allowed to happen to him in a place that was promised to be safe. The Springlock failure wasn’t just a workplace accident. It was the beginning of the end. The shift where he stopped being Jeremy and started becoming a husk, now here he was frozen in a bowling alley yapping with a man in his fifties who still spoke like a pirate.

Nothing was physically stopping him from going. He still knew the layout of the Pizzaplex like the back of his hand. Five and a half hours. That was all. One long drive, a walk through the belly of the beast and he could be back by sundown. Assuming the schedule was still the same and it probably was, his chances of running into any particular person were low. Practically non-existent during opening hours and yet, the idea of walking into that place again made his stomach turn. Even thinking about the scent of the halls, the synthetic neon and the heat of constantly working machines made his throat tighten.

God. Should he go and ease his mind or stay here and let it rot out completely?

 Finn was staring at him. Not blinking. Not moving. Just watching, the way a fox watches a rabbit caught in a snare it set itself. Jeremy was completely zoned out Finn could see that clear as day. Lips slightly parted, eyes unfocused but always that creepy wideness, lost in that dense fog of thought that seemed to wrap around every damn Bonnie actor once something hit too close to home. Why did all the bunnies do this? They were like nervous clocks all tension and ticks, never knowing when to move unless someone gave them permission. They clearly wanted to act but something always held them back. Fear or doubt, maybe guilt, it didn’t matter. They’d sit there until someone shoved them hard enough.

Fine. If Finn had to play devil’s advocate again then so be it.

“Oi,” he said, cutting through the silence with a voice like gravel and sarcasm. “How about this? Y’ead down there to make sure mi dear Roxy isn’t pullin’ ‘er ‘air out over some brat.”

The words were light, almost flippant but Finn wasn’t joking. Not entirely. Sure, it was part bait, part nudge. A way to break Jeremy out of the decaying loop he’d clearly been stuck in all week. But it was also a quiet, unspoken truth, he was worried about Roxy too. She wasn’t like past actors. She lacked the control, loud, brash, easily provoked and she didn’t exactly handle the unexpected with grace. Especially not when it came to kids crossing boundaries. Finn knew her better than most. She was his cousin, after all and if a child had wormed their way into her personal space... there was a very real chance something could go wrong.

Jeremy was planning on asking a friend to drive down to the Pizzaplex this weekend anyway. Check in. Keep things from tipping. But now? He looked like he needed to go. Not for the kid. Not even for Roxy but for himself, then he finally blinked, snapping back into his body like someone waking from sleepwalking.

“Oh, so it’s a favour?” he said, raising an eyebrow. His voice had a little more life in it now. A little more Jeremy.

“Aye,” Finn replied without missing a beat. “You could use the drive. Even if yer car is shite.”

Jeremy actually laughed, short and startled. The kind of laugh you don’t expect to come out when your whole body’s twisted up in dread. “Christ,” he muttered, rubbing his face. “You never let up, do you?”

“Not on the ones worth pokin’,” Finn said with a shrug. “Now c’mon, get yer keys. Go see if that old badge still gets ya through the door.”

Jeremy didn’t move right away but the spell had broken. The fog had thinned and somewhere beneath the hesitation, there was something beginning to resolve in his posture.

Maybe this wasn’t about going back, it was about finally walking forward.

Chapter Text

What a stupid fucking brain! 

That's all Jeremy could think as he found himself on the motorway. He'd been driving for five long hours since that chat with Finn at the bowling alley. He'd been perfectly fine for a year, enjoying a new lease of life and learning to cope with his limitations, but it takes a a singular week of rumour fuelled paranoia for him to come back charging to the place that haunted his dreams. Jolly idea! Worst of all he's doing this assuming he won't be questioned or caught by any staff! God, how long is this road? Why did he decide to do this after his hands started cramping from bowling? Maybe he should pay for a hotel before he tries this; he can already feel exhaustion creeping into his bones, but then all his motivation will disappear before he gets to the oversized doors in the morning. At the same time he remembers that his former colleagues allowed a child to stay at a PizzaPlex owned by a company with a history of children being murdered by psychopaths in large metal suits. If he doesn't step in, what's to stop it happening again? Seriously, how is he the only one who can see that something is wrong here? Did he take all the brain cells when he left? Ugh, anyway. He's solving this tonight. 

As he turned off the motorway and drove into the vast car park, he could see the Pizzaplex's bright lights illuminating the night sky. It was impressive, as it always had been: There was fake foliage outside the building and neon colours, as well as a loud and proud sign adorning the front. However, seeing the alligator on the entrance window just made him uneasy. The building was almost criminally massive, a sprawling entertainment complex or shopping mall than the simple pizza restaurant that had started it all. The design is steeped in 1980s nostalgia but interpreted through a futuristic lens. Expect bright neon lights lining the building's edges and glowing LED billboards advertising everything the corrupt company has to offer its ever-needy customers. 

Regardless of how he feels about this place, he's got a job to do, even if his approach isn't entirely legal. Jeremy purposely found a spot near the back of the car park at an angle to hide the number plate better (a paranoid move, since the outside cameras would have seen the plates on the way in), and dragged his tired body to the doors. He silently hoped that they had already closed, but given his recent luck, they hadn't. Testing the doors, he found that they hadn't been locked either, so he carefully pried them apart and slipped in. Security tended to be lax at this hour — there had always been too much to monitor inside, and the cameras in the lobby were just for show. It was another example of Fazbear Entertainment cutting corners.

The bright lights and shiny surfaces almost blinded him until the lights started to shut off. Well, shit... It's 8 pm according to his smartwatch. Usually, the lights went out at around 11 pm, once the night bots kicked in. He was glad he had put on black clothing for the hell he was about to endure. He yanked a face mask out of his jeans pocket and started walking through the lobby. It was time to see if he could remember where the tunnels were, or at least run off to Rockstar Row to start his search. It'll take the heavy suits time to get over there, so speed and silence are of the essence. Part of him wanted to see if he could find that old suit, just in case things got hairy. Night-time was a different beast with Springlock actors. Sometimes they get too caught up in their roles and treat adult intruders like prey.

Despite the lingering worry, he couldn't help but gaze at the eerie lobby, lit only by neon lights winding down large pillars. He'd take a hard left and head straight to the maintenance tunnels, which had an unforgiving number of stairs leading down to them. There were no signs of the security bots yet, but he didn't want to risk running into any humans either; the security pass in his pocket only allowed access to level 5. It was high enough to get through basic staff doors, but not enough to access all the S.T.A.F.F. areas. That would suffice, as he only needed to access the basic areas for the search, and a random kid couldn't gain entry to those high-level spaces anyway... right? 

Well, getting to the maintenance tunnels was pretty simple. They were weirdly empty, thankfully very dark and dull, so he didn't have to think too hard about where he was. The real challenge was stopping himself from jumping at every little thing and listening out for any sign of a child. He crept between crates and snuck around one of the brainless staff bots that was making a small circuit around the larger area of the tunnel. Eventually, he made his way down to the next set of stairs, which should lead up to Rockstar Row. On the way, though, he found the bathrooms and heard a strange eating sound. Despite knowing he really shouldn't, he went to investigate, as it couldn't have been a person or an S.T.A.F.F. bot — it sounded far too visceral and feral. 

As Jeremy walked down the dimly lit corridor towards the restrooms, he noticed that the door to the ladies' room was slightly ajar. Strange, wet chewing noises, irregular and almost animalistic, echoed softly from inside. He paused. He didn’t want to go in there. It wasn't just because it was the women's bathroom; something else felt wrong. As he crept closer, the sounds abruptly stopped. Then he heard the metallic clang-clang of heavy animatronic feet retreating into the tiled darkness. His pulse jumped — one of the Glamrocks was in there. Despite every instinct screaming at him to turn back, curiosity won. He peeked inside. Glamrock Chica’s bulky frame was moving towards the opposite exit, her colourful plating dulled and smeared. But what made his stomach knot was what she had left behind, overturned rubbish bins, their contents strewn across the floor; torn wrappers; rotting food; and something else he couldn’t quite identify.

She’d been digging. Eating.

Not performing or cleaning, but scavenging. Like a thing starving.

Jeremy stepped back, dread coiling in his gut. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t Susie. That couldn't be her! So why was her suit moving so strangely as if it had an animalistic mind of its own or? Finally snapping out of his shock, he slipped away before she turned around. He got his act together and jogged to the massive set of stairs that were hell on his knees. A skittering noise running up the wall behind him sent his anxiety from a 4 to an 8. He ended up nearly running up the rest of the stairs in a desperate attempt to leave the underground. Reaching Rockstar Row with a layer of sweat on his face wasn't how he'd imagined his night going, but it was too late to turn back after seeing THAT.

The area was still pretty well lit thanks to the green rooms. It looked like most of the actors were in their rooms, judging by the bright lights shining through the curtains. Hopefully they're too exhausted to drag themselves out and mistake him for a regular night guard. He really should have brought a torch, but never mind — he'll just have to turn on the one on his phone and hope it's enough for a few hours. The carpet was as plush as ever and the museum area was impressive, considering that most of the items from the old location were either burnt or thrown away by the company. Seeing the prototype hat and bow tie for the Freddy Fazbear suit was certainly a treat for an obsessive history nut like himself. Maybe he should convince his uncle to come here. But his thoughts were cut short by a small shadow darting across to the gap between the green rooms of Chica and Monty. Thankfully, he didn't need to go any deeper to find the child! He ran straight to where the child must have gone, weaving between the red ropes to the vacated green room. He opened the door and spotted the youngster crouched between the arcades cabinet on the far side of the room and the wall, poor thing was panting from all the running he must have been doing. 

"Oh, thank God you aren't dead!" Jeremy said, half laughing as he walked over to where the child was hiding. 'I'm...' He paused for a moment. Should he be Bonnie or Jeremy to this random child? Glamrock Bonnie is dead, and if this child told anyone connected to Fazbear Entertainment that Jeremy was on their property, he'd get fined. 

"You... you look like Bonnie," the child suddenly said, looking as if he had seen something he shouldn't have.

"Okay, you got me. I'm a fan," replied Jeremy in a tone that screamed, 'I really wish that wasn't obvious'. That would sort things out, at least. Though how this random kid had guessed the character he was once played so quickly made him question a few things, not a lot of kids would be able to guess Glamrock Bonnie- then again how many characters have bright blue hair and burning red eyes with borderline slutty eyeliner?. Never mind, just get the kid out — that's why he's here.
"So who are you, and where are your parents?"

"No, wait! I'm Gregory. Please don't take me to the night guard! I don't have parents. I live here. I promise!" Gregory spoke in a panicked voice. Judging by his reaction, the kid had been spotted by an actor before and let off the hook, but he wasn't going to let someone else's poor choices lead to this kid getting hurt. There's a lot here that even he didn't go near after finding out what they keep in the depths.  

"Sorry, Gregory, but this place isn't fit for a little kid once the lights are off. I'm getting you out of here, and then we can figure out what to do." Jeremy was firm; he wasn't going to be swayed by puppy eyes and a quivering lip. Despite having fun on stage, kids never had a hold over his heart.

"Please! You don't understand, I can't leave! I have to help her!" 

"You aren't helping anyone by being here" he said, going in to grab Gregory. He was less than pleased, however, when the brat squeezed past him and through the security door in Chica's room. Great. Now he's invading his friend's bedroom for the sake of a child who has some kind of issue with authority and loves scampering around private spaces. Who on earth could this little kid help, and why was it apparently so important that he ran from everyone trying to take him to safety? He'd only been there for an hour, so if he followed the kid around, it shouldn't take long to catch him and take him to the nearest police station. 

'Wait! Come on, kid, tell me why you have to help someone!' Jeremy called out, following Gregory's path. He even went into the Chica actor's bedroom and stood on her dresser under the vent that the child had climbed into.
"If it's a good reason, then maybe I'll help!"
At that, the sounds of clattering through the dark vent stopped.

"How can I trust you?"

"Because I seriously don't want to be here. If you get caught, you'll either be thrown outside or sent to an orphanage, but if I get caught, there'll be a hole in my pocket! I seriously don't want to work in retail just because I wanted to save some sassy kid from being kidnapped." Jeremy hissed, but it seemed that his rambling attempt to convince Gregory had worked, as the young boy slowly started to come back out of the dusty void.

"Promise?"

With a heavy sigh, Jeremy replied, "I promise."

Chapter Text

Jeremy decided to let the kid keep calling him Bonnie. It wasn’t worth correcting, not with the way his hair fell into that messy blue hue under the Pizzaplex lights or how the red of his eyes could pass for the rabbit’s. Turns out the habit of dying his hait this shade even after all this time just made him a red herring. He’d have to ask later how Gregory even knew what the Glamrock Bonnie looked like considering that character been on the stage in years. Still, there were bigger problems. No way in hell was he letting anyone say his real name in this place. The cameras might be old but the mics still worked well enough to pick up what they shouldn’t. One slip and everything could unravel.

After dragging Gregory out of the vent system and away from Rockstar Row, they started their slow trek through the Pizzaplex’s shadowed hallways. The plan... if you could call it that, was to track down those weird arcade cabinets the kid kept talking about. Princess Quest apparently. Gregory had already found two, and swore there was a third hidden somewhere in the building. Bonnie didn’t have a clue what those machines actually looked like, but he figured anything with a name like that would stand out. The problem was, they weren’t in the main arcade. No, whoever put them here had scattered them like secrets, all tucked away in corners most guests would never see. One in the day-care’s hidden room, another somewhere behind the DJ’s stage, maybe the last one lurked behind the walls of Fazerblast or Roxy Raceway. Hell, maybe even Bonnie Bowl.

The Pizzaplex was massive, practically its own city and the animatronics still roamed its corridors. Yeah, animatronics. That’s what Gregory thought they were. Bonnie wasn’t about to shatter the illusion. The kid didn’t need to know the truth that the Glamrocks weren’t just machines, that they're just people in Springlock suits waiting under the stage for the lights to dim before slipping back inside. Sometimes he’d done it too, leaving the suit in performance mode when he was too tired or too sick to keep up the act. He’d sit below the stage, listening to the muffled cheers above, feeling like the laziest man alive.

He didn’t like kids but he wasn’t heartless.

Gregory had already seen too much for one night.

No need to ruin the rest of the magic for him.

They reached the atrium... that massive, echoing heart of the Pizzaplex and the place looked like it had been frozen mid-breath. Neon signage still pulsed above shuttered storefronts, animatronic faces smiled from dusty billboards, and the air carried that strange, electric tang of stale popcorn and ozone. Jeremy, still “Bonnie” to the kid took a moment to get his bearings, running a hand through his hair as he mapped out their next move. Roxy Raceway was clearly off the table considering the entire entrance had been sealed behind towering construction barriers, plastered with “Under Renovation” signs that looked like they’d been there for months.

“Yeah, we’re not going that way,” he muttered.

He scanned the atrium again, eyes drifting upward until they landed on the dim silhouette of Bonnie Bowl. Of all the places left standing in this garish palace of noise, that one still tugged at something in him. “Safest place in the building,” he said quietly, mostly to himself.

The decision made sense. Bonnie Bowl had been closed off for ages, no tourists, no staff, no patrols from security bots. Out of every attraction still limping along under the flicker of emergency power, it was the only one completely dark. Every other sign blazed like a beacon in the atrium’s high glass canopy, but Bonnie Bowl’s logo hung dead and hollow, its neon missing and mascot plain. It hurt to look at it, the neglect, the silence. Once it had been his favourite spot but now it just felt like a grave. The escalator up to the floor groaned faintly when he stepped onto it, metal clanking under his shoes. He moved carefully, placing each foot flat trying not to make the steps sing. The sound echoed anyway, bouncing up toward the second level. Gregory of course had no such sense of caution. The kid darted around him with a burst of reckless energy, practically sprinting up the incline.

“Seriously?” Jeremy hissed, voice sharp but low. “Do you have any idea how loud you’re being!?”

Gregory turned around with his beaming grin. “Do you have any idea how slowly you’re moving?” before continuing onwards.

Bonnie's jaw tightened. He didn’t bother replying since the kid wasn’t wrong, but that wasn’t the point. Instead he just exhaled through his nose, the sound half a growl. The boy was brave he’d give him that. Brave or stupid. Maybe both. He walked at an even pace, keeping his footsteps measured and quiet, motioning for Gregory to stay close as they followed the curve of the wide upper balcony. From up here, the atrium stretched out below them like a neon graveyard, vast, still and humming faintly with residual power. As they reached the railing Bonnie glanced down to the floor below and froze. Monty was there, the gator prowled through the open space like something feral with movements too fluid, too animal. Gone was the exaggerated swagger the character used on stage, all the showboating and tail-flicking meant to amuse crowds. What Bonnie saw now was different, lower to the ground, shoulders rolling, head twitching side to side in jerky, hunting motions. The green of his suit glinted in the half-light as he crept between the shadows of the photo-booths.

What the hell is that stance?

Bonnie felt a twinge in the back of his mind, something that wasn’t quite fear but close enough to it. Bitter as he was, he’d never seen any of the others move like that. Fazbear Entertainment had always been strict about keeping up appearances. Every “performer” was supposed to stay in costume outside the green rooms, even off-hours, just in case a stray guest or security caught sight of them. But it was well past closing time, and the place was empty. There was no reason for Monty to still be in character. And certainly not that character.

The way he moved wasn’t just unprofessional, it was wrong. Predatory. His eyes following the animatronic as it disappeared behind a column, tail scraping lightly against the tile. "What the hell are you doing, Monty?" He tried to reason it out. Maybe the others had picked up that a kid was inside? Gregory hadn’t exactly been subtle sneaking through vents so maybe they were staying in costume to keep the magic alive, to avoid traumatizing the kid with the truth yet that didn’t sit right either. If they really cared about keeping up the illusion they’d have just left the suits in the charging stations behind the green-room security doors. That’s what he used to do, pop the suit off, stretch, breathe, be human again for five minutes before showtime.

No. This wasn’t performance. This was something else and the longer he watched Monty stalk through the atrium like a beast in a cage the more he felt that old, familiar dread creeping back up his spine, the sense that whatever humanity had been left inside those suits... was gone.

“Hey, Gregory,” Bonnie began after a long stretch of silence between them. His voice came out low, a little rough. “How long have you been living in the Pizzaplex, exactly? You keep saying you’ve been here for a while, but that doesn’t add up. You couldn’t have dodged those giant animatronics all this time... at least not on your own.”

He tried to sound casual, but there was an edge under his words. Part of him just wanted to know what kind of mess the kid had gotten himself into. The other part, the colder, more pragmatic part, needed to know if Gregory’s little adventure was the reason his ex-colleagues were losing their minds inside those suits. He’d heard it happen before, too many hours sealed in, not enough air, not enough distance from the performance. The line between person and animatronic blurred fast in there.

Gregory hesitated. His fingers fidgeted with the edge of his Fazwatch, eyes darting away from Bonnie’s. “Oh, well... Freddy’s kind of been helping me,” he said finally. “We’re trying to find the Princess Quest cabinets. We think we can free our friend that way.”

There it was, that nervous honesty of someone who didn’t want to lie but also didn’t want to tell the full truth. Just enough to keep their deal afloat, he helps Gregory find what he’s looking for and in return, the kid agrees to leave the Pizzaplex when it’s done. But Bonnie’s thoughts soured. "Frederick fucking Filburn the Second" I swear to God. He rubbed his temple, exhaling sharply through his nose.

“So that’s why you keep tapping at that Fazwatch,” he muttered. “Figures.” His tone flattened, all patience gone. “Look, kid, I don’t know what kind of connection you’ve got with Freddy, but I’d rather we steer clear of the Glamrocks entirely. We can find the last cabinet ourselves.”

He didn’t elaborate. Didn’t need to. The less Gregory knew about what those suits really were the better. By the time they reached Bonnie Bowl the tension between them had settled into an uneasy truce. The doors were stiff with rust, and it took both of them prying together to get them open. The sound echoed through the empty corridor, metal groaning like something ancient waking up.

The bowling alley beyond was steeped in a strange kind of nostalgia with bright colours dulled by time, the faint scent of waxed lanes and stale popcorn clinging to the air. Neon lights buzzed weakly along the walls, painting the space in flickering purples and blues. The checkerboard floors still gleamed faintly under the dust and the old arcade décor screamed of a decade that refused to die. The place was quiet and most of the lights were out, the few still working cast long, uneven shadows across the lanes. A broken sign above the Ice cream bar sputtered on and off, bathing the counter in erratic bursts of light. It was supposed to be a fun, family-friendly space. Now it felt more like a memory left to rot. At least the staff had kept it somewhat clean, though the absence of any service bots made the silence heavier.

“No staff bots,” Bonnie murmured, scanning the room. “Good. We’re alone.”

He stepped further in, the echo of his shoes bouncing off the walls. The air was cool, stale, and still. He remembered there being a few arcade machines tucked in near the lanes probably old prototypes collecting dust by now.

“Go ahead,” he said finally, waving Gregory toward the far end. “See if you can find anything useful. Just don’t wander too far.”

He told himself it was fine, that letting the kid poke around a little wouldn’t hurt. But as Gregory darted off into the shadows, Bonnie couldn’t shake the feeling that the bowling alley wasn’t as empty as it seemed.

After showing where the arcade machines were, Gregory took off like a rocket. Bonnie had a minute to catch his breath. If he could just slip the kid in and out of attractions that hadn't been searched yet, it shouldn't take more than a few hours. Even if the shutters drop and they're locked in until 6 am, he still has the security card and can get them out via the loading docks. He'll plan as he goes along. Worst case scenario they can stay in Bonnie Bowl until 5:45AM then camp out at the doors before anyone comes in at 6 am.

Gregory came running back a few minutes later, sneakers skidding slightly on the dusty tile. His expression said everything — frustration, confusion, and just a touch of embarrassment.

“None of them are right,” he blurted out.

Bonnie raised a brow. “None of them?”

“Yeah. The machine we’re looking for — it’s black, with an 8-bit orange princess holding a sword. None of these ones have that.”

Bonnie blinked at him. His mind went blank for a moment. An 8-bit orange princess with a sword? He racked his memory, flipping through years of half-forgotten Fazbear junk, but that description rang absolutely no bells. Even his uncle, who could drone on for hours about the old arcades and their endless parade of pixelated nonsense, had never once mentioned anything involving a princess.

So it’s new. Or… custom.

That thought made him uneasy. Anything custom in this building usually came with strings attached.

“Alright,” he said finally, scratching the back of his neck. “If it’s not out here, it’s probably stashed somewhere less obvious. This place has more hidden rooms than sense.”

He already had one in mind — a backup green room tucked away in a forgotten corner of Bonnie Bowl. It had been built for him, back when he’d still been “Bonnie” in more than just name. He’d asked for it after Rockstar Row started feeling hostile, and the management — surprisingly — had agreed. Officially, it was just a “comfort space.” Unofficially, it was his escape hatch from the noise.

He remembered the staff using it as storage after he’d stopped showing up. Old props, spare uniforms, busted equipment — the usual Pizzaplex graveyard of things that weren’t quite broken enough to throw away. Maybe, if he was lucky, there’d still be a few relics in there worth salvaging. He even caught himself thinking about his spare pair of star-shaped sunglasses. Ridiculous things — loud, flashy, utterly impractical — but he’d always liked them. If he was going to risk his neck in this madhouse, he might as well take a souvenir.

He started toward the far corner of the bowling alley, the soles of his boots squeaking faintly against the waxed floor. That’s when he felt a sudden tug on his sleeve.

“Don’t,” Gregory whispered. His voice was tight, almost pleading. “Don’t go in there. You don’t want to see it.”

Bonnie stopped short, frowning down at him. The kid’s grip was surprisingly strong for someone so small.

“See what?” he asked, keeping his tone light, though a flicker of unease curled in his gut. It wasn’t like Gregory to sound scared.

Gregory didn’t answer — just shook his head, eyes wide and dark in the dim light.

Weird, Bonnie thought. The kid wants to protect me? That’s new.

He managed a crooked grin, trying to defuse the tension. “Relax, kid. I’m just checking for arcade machines. I’ll be in and out before you can panic about it.” He gave a short laugh, nudging Gregory’s hand off his sleeve. “Besides, I’m a big boy.”

Gregory didn’t laugh. He just frowned — that funny, uncertain frown that made him look too old for his age. But he let go.

Bonnie gave his shoulder a reassuring pat before stepping inside.

The back room smelled like dust and machine oil. He had to squeeze past a collapsed cardboard cutout of Chica holding a bowling ball, several stacked boxes, and what looked like a dismembered staff bot missing half its head. The whole place was a mess — far worse than he remembered.

“When did this place turn into a landfill…” he muttered, grimacing as he nudged a pile of debris aside with his shoe. He spotted a broom lying on the floor, its handle cracked but still usable and picked it up to sweep aside some of the mess. Shards of broken glass crunched underfoot, mixed with small blue fragments that caught the low light.

At first, he thought they were just bits of wall tile but as he swept them together, something about their texture felt wrong. They weren’t ceramic, more like painted metal. Smooth, slightly curved, he crouched down and carefully started running his fingers through the fragments just to feel they were a solid almost plastic material. The walls around him were painted a duller blue, but even they looked off. The colour seemed uneven now, like something underneath had bled through. The air carried a faint metallic tang, the kind that made the back of his throat itch. He straightened up slowly, broom still in hand, eyes narrowing as he glanced around the dimly lit space. Whatever had happened here it wasn’t just neglect.

He’d soon find out why Gregory had been so anxious about him stepping into that room. Poor kid — he must’ve thought the so-called “mega fan” would fall apart at the sight.

At first glance, it was just clutter, more discarded props and lifeless machines but then his eyes caught on something at the centre of the floor. A large, uneven section of carpet had been crudely cut away from the rest of the flooring, as if someone had torn it out in haste to create a makeshift mat. And lying across it, broken and sprawled in pieces was him.

The Glamrock Bonnie suit.

There it was... or what was left of it spread out like a dissected memory. The once vibrant blue fur was now dulled and matted with dust, its synthetic sheen long gone. Strands of that fluffy hair still clung to the cracked skull, and the familiar purple headband hung loosely around the fractured dome. The cute black nose, the wire black whiskers and all the little touches that used to make the character look friendly, comforting were twisted now into something grotesque. The red bodysuit, once polished and stage-ready had been torn nearly in half. The pelvis was detached from the torso and the chest piece once crowned with a bright, shining yellow star was marred by deep, uneven gouges. Claw marks. They cut through the paint and the plating almost down to the frame beneath. Whoever did it hadn’t just tried to dismantle the suit, they’d attacked it.

One leg was still attached to the lower half, hanging on by a few bent bolts. The other was tossed aside nearby, the servos inside rusting and jammed. Both arms were split down the seams, wires spilling out like veins, the paint chipped and webbed with cracks. The head was the worst of it. The left side of its face was shattered leaving half the inner structure exposed, metal skull, burnt wiring and one flickering optic. The eye glowed faintly red, twitching with dying power. It wasn’t enough to illuminate the room but enough to glint faintly off the torn shell and glimmering shards nearby.

Bonnie stared.

He didn’t breathe. Didn’t move. He just stood there in the doorway, the broom handle still in his hand and his mind refusing to catch up with what his eyes were showing him. Someone made sure it wouldn’t go to Parts and Service. Normally, damaged suits were programmed to crawl there automatically once disconnected from the performer, a safety feature, a precaution for when an actor was injured or trapped inside. But this one had been sabotaged. Whatever protocol it had left was gone, overridden.

It wasn’t an accident.

The cut carpet, the careful placement and the deliberate disconnection? it all screamed intent. Someone had wanted this body to stay here. Hidden. Forgotten. The flickering red eye stuttered, a faint electrical buzz filling the silence and for a split second, the optic flared just bright enough to reflect in Bonnie’s own. It felt like looking into a mirror warped by time, the same face he’d worn on stage, the same smile kids had once adored now frozen mid-expression, stuck somewhere between surprise and terror. Those artificial eyes all wide, glassy and trembling with dying light almost seemed to recognize him. For the first time in a long time, Bonnie felt that same hollow, electric panic he’d buried so deep, the echo of the night everything went wrong. The night his life had split in two just like that suit on the floor.

“Monty? What’s going on?”

No response — just a low, guttural growl rolling through the dark like thunder under his skin.

“Monty,” Bonnie said again, trying to sound calm, but his voice cracked. “I get it, alright? You’re still mad about what I said. I shouldn’t have gone off on you about your bass skills. I was just— I was angry, okay?”

He remembered where he’d been, high up on the catwalk above Gator Golf, checking one of the cannons after someone on staff complained it kept jamming while doing a small refill on a couple. The catwalk creaked under the suit's feet, the air hot and heavy with grease and that damn fog. Then he heard it, that bellow again.

He turned, scanning the catwalk. “Monty?”

The gator’s voice came out low and venomous. “Always messin’ with my stuff. Always needin’ attention. It’s bad enough they love you more than me and now you’re up here... alone.”

Bonnie’s pulse jumped. “What are you talking about? You mean the kids? Hey, you can have ’em- they just scuff up the paint.” He tried to make a joke of it.

Monty’s silhouette shifted. “Ungrateful. Fucking. Rabbit.”

“I’m not ungrateful!” Bonnie snapped, taking a step back. “I’m glad they’re happy, but-”

He didn’t finish. Monty lunged.

The impact knocked the breath out of him, metal on metal, the hollow clang echoing off the rafters. For a split second, he thought it was just another argument, another rough shove like they’d had before. Then the claws came down.

Bonnie hit the grating hard, one arm pinned beneath him. He tried to twist free, but Monty’s weight was crushing. The claws screeched across his chest plate, too deep. He shoved back, hard, the edge of the catwalk railing clanking hard against his back.

“Monty, stop! You’re gonna-”

The rest was lost to static and warning tones as his HUD blinked red across his vision. Error messages flashed like strobes in his eyes.

WARNING: PRESSURE DETECTED

He couldn’t see clearly, the HUD filled with cascading red text, alarms shrieking in his ears. It was like clawing through fog, through air that wouldn’t hold him. He swung wildly, felt metal bite metal, sparks flying between them.

Then came the push. Too strong. Too sudden.

The railing snapped.

He felt the suit’s weight shift, every joint screaming in protest and then gravity took over.

For a heartbeat, he was falling. He saw the stage lights spinning above him, heard the faint echo of the crowd simulator looping applause far below. Then he hit something solid and grotesque, one of those oversized animatronic gator heads. The sound it made wasn’t human.

SYSTEM ALERT: SPRINGLOCKS ENGAGED

PLEASE REMOVE 

PLEASE REMOVE

The shock tore through him

A sickening chain reaction.

Springs snapping.

Metal constricting.

Forty-eight springlocks triggered along the torso and arms. Twenty-one in the legs.

Seven could not be removed from the bone.

He couldn’t even scream at first, just a raw, breathless sound that barely escaped his throat as the pain bled into static. The suit had become a cage of steel teeth, digging into flesh, grinding into bone.

He remembered the voice of the system looping over the alarms but the sound was fading as his body shut down.

“Error: springlocks compromised. Please remove. Please remove.”

But there was no one there to help him and in the flickering haze before everything went black, he saw Monty looking down from the catwalk just watching. Unmoving. The red lights reflected in his eyes like twin spotlights.

Bonnie never thought he’d be grateful for head trauma. But standing there now, staring at the remnants of his old suit, he found himself silently thanking the damage for dulling what he should have felt that night. Maybe the concussion had been a mercy. It had blurred the edges of memory, softened the screaming pain into something distant and dreamlike.

Nobody ever told him exactly what state he’d been in when they found him only that it “wasn’t suitable for public discussion.” The company had buried the report under layers of corporate silence.  But he’d put enough together to know it had been bad. The cold ache of metal in his ribs and shoulders told the story for him, reinforcement plates, endo rods, screws where bone used to be. Someone had worked hard to hide the evidence, to make him look mostly human again. He glanced down at the broken Glamrock Bonnie suit, it was like looking at his own body laid out before him. Torn. Patched. Abandoned. He tried to steady his breathing, in through the nose, out through the mouth, the same exercise the therapist had drilled into him after the accident. It used to keep him from shaking when the lights got too bright or the stage sounds echoed too loud in his head. Now he used it just to stop the thoughts from spinning.

But as he inhaled, he felt something unexpected... relief. A strange, gentle calm that settled into his chest like warm air, It was as if coming across the suit again was like finding a missing part of himself. This thing had saved him despite the fall. It had given him purpose, joy, connection. It was the bridge between the person he was and the dream he’d chased, one of lights and laughter, of music echoing through the atrium and children’s faces glowing under neon stars. It had tied him to his friends, to his family, to a legacy that meant something before it all fell apart. He remembered how proud his uncle used to be when talking about the Fazbear shows, the wonder, the idea that they could make people believe in magic if only for a little while.

That’s what it had been, back then. Magic. Fantasy and fun. A chance to be a big kid again. To dance, to laugh, to lose himself in a character that made others happy. It wasn’t about the pay-check or the fame. It was about the connection, the simple, innocent joy of making someone’s day a little brighter. He smiled faintly at the thought that even after everything, the pain, the loss, the nightmares, he couldn’t quite bring himself to hate it. The suit, the stage, the lights... they were part of him.

Pushing the confusing mix of nostalgia and unease to the back of his mind, Bonnie finally got down to business. The endoskeleton sprawled before him looked battered If he put it back together carefully, it should be able to walk. Glamrocks weren’t built for perfection. They didn’t need pristine endoskeletons to move, they just needed functioning optics to see and a frame strong enough to support a body. Get those right and the rest could be improvised.

Since Gregory was waiting outside, Bonnie figured he could make himself useful by fetching parts from the bowling alley, loose wires, bolts, spare servos, anything that might help stabilize the old frame. He could direct the kid without dragging him into the mess of metal and broken tech. It was delicate work and he didn’t exactly trust small hands around live circuits, but this way he could focus on the intricate rewiring while Gregory played the role of supplier. He knelt beside the suit, inspecting each damaged joint, imagining how it would feel to step inside again. The limbs were heavy with dust, the head crooked, optics dimmed to a ghostly glow, but there was potential. He could make this frame hold its position just long enough to get it to Parts and Service for a proper endo swap. Once that was done, they’d move faster, quieter, smarter, no more dodging wandering staff bots or creeping through restricted areas with sweaty palms and shallow breaths.

A small grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah... that’s right,” he muttered under his breath, rubbing a hand along the scratched chest plate. “Screw Fazbear. I’m taking it back.”

Every dent, every gouge, every scar on the suit was a reminder of the shows, the lights, the music, the chaos and the way it had once been his. He flexed his fingers, already planning the steps, secure the frame, reconnect the optics, stabilize the limbs, patch the wiring and coax the old frame into standing. He’d need Gregory to bring parts, small things, easy enough for the kid to carry but the hard work, the dangerous part? That was all his and if he could get it moving again, even for a few minutes... well, maybe he’d finally feel like he had some control back.

He pulled himself off the floor and made his way back to Bonnie Bowl. “Hey, Gregory. Want to help me with something real quick?” His smile was probably a little too eager, the kid’s eyes widened, clearly unsure what to make of it.

Bonnie disappeared into the back room, rifling through dusty boxes for anything that could serve as a temporary fix for the suit. The outer shell wasn’t repairable on the spot, but a screwdriver from an old dresser and a pair of worn electrical gloves were a good start. He remembered the basic repair tips meant for quick fixes, at least enough to get the mechanics moving but the springlocks were another matter entirely. Before touching anything critical he tested the head’s springlocks first, pressing on one with his finger. Solid. Still in performance mode, at least for now. The full extent of the damage wouldn’t be apparent until it synced with the main crank system. The limbs had been torn off, but judging by the way it must have happened, they could probably be forced back into place. Heavy lifting ahead. Great.

2 hours later

The suit would hold up for now, but only barely. Its servos groaned under the strain and the spring locks were clinging to life by some cruel miracle. The endo inside had been crushed beyond recognition; even if it somehow twisted free, it would more likely collapse inward than threaten him. Still, caution wasn’t optional. If everything went sideways, he could just have Gregory crank the emergency lever on the back, a safety net of sorts.

He gave Gregory a vague instruction to fetch something from the ice-cream bar at the back of Bonnie Bowl, he'd made sure the kid hadn't come into the green room to see what he was doing and made sure to watch the boy scamper off each time just in case he got curious. The request was deliberately obscure; it bought him a few precious moments alone. He needed them. The idea of anyone, especially a kid watching him wrestle into the battered suit made his stomach knot. He could almost hear the imaginary gasps of witnesses if he failed, picturing the wide-eyed horror at what would look like a half-dismembered mascot being defiled.

Opening the back of the suit felt like yanking open a pair of stubborn elevator doors. The second his shoulders cleared the rim, the metal snapped back into place with a hollow clang. Now he was trapped inside, a prisoner in his own plan, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot as he tried to find a position that didn’t threaten to tear the repairs or his patience. The lights in the headpiece cut through the darkness, forcing him to squint and blink in protest. Beneath him, the whirring of machinery was almost deafening, a reminder that any sudden movement could trigger disaster. Standing up straight felt like testing the limits of physics, each careful shuffle a gamble and yet, he kept telling himself it was the right move. If the endo could be repaired and the spring locks replaced, the rest of the Glamrocks would be a minor obstacle at best. With a suit this dangerous but potentially unstoppable, getting through Roxy Raceway wouldn’t just be possible, it would be inevitable. All he had to do was survive the entry.

The tight fit of the suit was a brutal reminder that Bonnie wasn’t what he used to be. Months of barely moving and lovingly overfed by a couple of old coots hadn’t exactly been kind to his waistline. To be a performer you had to stay lean, agile and strong. This suit as monstrous as it was could practically do it for you, muscle built, fat burned, endurance tested if you were willing to wear it twelve hours a day, seven days a week.

Twisted metal pressed sharply against the left side of his face where Monty had torn out a chunk and across his body the shell was scarred and cracked, leaving weak spots that made him wince with every movement. He prayed Gregory wouldn’t ask too many questions when he scooped the kid up and carried him down to Parts and Service, navigating the labyrinth of backrooms without incident. A few tentative steps and the suit let out low, creaking protests, but it held. For all its age and damage, it was functional. The twisted company had really gone all-in on safety if they were willing to let someone move in this much without immediate disaster. That realization was a small relief, but it didn’t make the claustrophobia any less suffocating.

As he started the slow trudge out of the backroom, a new concern hit him: he needed to explain this to Gregory. So much for preserving the magic. Maybe he could spin a story, convince the kid it was just part of the rush and chaos of the day. He’d figure it out later, once they were in the car, headed to the nearest hotel to crash. Then, away from prying eyes and curious questions, he could tell the kid anything he wanted and at least pretend this whole misadventure hadn’t been quite as terrifying as it felt inside that creaking, twisted cage of metal. Bonnie decided to take his time as the suit slowly rebooted. The HUD inside the eyes showed signs of low power and a list of warnings about the suit's overall integrity. He managed to clear these from the screen, after which a pixelated line stretched out before him, forming a path to the parts and service section. Nifty! He had never seen this emergency system before, but it was actually kind of reassuring to see that they had thought of it. That's good; now he doesn't have to try to remember all the tunnel routes or worry too much about a second Springlock failure caused by the neglect. A couple of minutes later, his vision cleared and he could confidently start taking bigger steps. Everything was coming together and he would be running around in no time.

Chapter Text

Gregory p.o.v.

Things weren’t going well tonight. In fact, they hadn’t been going well for weeks. The staff... what was left of them anyway, had started acting like he was some kind of problem that needed to be contained. Every evening now the Pizzaplex went into lockdown earlier and earlier. The once-bustling neon paradise of flashing lights and music would go dark by 8 p.m., the shutters clanking down and the S.T.A.F.F. bots marching out in formation like obedient soldiers, sealing him inside. Before, he had until 11 p.m. to move around undetected, but lately, it felt like the building itself was trying to push him out.

And then there was him, the blue-haired weirdo who showed up out of nowhere. Creepy eyes, nervous voice and a way of looking at him like he already knew too much. The stranger refused to say his real name, dodging questions and changing the subject with that same infuriating half-smile. He claimed he was “here to help,” said things like “You shouldn’t be here, kid” like he knew better but Gregory wasn’t born yesterday. He’d fallen for that routine once before with Vanessa. She who had seemed kind, protective and even promised to keep him safe only to then turned into a literal nightmare wearing a bunny mask. A virus in her head, twisting her into something cruel and hollow. No, trust wasn’t something Gregory handed out freely anymore. Not to strangers. Especially not to adults. Not in this place.

It was bad enough that he still hadn’t found the final Princess Quest arcade machine. That was supposed to be his ticket out or at least the key to understanding what was really going on here. But the new guy, this Bonnie lookalike with the wild hair and restless energy, actually seemed to know where to look. That made things complicated. Gregory didn’t want to team up, but he couldn’t ignore how much faster things were going with another pair of hands. Freddy was great, his best friend even but even Freddy had his limits. Every hour like clockwork, the big bear would vanish to recharge and he couldn’t fit into the maintenance vents or the service tunnels either, which meant Gregory was on his own when it came to tight squeezes or stealth work.

Bonnie, on the other hand, could handle that. He moved quick, quiet, like he’d done this before and Gregory couldn’t help but think if one of the Glamrocks showed up, at least he wouldn’t be the only one running this time. In a chase, survival didn’t mean being fastest. It meant not being the slowest. Still, it was kind of comforting, seeing someone else care about fixing Glamrock Bonnie. The two of them had spent hours with one scavenging parts and the other reattaching wires, trying to make sense of the mess left behind in Bonnie Bowl. Every time Gregory asked for updates he was told there were moments, brief flickers when the machinery actually responded, lights blinking, gears turning, like the old animatronic was trying to wake up again. It gave him a strange kind of hope. Maybe they really could bring him back.

Now he was rummaging through the back of the ice-cream bar, sifting through old mixers and broken registers looking for a “small fuse or chip, anything that looks like it belongs to a circuit board,” as Bonnie had described. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was doing, but scavenging had become second nature by now. His fingers were sticky with dried soda syrup, his knees aching from crawling under cabinets when his Fazwatch buzzed on his wrist.

“Gregory, what are you doing up there?! I fear Roxy has finally found your scent. Do not worry, I am coming.”

Ah, rats. Fazdad was on his way.

Gregory’s heart jumped into his throat. He couldn’t let Freddy see what they were doing, not yet. If Freddy saw Glamrock Bonnie’s half-repaired shell and realized Gregory had been tampering with it, he’d lose it. The last time they’d come up here, Freddy had stood in front of Bonnie’s empty stage with his voice trembling with static as he said, “I miss him.” It had been the first time Gregory had witnessed the big bear be so... human. The memory still stung. He couldn’t let Freddy go through that again, not if this didn’t work.

“Dang it,” Gregory muttered, scrambling to his feet. He could hear the distant thud of footsteps echoing up the corridor. Freddy was close. Gregory spun around toward the back room where the 'Bonnie' was still working.

“I’ve gotta go! Freddy’s coming!” he called out, his voice bouncing off the tiled walls. No time to wait for a reply. Gregory bolted for the main entrance of Bonnie Bowl, his sneakers squeaking on the floor as the neon lights flickered overhead. The doors hissed open just as a massive shadow loomed on the other side.

“Gregory!” Before he could react a pair of strong metal arms scooped him up off the ground. Freddy’s chest cavity hummed with warmth and familiarity as Gregory was lifted safely inside the animatronic’s frame.

Freddy p.o.v

“Gregory,” Freddy’s voice crackled through the thick helmet, softened but heavy with strain. “I thought I told you to be careful. You have not responded to my messages for two hours.”

Gregory just stood there panting and sheepish, the glare of neon lights from the atrium gleaming against Freddy’s metal faceplates. The bear’s massive frame made him look calm, almost friendly but the man inside the suit was anything but. His pulse was pounding in his ears, sweat stinging his eyes. Two hours of silence, two hours of imagining every horrible possibility that had driven him half-mad. He had paced the entire atrium during that time, the sound of metal paws clicking against the polished floor echoing through the empty mall. Every echo had sounded wrong, hollow, too much like footsteps that didn’t belong to him. It was hard to “stay in character” when the person you were supposed to protect kept vanishing into danger zones. He was supposed to be Freddy Fazbear, the confident, cheerful star of the Pizzaplex but behind the grin and voice lines, he was just a man trying not to lose control of his own suit... or his mind.

Maybe he should have done things differently when this all started. Back when Vanessa’s strange behaviour had been chalked up to stress, when she smiled, it had looked human and when she spoke, it had sounded kind. But there were cracks forming even then, moments where she would stand too still or repeat phrases word-for-word. It wasn’t until they found out about the virus buried in her neural chip that they realized how far gone she already was. He’d allowed Gregory to stay inside the Pizzaplex while they looked for a way to purge it, convinced they could fix it together. He told himself it was safer that way, that the boy would be protected inside the complex’s reinforced walls. But now, seeing what the virus was doing to the others, Freddy wasn’t so sure. The infection wasn’t just digital, it had begun to affect the suits themselves. The calibration systems that kept the springlocks stable, the hydraulics that handled motion control, even the sound modulators all of it was glitching and when the systems misfired, it wasn’t just a performance issue. It was life or death.

His friends were changing.

Chica’s suit had started to twitch on stage, her hand spasming on the guitar. Monty’s strength settings kept overloading, last week during rehearsal, his claw servos snapped clean through a prop bass and he had stopped removing his sunglasses after shows, claimed the light hurt his eyes but Freddy had seen the flickering red glow behind it. Their shows were suffering too. The upbeat energy that once drew crowds now felt chaotic, erratic. Chica played her guitar too fast, Monty even smashed his bass at the end of the afternoon shows and Roxy snarled as she played the keytar more aggressively. Freddy tried to hold the performance together, to keep up, but his suit wasn't built for that kind of intensity. The springs in his shoulders strained with every exaggerated movement. The mechanical locks pressed tighter when he bent too far.

He dreaded the moment he’d have to rely on Performance Mode for real.

It wasn’t supposed to be a big deal just a safety measure, an automated override that handled choreography and dialogue when the performer inside needed a break. But Freddy knew better. Performance Mode didn’t care about the man inside when it engaged, he could feel his body move without his consent, limbs jerking, the voice chip speaking words he didn’t choose. It was like being trapped in a nightmare, awake but helpless, watching himself perform behind a smiling metal mask after management stopped letting them out, too many security issues meaning they just weren't safe. If the virus spread further and forced them all into that state there might not be anything human left to save.

Freddy had overheard the technicians whispering in the back corridors lately. They were talking about “malfunction thresholds” and “replacement protocols.” About how management was getting tired of dealing with human error, tired of the risks that came with springlock suits. They wanted full automation. Machines that didn’t complain, didn’t tire, didn’t bleed. That word replaced stuck in his mind like a splinter. To be replaced meant to be erased. To be fired and discarded while the metal shell that bore your name went on performing without you inside it. Freddy didn’t fear death half as much as he feared that, he exhaled a slow, mechanical sigh, the air filters buzzing faintly as they struggled to vent the heat trapped inside the suit. When he looked down at Gregory through the small cam view in the HUD, all that anger melted away. The kid was reckless yes but he was also brave, clever and somehow still full of hope that maybe they could fix this place.

“Please, Superstar,” Freddy murmured, “Next time, do not make me worry so much.”

Gregory nodded, guilt flashing across his face.

For a brief moment, Freddy let himself believe that maybe things would get better. That maybe the virus could still be contained and that the suits would hold out a little longer, deep down, beneath the weight of the mask and the hum of the springlocks, dread pressed like a cold hand against his chest because if his voice gave out or if one more friend fell to the virus... the Glamrocks wouldn’t just lose their show. They’d lose themselves.

"I'm sorry, Freddy, I-I was just trying to hide and take a breather, y'know?"

Oh, great. Gregory was lying now too.

“For god’s sake kid, just be honest with me! I’m all you have! Just be honest- BE HONEST WITH ME AT LEAST!”

But those words never left his mouth. They stayed trapped behind the heavy metal grin of the Freddy suit, trapped with the sweat and the panic that built up under the mechanical shell. He couldn’t afford to scare the kid, not now, not with Roxanne still prowling the halls in her suit. The last thing anyone needed was for Gregory to bolt out there and run straight into her but frustration was gnawing at him and the sleeplessness made it worse. He hadn’t had a proper night’s rest in... how long? Two days? Three? He had started keeping Gregory tucked away in the back of his green room, behind the reinforced security door, claiming it was “for safety.” But part of him knew it was also because he didn’t trust himself anymore, not to keep calm, not to stay composed, not to hold character without it cracking.

It was absurd how Gregory thought he’d somehow planned all of these rigged up hiding spots, the bedroom behind the security door and makeshift security measures in the few hours between closing time and midnight. The kid gave him way too much credit. There was no plan. Just exhaustion, survival and the suffocating pressure of the suit pressing against his ribs. He was in the suit almost constantly now. The springlocks creaked and clicked with every movement, reminding him how dangerous it was not to vent out moisture but he couldn’t take it off while Gregory was awake. The illusion had to stay perfect. Freddy had to stay Freddy.

During the day on his rare breaks, he’d tear the head off the suit and devour whatever food he could find, cold pizza slices, protein bars, even leftover fries from the staff room. He ate like a starving animal, desperate and shaking. The moment he was back in character though he had to pretend he didn’t eat at all. Animatronics didn’t eat. Freddy Fazbear didn’t eat. He was living inside a lie, sleeping standing up in that heavy suit, waking up with his skin stuck to the inner padding, every muscle aching. The edges of the metal dug into his shoulders. His skin was raw from friction burns and yet he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t risk taking it off for more than a few minutes. Sometimes he caught his reflection in one of the polished walls just to see Freddy staring back at him, wide grin frozen, glass eyes reflecting his own exhaustion. He wasn’t sure where the mask ended and where he began anymore. He wanted to scream. To rip off the suit and throw it across the room. To just sit down and breathe but instead, he stayed still because Gregory was watching... Freddy didn’t get tired... Freddy didn’t break down.

But the man inside the suit was starting to.

If they didn’t find that last arcade machine soon, he was going to collapse and that would be a disaster. Not just embarrassing, but dangerous. The last time he’d gone down in the suit, it was on stage, mid-performance, sweat soaking through the padding and fever boiling under his skin. He remembered the sound of the crowd, the gasps, the screams, the mechanical groan of Freddy crumpling to the floor like an titanium tree. Management called it a “technical malfunction.” but he called it nearly dying. He couldn’t let that happen again. The Freddy suit had been waiting for him in his green room that night, propped in the corner like a dead thing. He always hated how empty it looked without him inside, lifeless, slumped, just a shell. He pulled it on piece by piece, fighting the claustrophobia as the locks clicked into place around his torso. But when he tried to adjust the chest plate, he had felt something shift inside. Gregory.

The kid had climbed into the stomach hatch.

He almost laughed from disbelief, but it came out more like a sigh through the modulator. The boy had snacks in there for crying out loud, turning the cramped compartment into a makeshift den. It was a miracle the springlocks didn’t trigger with how much the kid moved around. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was how close Gregory was. There was barely a few inches of material separating the boy from his ribs. Every time he spoke, every time he breathed too hard or turned too sharply, he could feel Gregory shift against the inside wall. Even now after getting acquainted properly, the kid would murmur questions all innocent, curious questions that caught him off guard.

“Freddy, why are you so warm?”

That one had nearly broken him. “It is because you’re so close to complex machinery, superstar. The components generate heat.”

Totally not because there were two people in the suit. Not because one of them was slowly overheating while trying to keep his voice level for the children watching. If the “safe mode” feature hadn’t been engaged, forcing the suit to recharge every hour, he might’ve actually passed out from heat stroke by now. The cooling fans barely worked and the thick layers of padding trapped every ounce of body heat. Every recharge session was his only chance to sit down, take a real breath and remember what air felt like. Maintaining the illusion of a sentient animatronic was becoming unbearable. Every motion had to be deliberate, every line delivered in that cheerful, robotic tone. One wrong inflection, one stumble and Gregory might start asking the wrong questions and losing the kid’s trust? That would be even more dangerous than the heat or the exhaustion. Gregory believed in Freddy, trusted him completely. If that illusion broke and the boy realized there was just a tired man under all that metal and foam, well, things would fall apart fast.

For now, he just had to keep going. Keep acting.

He told Gregory they’d head to Monty Golf again. The kid perked up at that as if the promise of bright lights and plastic turf could make everything feel normal again. They hadn’t finished exploring last time Monty had caught on to them before Gregory could finish the golf minigame and the suit’s battery had been running dangerously low. It was reckless, maybe even stupid to go back. But he was sure the last arcade machine was hidden somewhere in that neon jungle of greens but if finding it meant keeping Gregory’s faith in him alive a little longer then it was worth it. Even if it meant sweating through another night.

Bonnie p.o.v.

All he’d caught was a single phrase, “Freddy is here” and that was enough for Bonnie to realize that relying on a plan was about as safe as trusting the condition of his current suit. The Glamrock Bonnie frame was battered, scratched and creaking in ways it hadn’t before, and every step reminded him just how fragile he really was. He lingered in the back room for a few moments, letting the heavy, ominous footsteps recede into the distance before finally daring to move. According to the pixelated path displayed on his HUD, the quickest route led down to the stage in the atrium and from there he could trigger the lift down to Parts & Service. That was where the automated repair sequence for the springlock replacements and endoskeleton maintenance could be initiated. The springlocks were critical, without them the endoskeleton would snap back but did this body even have a working endo anymore?. The spare parts on the shelves in parts and service so that was a small comfort, though he hoped the layout hadn’t changed since he’d last been here. Any deviation could turn a routine repair into a disaster in seconds.

The floors beneath him were slick, and every creak and groan of the worn suit reminded him just how fragile it was. He moved cautiously at first, each step calculated, aware that one misstep could send him tumbling or strain the weakened joints even further. The ear sensors were still alive, picking up the faintest echoes, while his HUD pulsed softly, radar scanning for any nearby movement. For now, the area seemed clear but Bonnie knew better than to trust that for long. Every shadow, every whisper of sound could be a threat. Still, as he navigated the hallway he felt a growing sense of reassurance. The suit though battered was holding together and the path ahead promised a chance to fix it properly. With each careful step his movements became more fluid, more confident. The old thrill of inhabiting the body he knew so intimately began to return, tempered now with the knowledge that repairs and safety were within reach. One wrong move could still spell disaster but the fear that had gripped him at first gradually gave way to cautious optimism. He moved faster, smoother and with a spark of exhilaration, testing the limits of the suit he was determined to restore.

The atrium was two sets of escalators down, but to activate the lift after hours, he needed to use a showtime disk at the small staff setup overseeing the whole area. He couldn't remember exactly what it was called, but as long as there was a disk, he could switch it on and start the automated show. Much to his dismay, the suit was slow, and the walk was taking a while. He had only managed to get halfway there before he noticed Chica walking around below. Her shoulders were slumped, and her head was at a strange angle as she acted almost possessed. She was calling out for Gregory, promising him candy and saying that his parents were looking for him. That was just creepy. He had only spent a couple of hours with the kid, but it didn't take an expert to see that he was much smarter than he looked. Regardless of how Gregory viewed the mascots before this, the kid is never going to trust someone who offers him sweets. That's the first lesson of stranger danger.

Bonnie reached the little DJ booth and thankfully there was already a showtime disk ready to be played, he dropped down the record player and watched as the show lit up. It was nostalgic in a way, the lights and gigantic holograms of the animatronic mascots all singing and playing their instruments were nostalgic in a way, but the gator was where his character once stood. None of the '80s synth-wave or neon signs could soothe the ache in his heart, but he didn't have time to grieve for his old job. He needed to get down there now that the lift had been activated. He could already see Roxy doubling back and running up the escalator to check who had just activated the show. Getting past the wolf was going to be difficult when he could barely keep the suit upright. This was going to be a mad dash for the stage, he could already feel his legs struggling as he started to jog. 

"GET BACK HERE!" he heard Roxanne cry in anger, but he slipped down the escalator, his mechanical ass slamming into several sharp steps. He bit back a silent scream as he was rattled around like a marble in a tin, but managed to pull himself up and limp awkwardly to the last set of steps. He tried going down a little slower, jumping the last few steps and using the momentum to run towards the stage. God, he hated the massive length of the room! He staggered past the photo booths, hearing the angry footsteps of another Glamrock chasing him down. Shit! Chica! She practically screamed when she saw him charge past. In an attempt to buy himself time, he flipped over one of the large party tables, scattering balloons and chairs in her direction. He didn't want to waste time looking to see if it had actually tripped her up. He almost fell over the lip of the stage, but managed to slam a metal paw over the button, causing the stage to begin lowering. Thankfully, the floor would close above him before Chica could get anywhere near.

Once the lift had deposited him at Parts & Service, he trudged down the dimly lit hallway, finally reaching the sanctuary of the repair bay. Only here could he step fully out of the suit—and when he did, he nearly collapsed. The sprinting, the dodging, the constant strain of carrying the upper half of the damaged Glamrock Bonnie frame had taken its toll. His shoulders screamed, his arms throbbed as though each muscle had been stretched to its limit, and every movement sent jolts of fatigue up through his torso. With only the barest reserves of power left, the suit moved itself onto the repair table. The machinery hummed to life, scanning the battered shell for damage. Small alarms blinked and chirped, each one highlighting another flaw, a reminder of just how far gone this particular frame had become. Glamrock Bonnie parts were long discontinued; there was no way to patch the shell back to working condition. Still, he could activate the automated sequence to strip off the shell, replace worn endoskeleton components, and install fresh springlocks.

The display laid out the scope of the work in clear terms: whole arms, torso, and critical endo components needed full replacement. Estimated repair time: about an hour and a half. He had braced himself for something far longer, so relief hit him in a wave. The list of commands on the screen detailed a complete body overhaul and even some head repairs. He glanced up just in time to see a new endoskeleton gliding along a conveyor belt above him, while the old, battered Bonnie head was detached from the shell with surgical precision. At least he wouldn’t be apart from himself for long. Once the repairs were complete, the shell would be reattached, the springlocks reset, and he could move again. Pain and fatigue were still clinging to his body but there was a spark of anticipation underneath it all, a quiet thrill at being on the brink of restoration.

He might have had enough time to track down Gregory in the hour and a half the repairs were scheduled to take but leaving now was too risky. One wrong move, one unexpected visitor and the entire process could be interrupted. Bonnie’s body was screaming for rest, the pain in his shoulders and arms demanded it. Maybe this was reason enough to lie down on the cold concrete, to let the unforgiving floor take some of the weight off him. Carefully, he lowered himself to his knees, gritting his teeth against the strain, then rolled onto his side with a groan. “Never again,” he muttered under his breath, feeling the chill of the floor bite through the thin padding of his clothes. At firs, the cold was jarring, almost painful, but after a few moments, it became oddly comforting, a sharp contrast to the ache in his muscles. He allowed himself a moment of surrender, letting the concrete press against him, easing the tension.

It wasn’t long before sleep began to edge its way over him. Thirty minutes later, heavy footsteps echoed from the direction of Roxanne’s lift, snapping him awake. Instantly alert he scrambled off the floor and darted around the cylindrical support structure nearby, finding a hiding spot that was far from pristine, it was dirty and scuffed but sufficient. He crouched low, listening intently, ensuring he could manoeuvre quickly if needed. Whoever had decided to join him down here was unaware of his presence and Bonnie intended to keep it that way. Every muscle tensed as he waited, ready to circle back into safety at the first sign of danger.

Please, please don't be Freddy...

Chapter Text

Freddy p.o.v.

Freddy was still exhausted, his circuits humming in protest after loping from one attraction to the next in a blur of repeated patrols. The HUD in his visor flashed “LOW POWER” with blinking insistence, but his focus wasn’t on that—Gregory was fidgeting again, and the kid’s restless energy set Freddy on edge. How did he know? Because Gregory wouldn’t stop shifting, knocking against the thin wall that separated them, and Freddy swore he heard the damn thing rattle slightly, as if it might give way any second. On the next run to the charging station, he’d have to step out of the suit and check the wall, make sure it was still intact. But for now, his priority was getting Gregory into Gator Golf before Monty showed up.

He’d spent the past week watching his friends unravel, a slow, creeping thing that was part virus, part exhaustion. The virus still confused him; he didn’t understand how it had spread so easily but the suits weren’t helping. No one could take them off at night, not with Gregory sneaking through the vents, not with the constant paranoia. It wasn’t even about hiding anymore they just didn’t want anyone to see them, period. Names were meaningless now. Mention what someone used to do before the Pizzaplex, and you’d get an outburst. Freddy had tried talking about a fishing trip with his father, and the response had been immediate and sharp, “Freddy wouldn’t go fishing.” Ridiculous. A bear loves fish! he’d probably have eaten the whole lake if he could. Apparently, that kind of bear-friendly activity was now extinct. He pressed a hand to his temple, trying to massage the headache that was blossoming behind his eyes but it did nothing to silence the jarring clank that echoed inside the suit. Thick metal met thick metal. Dammit, right. Still in the suit.

After dragging his mechanical ass forward for a few more feet, the low-power warning had reached a brightness that made him wince. It was practically screaming at him. “Gregory,” he muttered, voice flat and almost reluctant. “I-I’m afraid my power levels have dropped dangerously low. I’ll need to reach the nearest recharge station before we can continue searching together. I... I’m sorry.”

Why did it feel like he was slipping out of character? Maybe it was just that he couldn’t summon his usual cheer, or maybe the screen glare was giving him a headache. Either way, if it came down to it, he could just pop the head off while Gregory was in the stomach hatch. It wasn’t ideal, he’d have to fumble for the emergency detach button at the back but it could work. The sudden opening of the hatch had already triggered an automatic stop in the legs, catching him off guard.

“Gregory! What is it?”

“Nothing… it’s just getting way too warm in here.” Gregory slipped out, fanning himself like it was the hottest day of the year. Great. That ruled out the head trick if staying inside was uncomfortable. The arcade cabinet had better be found soon or he’d have to do something drastic about the suit battery. Maybe he could sweet-talk the day-care attendant into handing over the spare one or if Vanessa was cooperative, hack the system to break out of Safe Mode but Gregory had mentioned that Safe Mode was probably the only reason the virus hadn’t reached him yet.

Goddammit. He just wanted things back to normal—no more Safe Mode at night, no more-

a growl

"Haha, that almost sounded like a real stomach!" Gregory giggled at the noise, the sound echoing strangely against the metal framework of the attraction. "I didn't know animatronics would actually sound hungry when their batteries were running low! I'll be fine, Freddy. Go and recharge. It'll be harder to search Gator Golf if you're programmed to make obnoxious sounds. I'm gonna try to find a way up to the catwalk and search up there. I saw a few signs saying it’s too unstable for animatronics, so it should be safe."

Freddy stared straight ahead, the servos in his suit whirring faintly as the hunger gnawed at him. It wasn’t just low power, his body felt sluggish, a hollow ache that pulsed with each cautious step. The hunger was sharp but he forced himself to focus. He couldn’t let Gregory wander alone yet. Still, the mention of the catwalks made his chest tighten with a mix of concern and... anticipation. The thought of Gregory clambering above, temporarily out of reach, gave him a momentary, guilty relief. After the previous incident, the staff had been meticulous. Special sensors now lined every doorway to the catwalks, designed to deactivate the suits and eject the wearer instantly. It was effective, Roxy had tested it since she was the fastest among them, but the results had been chaotic and hilarious in retrospect. She’d practically been shot out of her suit like a rocket and Freddy had laughed until he couldn’t breathe. Even now, he almost smiled, though the empty ache in his stomach made it hard to focus on anything but relief and recharging.

With slow deliberate movement Freddy started toward the nearest charging station. Each step reminded him of the springlocks holding him together, the delicate balance of metal and servos under pressure. He was satisfied for now, the thought of food and power temporarily easing the hunger gnawing inside him but as soon as the battery ticked up to three bars, he promised himself he would return. Gregory wouldn’t be left alone for long. The ache in his chest deepened at the thought, mixing duty with desperation, a reminder that hunger wasn’t just about the body, it was about the drive to keep moving, to keep protecting.

He had noticed a few extra S.T.A.F.F. bots rolling through Gator Golf lately, their movements precise but unnervingly persistent. Freddy wasn’t sure if they were simply doing their routine patrol loops or if Vanessa had deployed them after the last incident. The uncertainty tugged at him, but a sharper, more insistent tug came from his stomach.

The ache was growing, a low, rumbling gnaw that seemed to echo inside the cramped confines of the suit. Okay, maybe when he leaves the suit to charge he could slip over to the bakery and grab something. Gregory would be safely searching the catwalk, out of sight and out of danger. Yeah... this should be fine but another growl rumbled through him, vibrating through the servos and joints of the suit. The sound startled even him, a reminder of how much the hunger was clawing at him now. The idea of a quick sugar boost felt almost irresistible. Even if he changed his mind—or told himself he shouldn’t—his resolve was already fraying. He was starting to get ravenous, each step toward the charging station heavy with the dual weight of duty and desperate appetite.

After finally reaching the recharge station between the lifts, Freddy peeled off the suit for the first time in hours. The moment the leg supports were released, he almost collapsed, the weight of the heavy springlocks leaving a lingering ache in his legs and back. He sank to the floor, sitting for a moment as he adjusted the black bodysuit that clung to his skin. Giant blue letters spelling “GLAMROCK FREDDY” ran up the right side of his torso, glaringly obvious even in the dim light. Thankfully, the material was flexible, far less skin-tight than people assumed so it didn’t cling in uncomfortable ways but the stark, unlayered design did nothing to hide him. The lack of insulation, combined with the chill from the air conditioning, made him shiver despite the exhaustion. He wished he had a baggy shirt to cover the dull suit, or at least something to buffer against the cold while he rested. Maybe a jog would warm him up enough...

His stomach growled again, a sharp reminder that rest could only do so much. Right, the bakery, he thought it was down the side corridor by Monty Golf. When he wasn’t weighed down by the cumbersome springlocks, he could move fast, maybe even fast enough to grab something before Gregory finished exploring. The thought of sugar, of anything to quiet the gnawing emptiness made him almost spring from the floor despite the lingering fatigue. At this point feeling his feet hit the carpet felt almost alien. Running felt even stranger, his legs were no longer awkwardly spaced by the springlocks, no longer bound by the rigid supports of the suit. He hadn’t realized how much the heavy animatronic frame had shaped the way he moved; for a moment he looked like a baby deer taking its first tentative sprint. He’d fix that eventually, but right now the freedom was intoxicating.

As he neared the stairs, he nearly jumped over them in a burst of exhilaration. His presence lifted the heavy security door just enough and he slipped under with a sudden laugh, the sound light and unrestrained. He’d never done that before! The sheer thrill of being out of the suit made him forget the dull migraine that had been building as if it had never existed. Seeing the Pizzaplex in its full, chaotic glory with his own eyes brought a rush of excitement he hadn’t felt in ages. By the time he reached the bakery seeing the shutters down at him were a brief disappointment until he remembered the small side door with the weak lock. It had been designed so animatronics couldn’t open it but now out of the constraints of the suit, he could try. His fingers tingled with anticipation, how do you pick locks again... ah right!

He reached up and fumbled through his hair, finding the small hairpin that kept his longer curls out of his eyes. Removing it, he was instantly confronted with his bangs, constantly falling into his vision, and he kept brushing them back as he walked toward the little side door. That small, mundane action made him realize just how much he had been neglecting himself. His hair was usually short and manageable, despite its natural curls, but now it felt unkempt. His skin under the sleeves of the suit was dry, almost flaky, and his hands were a shock. The joints were stiff, the knuckles raw and calloused from hours of gripping the inside of the springlock mechanisms. His nails were jagged and needed cutting. Every movement made him painfully aware of how much the suit had battered him, rubbing and scraping against him until the skin was toughened in ways he didn’t remember agreeing to. Maybe the constant pressure and friction of the joints had ground the softness away, leaving behind this strange, worn roughness.

He ran a hand along his cheek, the sensation unsettling. His usually soft brown skin had taken on a rough fuzz along his jaw. He once prided himself on the small rituals of daily care, shaving, moisturizing, grooming, that had been entirely impossible while inside the rigid shell of the animatronic. He grimaced realising he had no idea how bad it would look in the mirror. He dreaded it, the confrontation with his own reflection, the reminder that the suit had taken more than just physical energy, it had slowly, imperceptibly worn him down. His hands flexed instinctively, fingers stiff and oddly foreign, he could almost feel the imprint of the suit’s interior etched into his skin.

It took a while, but Gregory finally found a way onto the catwalks by climbing through what must have been an unfinished Sky Ride. The sight that greeted him was surreal, alligator-shaped boats were attached to some sort of rickety contraption on the roof. The metal groaned faintly beneath his weight, but the view was mesmerizing. He’d never been this high before and seeing the golf course from above was unlike anything else. Thick, fake foliage covered most of it, but the winding tracks and water hazards still peeked through in odd, tantalizing glimpses.

From above, the enormous alligator heads looked comically ridiculous, and Gregory couldn’t help grinning at them. He stepped further along the catwalk, curious to see more. Below, the S.T.A.F.F. bots moved in slow, pointless loops, like clockwork toys. No wonder they hadn’t found him yet their predictable patterns made them laughably ineffective. He shook his head and focused: the view might be spectacular, but he was here to check for arcade machines, not admire scenery.

He noticed narrow paths that led into the walls, suggesting doors or hidden areas. Coming out near the gator ride’s docking area, he knew he’d have to traverse the entire length of the catwalks to check the other side. Logical he thought and began walking. As he moved, his eyes kept catching bizarre installations, cannons mounted at odd angles in the upper areas and a gigantic bucket brimming with multi-coloured balls. Everything felt precarious, unsafe. Why leave all this up here? The structures groaned under the faint sway of the catwalks and Gregory’s stomach knotted with a mix of thrill and unease. He reached the first corner and tested the railing and he nearly lost his balance. He was about to groan in frustration when a massive jolt shook the catwalk. The gator ride sprang to life and Monty, the enormous, furious animatronic swung himself off with a thunderous roar.

“Time to rock n’ roll!”

The booming voice made Gregory jump, his heart lurching. The weight of Monty pounding across the catwalks sent shivers through the entire structure, the metal shaking beneath him as if threatening to collapse.

Gregory’s fingers fumbled for the Fazwatch, desperately hammering the buttons to call Freddy but there was no response. Panic crept in as the realization hit. He was truly alone up here. Every instinct screamed that he was in danger and the precarious, wobbly catwalks offered no comfort.

"What's wrong, kid? Scared I'm going to throw you off?" Monty scoffed as he lunged for Gregory. There was no way he was going to let the kid get away from him this time! His claws hit the familiar metal floor as he charged from the failed grab. His suit struggled to keep him stable on the harsh corners, but there was no way his prey could escape. It was just a matter of time before he snatched him in his claws. What was he meant to do then? Maul him? Crush? Kill? Or maybe throw him off the side of the railings and watch his brittle little body break? Hmm, he liked that idea. Does... he? Does he want this? Of course he does! He's wanted to catch that kid all week, but a nagging voice, drowned out by his constantly flashing screen, tells him to hunt the little shit down. His mind is spinning; he's tired and angry, and his claws are itching to dig into something. His suit feels as if it's pulling itself forwards; it knows what it wants to do, he hasn't pulled back once. 

Gregory sprinted past the enormous bucket, his eyes locking onto the bright red button just ahead. As he rounded the corner, the large target on the Hole in One Hurricane bucket came into view. A spark of hope ignited—if he could use the cannons to hit the bucket, maybe he could knock the angry gator right off! He was about to try the next cannon when a terrifying sound made him freeze: Monty’s massive body bending down, gearing up for a lunge.

Instinctively, Gregory ducked to the side, feeling the unforgiving metal floor scrape against his skin. Pain shot up his arms, but there was no time to linger. Gritting his teeth, he scrambled to his feet and bolted toward the cannon at the far end of the catwalk. He checked it carefully, aimed for the target, and fired. The stream of balls hit the bucket, and the meter began ticking upward. A surge of relief rushed through him. "Okay, it’s working! If I can just dodge the gator, I can do this!" What followed was a nightmare dance, playing chicken with a massive, green killing machine. Monty taunted him, mocking his size, sneering that he couldn’t run forever. The sound of Monty’s metal joints groaning and the thud of his heavy steps echoed across the catwalk, each one a pulse of terror through Gregory’s chest.

Then it happened. Monty stopped. The relentless mocking vanished in an instant, replaced by a raw, almost panicked rage.

“You little sneak! Are you trying to kill us both?” the animatronic bellowed, his voice vibrating through the metal floor.

Gregory’s heart hammered in his chest as Monty started destroying the cannons, one by one. No, no, no! He scrambled, panic blurring his vision. The cannons needed time to reload, and if Monty demolished them all before he could knock the bucket down, it would be over. He glanced at the Fazwatch. Nothing. Freddy is still cut off. Adrenaline surged as he dashed from cannon to cannon, aiming at the target, dodging Monty’s lunges and swings. His foot caught on the railing at one point, sending him sprawling, but he jumped up immediately, refusing to stop. Monty’s leaps grew more desperate, his massive frame vaulting over gaps in the catwalks in a terrifying attempt to grab Gregory mid-shot. Each close call made Gregory’s pulse spike, his every nerve screaming in a mix of fear, determination and sheer adrenaline.

This was no longer just a game, it was survival, a frantic, horrifying dance with a killing machine that didn’t even blink and yet somehow, Gregory forced himself forward, hands shaking but steady enough to aim, balls flying, hoping against hope that his plan would work before it was too late. Eventually, Gregory was down to the last cannon. Monty was right on his heels, a monstrous blur of green metal and raw power, smashing the previous cannon to splinters as he charged. Sparks flew from the destruction, and the metal floor vibrated with every pounding step.

Gregory’s lungs burned from the endless sprinting, and sweat dripped into his eyes, stinging with each desperate blink. The meter was nearly full, and for a brief, glorious moment, hope surged but it was immediately crushed as he tripped over his own untied laces, sprawling across the cold, unforgiving catwalk. Before he could scramble to his feet, Monty was on him.

The massive animatronic gator pinned him down with terrifying speed. Seven feet of predatory machine pressed into his tiny body, claws biting into the metal floor beside him as though testing him, gripping with unrelenting strength. But it wasn’t just the pressure that made Gregory freeze, it was the sound. Breathing. Heavy, wet, almost organic panting, vibrating through Monty’s long, gaping snout. It didn’t sound mechanical at all. Heat radiated from the animatronic’s body, searing through his clothes, a living furnace disguised in metal and paint. Monty’s eyes, glowing with that eerie red light, locked onto him with the cold precision of a predator that had cornered its prey.

“That’s enough,” Monty growled, the words low and guttural, like a beast warning before the kill. “You’re comin’ with me, dead or alive.” His jaws clicked menacingly, snapping in rhythm with the fury radiating from his massive frame. “You made me run around like an IDIOT for WEEKS! And now-” Monty’s growl twisted into a slow, cruel laugh, the sound reverberating through the catwalks. “I can solve our little problem for good.”

With horrifying strength, he rose, lifting him high above the catwalk’s edge. The height made Gregory’s stomach drop, he felt the true weight of the gator’s predatory power. Every claw, every inch of Monty’s immense frame screamed that he was no longer playing, he was hunting and Gregory was nothing more than prey dangling in the jaws of a savage, mechanical beast that felt frighteningly alive.

“MONTY! PUT HIM DOWN!”

The shout cut through the deafening roar of rushing blood in Gregory’s ears, slicing through the panic that threatened to drown him. Somewhere below, the faint, cheerful background music of Gator Golf reminded him of exactly where he was, how close he had come to dying.

The voice was human—but strangely familiar. For a fleeting heartbeat, Gregory thought it might be Freddy coming to save him. But something felt off. This voice wasn’t soft, polite, or filtered by any animatronic modulation. It was raw, demanding, laced with anger and fear, carrying the weight of someone desperate.

Monty, his savage green eyes fixed on the intruder, released Gregory with a terrifying toss and turned toward the new threat. Bad idea, you green menace! Gregory scrambled to his feet, heart hammering, and raced toward the button.

“No!” Monty bellowed, spinning around just in time to see Gregory slam his hand down on the bright red button.

The massive bucket tilted, too fast, too violently. Monty lunged, claws stretching out, barely catching it before it could topple entirely onto the catwalk. But the momentum had already been set in motion. The crushing weight of the animatronic suit combined with the rigid steel of the bucket dragged him down like a wrecking ball in freefall. The metal floor screamed under the strain, twisting, groaning, bolts snapping and supports bending under the combined force. Monty’s massive frame strained, his servos and gears roaring with effort, but it was no use, his torso was being compressed, his spine arching unnaturally over the railing’s edge. Every joint, every servo, every inch of his metal body groaned in protest as the predator he had been moments ago now fought a desperate, brutal battle against physics itself.

Gregory’s pulse hammered in his ears as he watched, frozen in terror, feeling the chaotic force of the struggle resonate through the catwalks. The gator wasn’t just strong, he was monstrous, an unstoppable, living nightmare trapped in metal and fury, and Gregory had somehow set the chain of destruction into motion.

Then- CRACK!

A loud, bone-jarring snap echoed through the catwalk, followed by a raw, guttural scream that seemed to come from deep inside the animatronic itself. Gregory’s stomach dropped. Something inside Monty’s machinery had broken, something terrible.

A robotic voice, flat and eerily calm, crackled out from the suit.

“SPRINGLOCK 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 FAILURE"

"PLEASE REMOVE."

Gregory’s heart froze. He had no idea what that meant—but instinct screamed danger.

Then the catwalk betrayed them.

With a deafening roar of twisting steel, snapping bolts, and groaning supports, the entire upper structure gave way beneath Monty. Gregory could only watch in frozen horror as the massive green animatronic plummeted. His body collided with support beams and jagged metal with sickening thuds, each impact accompanied by those twisted, inhuman screams—metal grinding on metal, fused with the terrifying sound of something agonizingly alive trapped inside.

Gregory’s chest tightened, his pulse hammering, as he forced himself to look away, yet couldn’t. The scene was nightmarish, Monty, once a predator, now a broken monstrosity, flailing helplessly as the springlocks tore and twisted in ways no machine should survive. The sound was unbearable, a symphony of terror, agony and mechanical death, echoing across the deserted catwalks of Gator Golf.

The walkway beneath Gregory lurched violently. The once-solid structure was disintegrating, collapsing piece by piece into the foul, swampy depths below. Steel supports peeled away like wet paper. The floor sagged under his feet and the railing beside him split with a sharp metallic snap. He had to jump to the stable floors that were connected to the entrance of the ride. Okay, okay he can do this-

He leaped-

And he was falling

Until something grabbed his arm and yanked him up onto a stable platform, Gregory felt like he was falling. The sudden motion pulled him into a tight, almost desperate hug with someone he had never seen before. The man who had distracted Monty was holding him firmly, his bright blue eyes wide with a mix of fear and relief. Brown skin revealed under the harsh lights and his dark brown curls were an untamed mess, even wilder than his own. Despite the obvious panic, there was a strange warmth in his expression, as if a fleeting sense of joy at seeing Gregory unharmed.

“H-hey, Superstar...” the man murmured, his voice tentative and Gregory’s heart skipped a beat. Oh no... no, no, no, what the hell is happening?!

“FREDDY!?” Gregory yelped, his voice sharp and frantic like a small animal caught in a trap. The figure in front of him, the one holding him so tightly, sat up, revealing himself fully. The hug became almost protective, grounding Gregory in the chaos around him but he barely had time to process it.

A sudden wave of noise tore through the air, screams, shouts and the mechanical clatter of panic. Below, on the stage of Monty Golf, Monty’s voice rang out in raw agony. The massive animatronic thrashed and the S.T.A.F.F. bots swarmed, executing their automated emergency routines. Sirens blared, lights flashed, and protocols were triggered, alerting the night guard and presumably summoning emergency services for something ominously labelled Protocol 1.

One of the bots leaned over Monty and began carefully detaching parts of the suit. Gregory’s stomach dropped as he glimpsed the person inside, a man with sun-kissed skin and red hair shaved into a rock mullet, his face twisted in pain and panic. He screamed, voice raw and desperate, “My legs... I can- I can’t feel my legs!”

Gregory froze, a cold knot of fear and guilt tightening in his chest. The chaos, the running, the desperate chase, it had all led to this. Someone else was suffering now, trapped in the wreckage he had indirectly helped create. The reality hit him like a punch

The man's body was unnaturally twisted and bright red liquid was seeping from the joints of the suit as more parts were removed. There was thick, sharp metal impaling his pelvis and each piece of leg casing that was removed revealed wires from an endoskeleton constricting very human legs, thighs with Glamrock Endo springs twisting into delicate flesh and exposed bone further down the shins. The animatronic’s frame was warped, half-collapsed and clearly unable to move, its massive green body a tangle of broken mechanisms. The endoskeleton inside had been broken in two, leaving the once-proud, terrifying gator a mangled, helpless shadow of itself. Gregory froze, staring at the ruined machine, he was responsible.

But he was just scared.

Everything spun around him as he felt himself lifted off the broken catwalks, carried away by hands that were strong but not unkind. Wha-what…? His mind scrambled. Has he really been chased by people in giant metal suits this whole time? The terrifying “infected AI” he had feared, the relentless animatronics, it had all been real people inside the suits. Freddy had been the only one he could trust? Or had he been fooled? Questions hammered in his head, each more terrifying than the last. Was this a lie? Was it all a game? Did... did I almost kill someone? He knew he had hurt that man, seen it happen with his own eyes, and the weight of it pressed down on him like the heavy machinery surrounding the stage. I didn’t want to... I didn’t want to... what have I done?

Amid the chaos, Gregory could hear Vanessa rushing toward the stage, her voice high and urgent, panicked but she wasn’t calling for an ambulance. She was calling management. Did she even care? Was she scared too? Or was this just another problem to be solved, another protocol to follow? Gregory’s chest tightened as the questions spun in his mind, the scene below a blur of twisted metal, shattered animatronic, and his own racing thoughts.

The mangled Monty lay there, silent now, a reminder of just how close everything had come to ending in disaster and how easily fear could turn a moment into something unrecognizable.

Chapter Text

The footsteps were growing louder, too loud to ignore or brush off and a chill crept up Bonnie’s spine. He froze, tools halfway to the open panel, his mind racing. Someone else was here. He wasn’t supposed to have company, not tonight, not while the suit was still half-gutted and exposed. For a moment, he held his breath, hoping whoever it was would keep walking. But then the footsteps stopped. That silence was worse than the noise. A knot of dread twisted in his chest. Whoever it was, if they’d seen the dismantled Glamrock shell, the wires spilling like veins from its open torso, it wouldn’t take long for questions to start. Dangerous questions he can't answer. Bonnie pressed himself against the cold curve of the repair cylinder, heart hammering and every nerve on edge as he came up with a plan.

Slowly, cautiously, he eased around to the far side, making sure the machine’s bulk hid him completely. The hum of its power core masked the sound of his breath as he dared a quick glance over the lower edge. There through the dim, flickering light stood Glamrock Chica. Her white feathers glinted faintly in the haze as she leaned in, curiosity gleaming in her artificial eyes, watching the automated arms patch and solder.

“Damn it,” Bonnie whispered under his breath. “Now’s not the time to play detective.”

He scanned the floor, desperate for anything to help him stay quiet or defend himself if it came to that. His gaze landed on a wrench resting on a low, dust-caked shelf. Perfect... if he could reach it. Dropping to his hands and knees, he crawled forward, trying not to cough as years of dust stirred beneath him. The grime clung to his fingers like oil, the air thick with the scent of rust and burnt wiring. He stretched out an arm, fingertips brushing the tool’s handle. Almost there. The wrench shifted slightly, the neck scraping against the shelf. He winced, froze. Maybe she hadn’t- SCREEEEECH!

The piercing sound of metal grinding on metal tore through the silence like a siren. Bonnie’s stomach sank. There was no hiding now.

“Who wants candy?”

The voice floated through the dark like a taunt, sickly sweet and metallic. It bounced off the concrete walls, warping into echoes that didn’t sound human anymore. The speaker inside Glamrock Chica’s mechanical beak sputtered at the edges, glitching faintly with static before resuming its eerie sing-song melody. The footsteps came next, heavy, uneven thuds that sent faint vibrations through the floor. Every step sounded like it belonged to something too big, too deliberate to be safe. He pressed himself deeper behind the stack of discarded servos and metal plating, barely daring to breathe. The air was thick with oil and burnt plastic; the smell of the animatronics lingered in every corner of the room, suffocating. His fingers clenched around the cold, greasy wrench.

She was close now. The faint whir of motors came with each movement, and the occasional sharp click, joints locking and releasing as she turned her head from side to side. He could picture it perfectly even without looking: that chipped pink beak, those glowing magenta eyes sweeping over the shadows, the fixed, artificial grin.

“Whooooo wants caaaaandy?” she chirped again, voice distorting into sinister rasp.

He swallowed hard. His throat was bone-dry.

Alright, think. Distraction. He tightened his grip on the wrench and peered out just enough to spot the automatic doors on the far end, the ones that led back to Parts and Service. The room was dim, lit only by the flickering overhead bulbs. One of them buzzed angrily, threatening to die at any second.

Timing had to be perfect.

With a silent breath, he tossed the wrench across the room. It clanged hard and then skittered to a stop near the door. Instantly Chica’s head snapped toward the sound. Her eyes flashed white as her processors whirred to recalculate. Then she moved slowly, deliberate steps toward the noise. Each one felt like a countdown. The doors opened with a hydraulic hiss. She stepped through. He waited... one minute, two then three, just until the hum of her servos faded. No more footsteps. No more candy offers. Just the low mechanical drone of the facility breathing in the silence she left behind. He exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours, pressing a shaking hand against his chest. His heart felt like it was trying to punch through his ribs.

“Jesus,” he whispered to no one. “That was-”

He didn’t even finish the sentence. Just sat there for a while, trying to collect himself. The floor was cold beneath him, the back of his shirt damp with sweat and grime. He could feel the sticky residue of oil on his palms. He looked like hell. Eventually, the adrenaline began to ebb. Time hadn’t passed like it should have maybe five minutes tops but it felt like hours. When he finally stood, his legs trembled slightly. He brushed the dust off, patted his thighs, forced a shaky breath.

“Alright... okay,” he muttered. “Let’s get this over with.”

He made his way toward the half-disassembled machine in front of him, a deactivated shell waiting for its next part. The computer terminal beside it blinked quietly, waiting for input. He tapped the touchscreen with trembling fingers, skimming through the repair log. Torso and spine replaced successfully. Lower body spared. Diagnostics stable. Good. Everything looked fine. Everything was finally under control... But there was a soft whir behind him. He turned slowly, praying he was wrong and that maybe it was just a loose fan or the HVAC kicking on. But she was there. Glamrock Chica stood halfway out of the shadows, head tilted just enough that her glowing eyes caught the light. Her beak opened with a faint, mechanical creak. “Found you.”

Always with the staring.

Those purple LED eyes bright, empty pinpricks framed by chipped pink eyelids locked onto him with an intensity that made his skin crawl. The light inside them flickered, glitching like static trying to remember what it once was. Her pupils, mechanical dots that shrank and widened without rhythm, twitched violently as though she couldn’t process what she was seeing.

Glamrock Chica stood frozen, head tilted just slightly, head feathers bent out of shape. Her servos made a low, stuttering hum as her expression twisted into something that looked horrified. For a fleeting moment, he could almost believe there was someone inside that expression, someone trapped behind the glass of her digital gaze. Her trembling hands flexed as though she wanted to reach out and confirm that he was real. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Actors rarely saw each other out of suit, not in the flesh. The rules were strict, obsessive, almost ritualistic. “Stay in your suit outside of your green room. Remove it only when hidden from public view.” Management repeated it like gospel. No one questioned why. No one wanted to.

But Susie had seen Jeremy without his. It had been one of his bad days, the kind of day that stripped away the smiling mask and left only raw exhaustion underneath. He’d been clashing with management for months before the accident, growing more reckless every week. They said he was becoming “difficult,” “disruptive,” “noncompliant.” He said he was tired of pretending everything was fine. He’d pulled off his suit that day in the maintenance corridor, his undershirt drenched in sweat, hands trembling with frustration. She remembered how he’d looked, hollow-eyed like he hadn’t slept in days. She remembered the way his voice cracked when he said, “They don’t care about us, Susie. We’re just parts they can replace.” and maybe, in some cruel twist of irony, he had been right. Her head jerked, her beak opening slightly as if to speak but all that came out was a faint buzz of static.

She flinched. The movement was human, too Susie. A flicker of recognition clouded by grief. He thought about how Freddy had grown sluggish that last summer, his joints sticking from overuse and overheating. How the kids climbed over him until his frame creaked. Management just smiled and told him to keep performing. He thought about Roxy, about how she’d stare at her reflection for hours, muttering under her breath about being perfect, about being the best. About how she’d quietly beg the tech team for upgrades that never came and Chica... poor Chica. She’d been forced to sing about greasy pizza and sugary drinks while her character file constantly reminded her she was “an advocate for healthy living.” The contradictions tore her personality apart, fragment by fragment. Bonnie had been caught in the middle of it all. He’d tried to play peacemaker, tried to calm them down when things got bad but every time he brought their concerns to management, they’d laughed it off. “As long as the characters perform correctly, it’s not our problem.”

Now, standing there under the flickering light, he realized what those words had really meant. They didn’t fix them. They bent them until they broke.

Chica’s head twitched again. Her voice box crackled, “Jeremy?”

The sound made his blood run cold.

Through the haze of pixels on her HUD, Chica initially thought it was another system glitch. They had been experiencing problems all week after the Nightguard seemingly befriended the boy they were chasing. But how could it replicate the face of someone who had been wiped from the database? They can't even scan the image of the blue rabbit, which is noted as just another neon sign or cardboard cut-out. So how could it torture her with the face of a dead friend? It's just cruel. She's already been pushed to the edge; she's ravenous all the time and eats everything in sight. She's even been eating mould and forcing herself to throw it all back up at 6am so that she doesn't gain weight from her late-night scavenging. The stress is too much for her. During the day she's usually fine, maybe playing a little too fast nowadays and desperately trying to keep her mind off the little boy who never leaves her thoughts. Chica is terrified of a child seeing her exit of the suit, but at the same time, she can't afford to lose the extra speed and strength she gains from wearing it. After all, she tried to coax him out once and he called her a rabbit woman and stabbed her hand with a screwdriver! At night, her suit goes haywire and she's constantly fighting it. It won't stand up straight; it's always trying to crouch and hunt, but maintenance never finds a problem. Sometimes, when the others aren't nearby, she cries. She cries over the fact that she can't seem to do anything right anymore and over the way her gentle touch has been replaced by pistons that crush anything they get hold of. The command is always "Find Gregory", but she's terrified that she'll kill him instead. 

Food had once been her only source of comfort, a nightly ritual that helped to dull the pain. But now it felt more like a crutch, the last fragile thread holding her together and that thread was fraying fast. She knew her grip on reality was slipping. She had only come down here because of what she thought was a hallucination that somehow turned out to be real. She’d convinced herself that Glamrock Bonnie was actually being repaired and that they were cutting corners to shove someone else into the shell. The thought shattered her, someone else wearing her friend’s death trap like a costume. It felt like desecrating a grave.

She couldn’t take it. Not again. Not like this. Something inside her shorted out, a feedback loop of fear and hunger and memory that twisted into something monstrous. Her head jerked violently, feathers scattering from the motion. The pleasant voice that once sang birthday songs now broke into a fractured shriek as her systems overloaded. In that single, shuddering instant, she didn’t see a friend anymore.

She didn’t see Jeremy.

She saw prey.

The sound that tore out of her speaker wasn’t a word just a guttural, static-laced screech as her body lunged forward. He barely had time to move before hundreds of pounds of reinforced alloy came crashing toward him. Instinct took over. He threw himself to the floor just as Chica’s body slammed into the containment cylinder behind him, glass spider-webbing with a thunderous crack. The impact reverberated through the room, setting off a shower of sparks from a nearby panel. He didn’t wait to see if she was down. Her head twisted at an unnatural angle, the grinding, crunching sound of endoskeleton servos misaligning filled the air and then she was moving again, clawing herself free, her beak snapping open and shut like a predator’s maw.

“Don’t- please don’t-” he gasped, but she wasn’t listening.

She lunged again, slamming both hands into the floor where he’d been a heartbeat before. Metal talons gouged deep trenches into the concrete. He rolled, pain shooting through his shoulder as he scrambled to his feet. Run. He didn’t think, there was no plan, no direction. Just the white-hot rush of terror flooding his veins as he bolted for the nearest exit. The automated doors to the maintenance hall hissed open just in time, sensors barely registering his sprinting body before sealing shut behind him. The sound of impact followed almost immediately BANG! the heavy doors buckling inward as Chica slammed against them. Metal shrieked under pressure. He didn’t look back.

The corridors beyond were dark, lit only by the emergency strips lining the walls. His chest burned as he ran, every footstep echoing too loud in the hollow space. The mechanical hum of the Pizzaplex’s underbelly seemed to grow louder with each turn. Endoskeleton storage. He needed to make it there. To hide. To think. The next door, the one leading into the storage wing, was already rising when he got to it, but it felt agonizingly slow. The motor groaned, the steel shutter inching upward like time itself had turned against him.

“Come on, come on, come on!”

He ducked under before it was halfway open, scraping his back on the edge as he tumbled into the room. He kept running, nearly tripping over a loose cable before regaining his footing. The echo of his own panicked breaths filled the air, ragged, uneven, animal. Behind him, the door shuddered again. Then the screech of tearing metal. Chica forced her way through, servos whirring, frame sparking with each movement. The bright purple of her eyes cut through the shadows like twin spotlights, scanning, searching.

The storage area was a maze of conveyors and half-built animatronic parts, arms, heads, torsos all suspended from hooks or lying in heaps like bodies in a morgue. The air was heavy with dust and the faint tang of ozone. He weaved between the machines, ducking under a conveyor belt as he heard her enter. The thunk-thunk-thunk of her footsteps echoed off the metal, disorienting him. Every sound bounced in the wrong direction. For a moment, he thought he’d lost her. Then came the clatter of a dislodged part a mechanical hand falling from a hook and hitting the floor. She turned toward the sound instantly.

Shit.

He bolted again, heart hammering against his ribs so hard it hurt. His shoes slipped on the slick floor as he rounded a corner, knocking over a stack of empty crates. They crashed behind him, the noise exploding through the narrow corridor. Her voice followed, distorted through static and rage. “Where are you, Jeremy?” Hearing his name made his blood freeze.

The voice was broken, half Susie, half machine like something caught between two worlds. There was confusion in it, sorrow even, buried under layers of code and hunger. He could hear her moving faster now, her footsteps turning rhythmic. He sprinted down another hallway, past rows of inactive endoskeletons mounted upright like metal corpses. Their eyes were dark until the motion sensors caught him and one by one, they flickered awake. Dim red lights blinked to life in the sockets of their skulls as their servos clicked and hummed to readiness. Dozens of them. Maybe more. He froze for a moment just to try and gather some idea of what to do next... then he remembered there was a loop here.

A circular path through the storage area, one that led back toward Parts and Service if you knew where to turn. It was his only shot. Behind him, the growing chorus of mechanical sounds, Chica’s shrieks, the whirring endoskeletons, the echo of his own pulse all blended into a single chaotic song. He took off again, the world narrowing to a tunnel of flashing lights and pounding feet. If he could just stay ahead of her. If he could just make it to the loop and out run her to the cylinder he might just survive this night.

Bonnie sprinted down the main corridor, lungs screaming, muscles on fire. The air was heavy and metallic, every breath tasting like rust and panic. His eyes locked onto the large access doors at the far end, salvation, or at least another few seconds of borrowed time. He reached the control panel and slammed his hand down on the first button. The massive door creaked to life, gears turning somewhere deep inside the walls. Slow. Too slow. There were more panels. He spotted the next one across the room, maybe fifteen feet away. Manageable. He darted for it, slipping on oil-slick tiles, nearly tripping over a loose conduit. The door began to rise inch by inch but when he looked up to find the final button, his heart dropped. It wasn’t on this side. It was across the next hallway, past another open chamber, a side room filled with hanging parts and dead machines.

“Shit…” he hissed under his breath.

His body was already shutting down, adrenaline ebbing into exhaustion. His legs burned, his back throbbed with every ragged breath. He stumbled toward the side room, not because it was safe, but because it was away. He slipped inside and collapsed against the wall, the cold seeping through his clothes. His chest rose and fell in sharp, uneven bursts, breaths that refused to quiet down, no matter how hard he tried. The room was dim. Rows of dormant endoskeletons hung from ceiling hooks, their silhouettes ghostly against the faint emergency light. In the centre of the floor sat a single golden present, small, perfect, untouched, its ribbon catching the faint red glow. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it.

“Wouldn’t that be funny,” he whispered to himself, voice shaking. “Open the damn thing, maybe win a plush before I die.”

But he didn’t move. His trembling hands stayed pressed to the floor because laughter didn’t belong here. The quiet hum of the building filled the silence, steady but far too loud when his own heartbeat was trying to drown it out. Somewhere in the distance, metal scraped against metal, a sound that didn’t belong to any machine still working properly.

Then came the footsteps. Heavy. Uneven.

She was close again. Bonnie froze. Every muscle in his body went rigid as the sound of Chica’s servos echoed down the hall. The thudding steps grew louder, then slowed, dragging slightly, like one of her legs wasn’t working right. She’s hurt, he realized, the thought doing nothing to ease the terror blooming in his chest. The noise shifted into a low scrape along the wall, metal against metal. It took him a second to understand: she was using it to steady herself.

“Candy…” she murmured through broken speakers, the word stretched and warped, half-glitch, half-growl.

He pressed himself flatter against the wall. His heartbeat was thunder in his ears. Her shadow, tall, angular, broken by flickering purple light from her eyes. The glow crawled across the floor like spilled neon as she peered into the room. The golden present sat in the middle of the floor, perfectly framed in her vision. Her gaze lingered on it for a second a, silent pause before she moved again. Closer.

Bonnie’s hand twitched, fingers curling into the fabric of his pant leg. Every instinct screamed to run, but even the smallest movement might draw her attention. He forced himself still, muscles burning, throat dry. Chica stepped into the doorway. The light hit her face just right, one cracked eyelid half-closed, the other wide and twitching. She looked half alive, half destroyed. Sparks danced from a tear along her shoulder joint... when did she get hurt?

She sniffed the air or tried to. Her servos made a faint click-click-click sound as she tilted her head. Mercifully, she turned away. He waited until her footsteps started again, slow and heavy, retreating back down the narrow passage. Only then did he allow himself to move, rising from the floor on shaky legs. His knees cracked. He crept to the door, keeping low, eyes tracking the faint movement of her glowing silhouette as she passed through the next corridor. She stopped again near the wall, Bonnie swallowed hard, heart pounding so loud it felt like she might hear it. Staring at her standing at the edge of the narrow route, one arm dragging along the wall as if it was too heavy to lift. He’d have to go that way. There was no other route. For a moment he just stood there, trembling, caught between the urge to survive and the crushing guilt of seeing what she’d become but he took one last breath, quiet and when she turned her head away, he moved.

The final button clicked with a hollow snap and for one fleeting second, Bonnie thought he’d made it. The heavy door slid open with a hiss, gears groaning as he slipped through the gap into the next room. The air here felt heavier, colder, as if the Pizzaplex itself was holding its breath. Then a sound. Faint at first almost like rain on a tin roof. Then louder. Dozens of synchronized, metallic footsteps echoing through the hall he’d just escaped. He froze, turning his head and saw them. A swarm of endoskeletons once lifeless, now animated  emerging from the corridors like a tide of hollow metal. Their glowing red eyes burned through the darkness, hundreds of tiny, pulsing points of light. Their movements were jerky, twitching, but purposeful. United. They weren’t supposed to move like that.

“...Oh, shit” That was all he managed before adrenaline took over again. He ran, echoing wildly through the narrow hall. The pounding of his own heart nearly drowned out the clatter of metal behind him, but not quite, he could still hear them. An entire army of them, chasing in perfect unison, their mechanical limbs scraping and clanging like war drums. The corridor seemed endless, each turn sharper, narrower, the lights flickering overhead in panicked rhythm. His breath came ragged, shallow.

Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t look back.

He rounded a corner too fast and clipped his shoulder against the wall, pain flared white-hot down his arm, but he didn’t slow down. His legs felt mechanical now, moving on instinct alone. His body had stopped asking permission from his brain. The sign ahead flickered weakly, Endo Day-Care - Authorized Personnel Only.

He slid under the door, half stumbling, half diving and nearly lost his footing as he hit the smooth floor of the new room. He turned, grabbing the control switch by the doorframe and yanking it down. The heavy doors began to close and agonizingly slow, the motors whining as if straining under the weight but behind him, the footsteps grew louder. He caught a glimpse through the shrinking gap, the glowing red eyes coming closer, filling the hallway like a sea of fireflies from hell. One endo reached out, claws extended-

The door slammed shut.

Darkness and silence. Bonnie stood there, chest heaving, sweat dripping from his temples as the adrenaline began to ebb. His throat burned, lungs screaming for air. He pressed his hand against the cool metal door, feeling the faint vibration of movement on the other side. The endos were there, several of them clawing, scraping, trying to force their way through but the door held for now, he staggered back, collapsing onto the weirdly plush tile floor, his limbs shaking uncontrollably. Every breath rasped, each one louder than it should have been in the quiet.

Finally, he let himself exhale a long, ragged sound halfway between a sob and a laugh, he was alive... somehow. The room was sealed. He could breathe again. For the first time in what felt like hours, there was no pursuit, no footsteps, no distorted voice calling his name. Only the faint hum of lights overhead and the distant metallic scratching beyond the door. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes... but even in the silence, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the room wasn’t as empty as it seemed. There were deactivated endos hanging on more hooks in a multicoloured room and a desk in the middle. He would take this small break and walk over, picking up a security badge out of curiosity only to see the sea of red lights across from him. 

The next few minutes barely felt real.

Everything blurred, movement, sound, even breath. His body had stopped asking for permission and started running on pure instinct, every nerve screaming for survival. The corridors smeared together in streaks of shadow and red light, the pounding of footsteps merging into a dizzying roar that didn’t seem to come from just behind him anymore, it came from inside his skull. He couldn’t remember when he’d started running again. Couldn’t remember when the noise had stopped. One second he was sprinting through the maze of storage rooms, the next... silence.

Then a crash, a spark and suddenly he was out.

Bonnie stumbled through the final hallway and collapsed face-first onto the cold metal floor of Parts and Service. The world tilted, spun, and gradually steadied again. His hands were bleeding from where he’d torn the electrical panels out of the automated door, wires sparking weakly in the distance. He’d sealed the way behind him maybe permanently. He just lay there for a moment, face pressed to the floor, feeling the faint vibration of machinery humming through the metal. He was shaking, but inside... something had changed and the fear that had driven him, that raw, animal panic was gone, burned out like an overloaded circuit. What was left was emptiness. Numbness. A strange, eerie calm that shouldn’t have existed in a place like this. His breathing evened out, vision steadying. He pushed himself up slowly, every muscle protesting. The lights overhead flickered to life with a low buzz, washing the room in sterile white. He’d made it back to Parts and Service. Somehow.

“Okay,” he whispered, voice hoarse. “Okay, you’re back. You did it.”

No Chica. No endos. Just the hum of machines and the faint beeping of diagnostics screens still running their endless loops. He forced himself to move, one step, then another toward the cylinder chamber at the back of the room. The glass enclosure loomed like a monument, faint condensation running down its surface. The small computer beside it glowed faintly, its readout flashing:

Servicing Complete. Unit Ready for Deployment.

He wiped at his forehead, smearing grime and ....blood across his temple, stepping closer, the cylinder hissed softly. Inside the animatronic, stood perfectly still, arms resting at its sides. Its chest plating gleamed, damaged yet functioning seamlessly, the faint whir of freshly installed servos pulsing beneath the surface. Bonnie exhaled slowly, resting one hand on the edge of the console.

“Looks like you’re all fixed up,” he muttered, voice barely above a whisper. “Guess one of us came out of this okay.”

The computer beeped in acknowledgment, and with a soft click, the cylinder began to open. The locking restraints disengaged, one by one, until the machine stood freely. Then with the slow precision of something waking from a long sleep it stepped forward, metal feet meeting the floor with a deliberate, heavy sound. The faintest trace of light flickered in its eyes as it turned its head. It was waiting. Bonnie stared up at it, the creature he’d just repaired, freed from its cage waiting for its actor. Him.

 "Oh yeah... I am so finding a way to take you home" Bonnie let out a hollow laugh, no way should he feel this safe in front of a massive blue bunny dressed in a red jumpsuit. 

Bonnie let out a massive sigh as he got into the suit. It felt much better now that the inside had been fixed, there was the minor issue of the torso, there was a breeze where the gaping spaces were, but that wasn't too much of a problem. The current plan is to  find Gregory. However, as he helped her stand they'd witness a S.T.A.F.F. bot zoom into the parts and service area, grab a toolbox, and take off again, for some reason ignoring the decommissioned character standing in the middle of the room, strange, but he had other things to focus on. As they left the area, they took the only working lift that happened to lead to Roxy's green room. Had he known it was that easy to get back to Rockstar Row, he would have taken it every time when he was working here. After leaving Wolf's room the coast was clear and there haven't been any more interruptions. He would have noticed the lack of bots after dodging them earlier, but he was far too focused on the fact that he could actually run without bits of metal stabbing him in the leg or wires tickling his hips. His backside still hurts from the escalator incident so he'll be taking the elevators from now on. 

A little while later, Bonnie made it into the atrium in record time, but skidded to a halt when he saw emergency personnel wheeling a badly injured Monty towards the exit. What on earth had he missed? While it was one less person to deal with, it was shocking to see the stupid gator actually hurt. At the elevators he spotted the Freddy animatronic in the charging station between the doors, but it was empty and no one was paying attention to it. This seemed suspicious, especially since Gregory was supposed to be with Freddy, meaning that he would now have to find the child in some random spot again. Great. It was back to square one, but at least his hearing was enhanced so maybe, by some miracle, he would run into one of them. If Frederick is anything like how he remembers, he's probably hiding as much as possible so the best place to hide is in the atrium where he'll have a bird's-eye view of the recharge station and be out of the medical staff's sight. Considering his location, Bonnie stalked around the railing, crawling up the escalators please don't slip, please don't slip  before setting up camp on the top floor waiting for the people to leave. Then he'll find a better spot so that by the time Freddy is active again, he can run over, grab Gregory and head to the elevators to go to the lobby. He'll then loop back down the maintenance tunnel to lose the bear and continue searching for that stupid arcade cabinet. In case anyone's wondering, no Bonnie doesn't care that Monty may be crippled now. In fact, he views it as karma after such a monstrous attempt to kill him! 

Little did Bonnie know, Gregory was already nearby and watching him.. with a completely different view on those he trusts.