Angel of Vengeance
a Five Nights at Freddy's/Doctor Who crossover
So dark.
So quiet.
So very, very alone.
She really didn't know how long she had been here. She could remember so little. Every day was a new day. Oh, she knew the others here, her brothers and sister, and she knew what they had to do, every day, while she waited silently here. Then at night came the real business, when she could come out and join them.
She never really remembered it.
Not the way most people remember things.
She only knew what she was, who she was, and what they had to do.
Each night, a new night.
Even him. She knew him best of all, loved him best of all, but yet each night was a new night, starting over, as if they never had started in the first place.
And maybe they never would start. She couldn't have him, not like this.
No one wanted him, and no one wanted her.
The lights in the hallway had gone out. After a while, she let the door to the storeroom open, and peered out around the doorframe. It was silent. No music. No laughter. No voices.
No screams.
Not yet.
She scrambled up the wall in the darkness, clinging like a spider, and hung from her favorite place on the ceiling like some crazy metal chandelier. Out of sight, able to pounce on anyone who came by.
So dark.
So quiet.
But not alone anymore.
At the end of the hall, where it turned towards the main dining room, someone new was there.
She didn't know what to think about that.
She didn't remember last night. But she didn't know this new figure either, and felt uneasy about that.
Dimly, she wondered why, then dismissed the thought and settled down to wait.
"Hello, hello!"
Jeremy was twenty-five and already feeling washed up. The first night of his new guard job had been bad. Last night been worse. This wasn't worth minimum wage, but he had nowhere else to go. He owed it to his mother to at least try to hold down a job. She hadn't believed him, about the animatronics trying to come into his office. And now his stupid lazy boss was calling him up. Or rather, a recording of his boss was calling. The stupid jerkface wouldn't even talk to him on the phone; he just left messages.
"So, you've made it another night! Wow, I'm impressed. You're doing great. Ah, just so you know, we made a new purchase and you need to make sure it doesn't get damaged. It's not animatronic; it just stands there."
Oh fantastic. Another friggin' statue?
"Not sure how we're going to use it long term, but it was a great deal. Make sure you don't scratch it. Oh, and the lights have been a little screwy today, so be careful with your flashlight. Good luck!"
He pulled up his tablet and checked the security cameras. Like hell he was gonna actually go out into the restaurant and look for the damn thing. The animatronics were all where they ought to be. Bonnie, Chica, and Freddy, all standing on the stage. The curtain around Pirate Cove was closed, the out-of-order sign still in place. At the end of one hallway, there was Balloon Boy. Too far away to hear his skin-crawling giggles, which was a blessing. At the end of the other hall, though, there was the new one.
He frowned. That thing didn't fit at all with the place. But hell, nothing about this place made sense. Bringing children to see creepy robots like these? He didn't understand it. So maybe a freaky piece of religious artwork was totally normal. Looked like it belonged in a church, or maybe a tomb. It was a stone angel, covering its face with its hands like it was crying or something.
Hell, maybe if the robots didn't freak kids out, this thing would do the trick.
The newcomer was absolutely motionless.
Was it animatronic too? She didn't think so. She crept along the ceiling, closer to it. Not far away from Pirate's Cove, and him. She loved him, insofar as any of them could love, and she thought probably he loved her too. Once. In the time none of them could remember.
The newcomer was an angel, and it looked very sad. Crying.
She swung down from the ceiling to inspect the newcomer closely.
Stone. Never had stone here before.
It's not like she had any real basis for comparison, but this was not something that belonged in the Pizzaria. You were supposed to be happy here. This stone angel was not happy. It was weeping.
"The happiest day of their lives..."
She didn't know where that thought came from. She had had it many times before, so it was familiar, but she still did not know where it came from. She did not know anything beyond the endless, agonizing present.
So how did she know what stone was, then?
The cup of coffee had already gone cold. He'd brought it to stay awake, but he was equally terrified of winding up with a full bladder. He'd seen the bathrooms here in daylight; they were creepy enough then. He didn't need to see them while cornered by murderous animatronics.
He leaned out the door and peeked down the right hallway. Nothing there. He peeked down the left hallway. There was that stupid statue. And . . . did he see something moving in the shadows around it?
He darted back into his office and slammed the door shut. Probably an overreaction, but that thing was creeping him right the hell out, and *something* was there, moving . . . .
She heard the door slam.
So. He'd come back.
Somehow, she knew he'd been here before, although she couldn't remember what he looked like or who he was, or how many nights it had been for him. The adults who came here were all interchangable, equally doomed.
She swung back up to the ceiling, and turned her back on the statue, skittering along the ceiling.
There was a window, and she peeked into the office.
The man was staring back at her, his eyes wild with shock. She knew unquestioningly that he hadn't seen *her* before. She'd been in too much shadow. She turned her head slowly, letting her mouth loll open to show all her teeth, and she swung the second face around to stare at him as well.
There was another sound, from behind her.
She turned away from the window and looked back.
It had moved.
But it was stone!
She could move very quickly when she wanted to, and right now she wanted to, very very much. She did not know this newcomer. She did not trust this newcomer. It was *different* and she did not know what that meant. So she returned to her storeroom and shut the door.
The only sound he could hear for some time was the pounding of his own heartbeat, amplified by his terror. Eventually, the adrenalin rush settled, and he had the presence of mind to check the other hallway. Nothing there. And then he realized that the weird mangled monstrosity was gone from the window. Cautiously, he opened the door.
Nothing burst through it.
He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He felt the cold sensation of terror sweat drying on his skin, the first time he'd even realized he'd started to sweat. He checked the cameras.
Everybody was where they ought to be. Well, presumably. He didn't really know where the mangled thing belonged. Maybe in a storeroom somewhere; it looked half-finished. Or half destroyed? Had someone attacked it? A person, or one of those horrible creatures? Maybe it had a grudge, then. That was pretty chilling. As if he had any idea why any of them wanted to kill him, now he got to wonder why this thing seemed to have his number too.
Wait.
He flicked back to the left hallway camera again.
The statue.
It had moved.
Its hands were in front of it, and it was looking straight at him.
Well, looking at the camera. Obviously not at him. It was a damn statue. It couldn't possibly have a mind, and if it did, it wouldn't know what a camera was. The animatronics, well, at least they had robotics. This . . . he must have just forgotten what it looked like. It was a stone statue, and statues don't move. Something inside of him had been weeping, not the angel . . . .
But deep inside, he knew that wasn't right.
Behind his curtain in Pirate's Cove, Foxy moved.
He spent so much time back here. Mostly marked "out of order", so he didn't get to perform for the kids during the day. He never could decide if he was jealous or furious about that.
It was dark here. Dark and safe.
Except that he was here, and that meant it was not safe. Not safe at all.
There's a monster in here, you know.
The curtain retracted, and Foxy stepped out.
He started towards the hallway, to scare the new security guard again, and see how long it would take for him to quit. Or worse, if it came to that.
But then he, too, saw the statue.
It was stone, and motionless. It held its hands out, palms up, as if it was supposed to be holding a pizza, and its face was utterly calm with just the faintest hint of a smile.
Foxy could not remember what he had been before, who he had been before, if there had ever even *been* a before. But even so, something in him looked at that smile and knew that it was very wrong.
Why was this thing here? Was it actually animatronic? An interloper? Or was it flesh?
He raised his hook to tap it, but a sound behind him made him stop. He straightened up and turned his head 180 degrees around to look straight back.
Security camera.
The guard was watching.
Foxy left the statue alone.
Oh god.
It was the fox. The stupid pirate fox with his stupid eyepatch and that hook that looked way too sharp to belong in a kids' theme restaurant. What sick freak designed this place?
The fox was checking out the weird statue. Somehow that made Jeremy feel a little better, as if even the animatronics were creeped out by it. But that meant admitting they were sentient, and he really didn't want to go there. Not that he had a lot of choice, but he'd argue the point as long as he could.
And then the fox moved.
His head turned *all*the*way*around*, and Jeremy's skin crawled to see it move in that unnatural way. Foxy was looking straight at the camera.
The statue was at the end of the left hallway. Jeremy put the tablet down and got his flashlight ready. He didn't know why, but Foxy seemed to really hate the flashlight. But he didn't know how much battery he had, so he didn't turn it on. Not yet.
The guard!
Foxy walked down the hallway. He could run very fast, but for the first approach of the night, he wanted to take it slow. There was plenty of night still.
He didn't know why it felt so good to scare the security guards. So good. So. Good. SO. GOOD. Sometimes it just felt satisfying to drive them off. Grownups had no business here. Grownups were bad. The security guards were grownups. There had been a grownup, once, who had done something very, very bad . . . . And sometimes it felt good on a deeper, more visceral level. He could feel a strange thrill through his endoskeleton as he slowly approached the back office.
He imagined he could hear the guard's legs shaking. And then he heard something else. A soft sound, like a flutter, mixed with a sharper sound, like the scraping of stone on concrete. Only this wasn't the guard. The guard was in front of him. This sound came from behind.
Foxy turned his head all the way around.
The stranger had moved. Its hands were covering its face.
That wasn't right.
Foxy turned the rest of his body around to face the statue and started stalking back towards it.
Jeremy peeked down the hallway. Foxy was standing in the dim light in front of the statue, his attention apparently fixed on it. Jeremy let out a long, ragged breath and flopped down into the crappy old office chair behind the desk.
The stupid fan was blowing in his eyes. With adrenaline pouring through his veins, he hardly cared.
Then he noticed a light blinking on the phone.
What the hell? Another message? But he hadn't heard the phone ring, and it was way too crappy a system to support message delivery. His hand shook as he reached out to hit the "Play" button.
"Erm, hallo? Is this recording?"
That wasn't his boss. It sounded like some fancy English dude. Maybe someone confused, because who the hell would be calling Freddy Fazbear's at - he peeked at the clock - two in the freakin' morning?
"Hallo! Erm, you're probably wondering why I'm calling. You're probably wondering *how* I'm calling too, since this is an ansaphone, but don't worry about that. Let's just call it timey-wimey and get on with it."
Jeremy forgot all about the animatronics for a moment and stood just blinking incredulously. "You're pretty confused, mister," he said out loud to the recording.
"Yes, yes, probably," said the man on the answering machine, and Jeremy jumped. "Only I'm not mister. You can call me the Doctor."
"How are you hearing me?"
"Yes, Strange, that, isn't it?" Jeremy could swear he heard a smug grin. "But never mind. Just accept that I'm terribly clever, and I won't bore you with how I found out that phone's serial number, went back in time to the factory where it was made, and added a time-space transceiver, before coming back to have this conversation."
A new voice broke in. "Would you just get on with it?" The voice was female, and if Jeremy wasn't mistaken, Scottish as well. "Sorry, Jeremy," she said, and he jumped again to hear his own name. "He just can't help reminding everyone how clever he thinks he is."
"Amy, please, our young Jeremy is in terrible danger." Jeremy's skin was crawling already; now he wanted to run. Screw minimum wage! But he didn't dare leave the room while those THINGS were out there. "Okay," said the Doctor. "You're trapped in a creepy pizza restaurant with a lot of robots, right?"
The Doctor paused, and it took Jeremy a moment to realize the question wasn't rhetorical. How'd he know where the phone was but not know for sure this was Freddy Fazbear's? "Uh, yeah," he said.
"Good!" said the Doctor. "That's wonderful. I suppose you thought this job would be nice and easy, but then those robots started moving, coming after you."
"Uh . . . yeah . . . what do you know about it?"
The Doctor tsked. "No spoilers; I can't tell you about the future of this place. But what's the biggest danger there?"
"Freddy," said Jeremy, "or maybe Foxy. Foxy's *fast*. Oh, and there was this creepy mangled thing . . . maybe I should call that one Mangle. Don't know where the hell that thing was hiding the last two nights . . . but they've all been trying to kill me."
"Good news! You're wrong! They're not what you should be worrying about!"
Jeremy let out a nervous chuckle. "Seriously? I've been trying to keep them away the last two nights, and now you tell me they're not actually dangerous?"
"Oh, Jeremy, no . . . and I'm very sorry, but they are actually very, very dangerous. It's just there's something worse."
Foxy's one good eye stared unblinking at the statue. He studied it more closely than he had before. It was surely solid, not animatronic. Not alive. Not flesh. Not enemy, not moving. He did not understand. It wasn't human, but it wasn't one of his kind either. It clearly wasn't a *child*. But that's all there was in the Pizzaria. There was nothing else it could possibly be.
It was covering its face with its hands, not holding them out in front, not ready to carry a pizza to a lucky young boy or girl.
The old rage suddenly swelled in his endoskeleton. What did it think it was doing? How dare it come here! It did not belong!
He leaned over to look more closely at the face behind the hands. If anything, the beatific smile had grown bigger.
"Have you seen the statue yet?" asked the Doctor's voice over the answering machine.
"Yeah," said Jeremy. "Creepy thing. What the hell does the boss think, sticking something like that in here? Looks like it belongs in a church, or a tomb or something."
"Funny you should mention tombs . . . I once saw *hundreds* of those in a tomb . . . ."
"Stick to the point, Doctor," said the Scottish girl.
"I'm getting there," he replied, clearly nettled. "It's not really a statue," said the Doctor. "It can move"
"Oh god," said Jeremy. "I thought I saw it change."
"It's called a Weeping Angel. It turns to stone in the sight of any living creature. I think that will include the animatronics, by the way. I can't explain now, but they're *technically* a little bit alive."
Alive? whatever. "Okay, so it's a statue that can move it's arms. How's that supposed to be worse than the monsters that wanna tear me apart? Foxy's got this huge sharp hook. Can't get more dangerous than that, I don't think."
"Listen to me, Jeremy. All the animatronics want to do is get rid of you. The angel wants to feed on you, and anyone else who comes here."
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"
"Look, before I explain further, I think you should check the cameras."
This thing was not right. It was time the others were told. Foxy had his differences of opinion with the others, mostly revolving around him being stuck off in Pirate Cove, but if he was honest, they were all he had. Now.
He stepped back from the angel, then turned to walk out to the main dining room.
Over the noise of his heavy footsteps and the whirring of his motors, he never heard the sound of stone on stone behind him.
Jeremy pulled up the cameras. He had to be careful; his cheapskate boss hadn't given him enough batteries to run the screen all night. Sure, the thing could be tied into the power mains, but the boss was probably too cheap to rewire anything. Would explain a lot.
"It's okay," said Jeremy. "I can see them all. Foxy's in the main dining room now. He's not coming."
"No, check the statue, Jeremy!"
He switched to the camera for the left hallway.
"What the hell?"
The angel was gone.
Freddy, Chica, and Bonnie stared impassively into space as Freddy gestured. They could not speak in any ordinary way; their voiceboxes were too limited. But Foxy screamed, and that got their attention. They had been together too long to not understand that he was concerned, and anything that worried Foxy . . . .
An interloper? A threat to the children? And not just a grownup this time. Something new. Something that moved but was neither flesh nor animatronic was not *right*.
Freddy Fazbear turned his head slightly to better watch Foxy's movements. Outsiders never understood. The perfect day must never end. Their perfect moment would be preserved. Even when the monsters came at night. He'd kill them all if he had to.
He moved, his teddy bear body lumbering compared to Foxy's swift strides, but stronger and more sure. Behind him, he could hear Bonnie and Chica stirring. They followed Foxy to the hallway.
It was empty.
"Oh no," said the Doctor's disembodied voice. "That's not good at all. Any idea where it might have gone?"
"Gone?" asked Jeremy, incredulous. "It's solid stone! Where the hell could it go?"
"Oh Jeremy. I told you, it's not really a statue." The strange English voice sighed. "It turns to stone only when it is being observed. The rest of the time . . . they're fast. Faster than you can possibly imagine. Faster . . . Jeremy, who's the fastest animatronic in the pizzaria?"
"Foxy," said Jeremy, without hesitation. "I barely blocked him yesterday, and I saw him coming from the end of the hallway."
"He's a snail by comparison. They can move across a room faster than you can blink. And that means you need to be looking at it. Find it. Oh . . . but don't keep the cameras on it for long. That can be bad too."
"How?"
The Scottish girl's voice replied. "The image of an angel becomes an angel," she said. It sounded like a recitation. "First Weeping Angel I ever met came out of a video recording. And try not to look it in the eyes."
Oh this just got better and better. "Look, if I can't look at it on the video, but I have to look at it to stop it moving, what the hell am I supposed to do? Go out and play with the killer robots out there?"
There was a distinctly awkward silence from the speakerphone.
So this is it, thought Jeremy. I'm gonna die.
The hallway was empty. Freddy turned to face Foxy, his eyes burning with rage. They had to focus on the security guard, and this *thing* had distracted them all. If Foxy had invented it . . . .
Foxy understood, and shook his head. He squatted down and leaned forward as much as his endoskeleton would allow. There were scuff marks in the wax on the linoleum floor tiles, scuff marks that had not been there yesterday. Something had been here, something very heavy.
He looked up at Freddy and pointed at the scuff marks. He let out a long discordant wail, the only sound his damaged voicebox could make, and then stood.
Freddy leaned over to examine the scuff marks. Foxy was right; something had been here, something that did not belong. He looked Foxy in the eye and nodded.
Then he turned to Bonnie and Chica, nodding at each of them in turn. They all knew what to do.
The animatronics slowly fanned out.
Foxy's scream rang out through the back office and Jeremy flinched reflexively.
"What's that?" asked the Doctor over the phone.
The sound had come from the left, but didn't sound like it was right outside. Jeremy pulled up the left hallway camera on his screen. "It was Foxy," he said. "Oh crap, they're all there. I think they're trying to figure out where the angel went." He picked up his cold coffee, but his hands were shaking too much, so he put it back down. "Look, Doc, I don't know what you're planning, but you've gotta come up with something fast. They're gonna get bored of playing Where's Angel and come for me. I can stop some of them, but not all of them at once."
The Doctor sighed. "People just don't listen to me . . . look, the animatronics are not what you need to be worrying about. The Angel is far more dangerous."
"Yeah?" asked Jeremy. "So how come they're the ones I'm seeing? The only ones who've tried to kill me tonight are Foxy and Mangle. That Angel just ran away. Maybe it's trying to lie low."
"Yes," said the Doctor, "you can think that if it makes you feel better. But it's not true. It's hungry, you see."
Jeremy snorted. "Hungry? What the hell does a statue eat?"
"It feeds on time energy. Yours, mine, maybe even the animatronics, but it will prefer someone like you, someone who can leave the pizzaria, someone with the potential for a long and productive and perhaps, well, might I say 'history altering' life. The more possible futures you have, the more delicious you'll look to it."
Jeremy's eyebrows rose right into his hairline. "What does that even mean?"
The Doctor paused a moment, as if to gather his thoughts. "The Time Lords called them the Lonely Assassins. Lonely, becuase they cover their eyes to prevent accidentally looking upon another of their kind, so they can never look upon one another. They do it even if there isn't another around; it's a force of habit. Assassin, because they can eliminate you so totally and so efficiently that it can happen before you can breathe. But they kill you nicely. They send you into the past. This creates a time differential, which is what they feed upon. They might send you a week back, if they're only looking for a light snack, or they might send you back ten years. A really hungry one, like this, will send you back a lifetime."
Jeremy shook his head sadly. "Maybe that'd be an improvement. Maybe with a new lifetime, I wouldn't screw it up so badly."
"No!" said the Doctor, forcefully. "No," he repeated, more gently. "Jeremy, I know who you are. I know who you are meant to be. I know what your potential is, even if you don't believe in yourself anymore." He sighed.
"You should tell him," said the Scottish girl's voice.
The sound became abruptly muffled, as if someone was putting their hand over the telephone receiver. Jeremy could hear their voices but could not make out the words. They seemed to be arguing. But soon they came to some sort of agreement, and the Doctor spoke again. "I haven't been completely honest with you," he said.
Big surprise, thought Jeremy.
"Your boss thinks he brought the angel in, but the truth is, it already wanted to come. It's here for you, specifically."
Chica watched Freddy, Foxy, and Bonnie fan out across the restaurant. Foxy stalked towards the restrooms. Freddy went for one of the party rooms. Bonnie went for the front entry.
They had been together so long, the three on the stage and the one in his Cove. Singing and dancing for the children. Would a new member of the family be so bad? Maybe Foxy was wrong.
And there was someone else, wasn't there? Somehow she was sure there was another animatronic. But there couldn't be. Could there? It was the three of them on the stage, the one in his cove, and the one that . . . what? She culdn't remember.
She dismissed the thought. It didn't matter.
Foxy said the intruder had been in the left hallway, so she would check the right.
Her feet clanged on the linoleum. She scratched her beak. It could detach; perhaps if she took it off she would look more frightening. It certainly worked on the grownups. She wanted to get a good impression of the newcomer, but even if it was to become part of their family, she wanted it to know who had been here longer, who was more important. If it was joining them, it would have to know where it ranked. If it even existed. She still wasn't sure about that part.
She stepped into the hallway
She saw it.
The angel was real.
The Angel is here for me? Me, specifically? The English dude on the phone was obviously full of it. Full of what, he had no idea. "Yeah, whatever, I think I'm gonna get back to trying to stay alive."
He pulled up the cameras again. This time he decided to check the right hallway.
"Chica!" he shouted. It was that stupid chicken-duck-whatever the hell it was, with the pink underpants and the bib. (Pink underpants? He didn't even want to think about what that said about the sick creep who designed this place.) He turned to hit the door control.
But he couldn't.
The Angel was in the way.
It was standing right in the doorway, its arms outstretched. It wasn't smiling anymore. Its mouth was wide open, showing rows of pointed teeth, and its hands looked poised to snatch him up.
A scream died in Jeremy's throat as he stared at it, frozen with terror. The only sound that came out was a squeak.
Chica saw the statue, lit by the light coming out of the back office, arms reaching through the doorway. A memory came that she couldn't place, of sitting around a campfire with other children, while one held a flashlight under their chin and told a scary story. Maybe she was the one with the flashlight? She didn't know.
It didn't matter. That wasn't her.
She approached the statue. It did not move. That was a little strange. A grownup would have at least looked by now; it's not as if she moved quietly. Was it afraid?
She was now close enough to see its face, sidelit by the flyspotted lamp in the office.
No. Whatever it was, it was certainly not afraid.
"Jeremy? Jeremy? Jeremy, are you there?" The Doctor's voice sounded increasingly urgent, but Jeremey was transfixed. "Remember, I can't see what you see. Is it the angel, or one of the animatronics?"
The angel was absolutely motionless. Solid stone, as far as he could tell. Jeremy felt a bead of sweat beginning to drip down from his hairline but didn't dare wipe it away. He licked his lips, his mouth suddenly dry with terror. When he spoke, it came out at first as a croak. "It's the angel," he said. "Oh god, you were right. It wants to kill me."
"Don't blink!" said the Doctor. "Whatever you do, don't blink! It can cross the room in a blink. It can kill you in a blink!"
He hadn't wanted to blink, but that thought made his eyes burn, as he deeply, deeply wanted to blink. Suddenly not being able to blink wanted him to blink very very much. There was now nothing he wanted more than to blink. And then he had another thought that made his spine crawl. Facing the angel put his back to the other door, which was wide open. There could be anything waiting to leap through it, and the last he looked, all the animatronics were at the end of *that* hallway.
There was only one thing he could do. He backed slowly up towards the door. He had to close the door. He had to close it *now*. His hand flailed blindly behind him, terror sweat building on his skin with each slap. After what seemed a lifetime but was probably only a few seconds, he found the door control. He slapped it, and the door slammed reassuringly shut. He let out a ragged breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
That only left one problem.
He was facing a Weeping Angel, and even if he did know what to do about that, he didn't dare tear his eyes away long enough to do anything.
The animatronics would still be coming. He had to get his flashlight, he had to monitor the cameras, he had to manage the power that was even now draining away, but if he took his eyes off the angel, he would die. Sure, eventually the power would fail, the door would open, and they could come in and kill him, but that didn't matter if the angel could kill him first.
He was starting to understand why the Doctor said the angel was what he really had to worry about.
-*** TO BE CONTINUED ***-
(c) 2016 Kirstin Jones/Calli Arcale, all rights reserved except those granted under terms of service