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Clementine nervously walked down the halls of the infamous horror attraction. She shivered. She had sneaked into Fazbear's Fright at 3:00 a.m. through the back exit. It was dark and Clementine could hardly see the end of the hallway through the cloud of darkness. Clem was terrified of the dark. She was tempted to just run back outside of the building and forget about her plans. But she held strong, clutching her little paper bag tightly to her chest. She tried to convince herself that the dark hallways weren't that scary. After all, this place was supposed to be scarier during the day, right? Nothing was going to pop out and scare her!
She was wandering aimlessly through the building, hoping to stumble upon Damien's office. Maybe if Damien had ever allowed Clementine to stop by on his dayshift, she would know where to find him. But, no, Damien never once allowed Clem to visit him at work. He always said the same thing, 'Clem, you're afraid of your own shadow. Fazbear's Fright is definetely a place that you should stay away from.'
Well, now Damien would be proud of her! After all, she was facing her fears to see him. No, wait, he wouldn't be proud of her. He would be angry! She had just broken into Damien's workplace! Alright, that's not completely true. The door was unlocked, so Clem just walked in. Still, she was trespassing and Damien wouldn't want to be affiliated with someone who broke the rules. Then she wouldn't have anybody to talk to, and she would be alone. She was terrified of being alone.
Clementine rubbed her head with her free hand. "Damien is going to be so mad me! B-But if I beg, maybe he'll let me stay until he gets his break at 6:00 a.m..." She muttered to herself. She started to feel better. "I mean, this place isn't so bad at night. I-I mean, I'll feel better once I find Damien, but this place isn't as nasty and rundown as Damien had me believe."
She continued down hall after hall, convinced that this building was massive, when she had really just been walking circles. She winced and held back the urge to scream when a loud sound emanated over the speakers.
"Hello?" A childish voice asked.
She looked up to where the voice had come from and noticed a tiny flickering red dot. She realized that it was a security camera. Did this mean that Damien was going to find her? Her search for Damien would finally come to an end.
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Damien had his camera focused on the delipidated yellow rabbit animatronic. A mischievious smile spread across his face. The glowing whites of the animatronics eyes stared blankly into the camera. "One of these days, I'm going to rip you apart, Bunny." He spat at the camera, knowing that the animatronic couldn't hear him. Or maybe the damned thing could hear him and was just giving him no response. He switched to a different camera and played the recording of Balloon Boy's voice over the speakers in another area.
There was already something in the room. How did Springtrap get to the area so quickly? It normally took him a few seconds to move from room to room. Then he noticed that the supposed 'Springtrap' wasn't tall or bulky enough to be the wretched golden animatronic. The figure walked closer to the camera and gave a hesitant wave.
Wait, was that...? No, Clem knew better than to come to this place. It had to be a new hallucination. Clem followed the rules. Clem was too smart to come to this hellhole.
The hallucination held up a paper bag and waved it around, as if the bag would explain everything. Yep, that was definetely Clementine Penrose. Damien almost dropped his tablet when he saw a bunny-shaped shadow creeping into the edge of the camera.
Clem was in the building. Clem was in the area that he had just sent Springtrap to. Clem had come to see him. Clem was an idiot.
He jumped up from his office chair and grabbed his metal pipe. He tried to lure Springtrap into another area before bolting down to where the scared girl was. Hopefully, he could get Clementine out of the building before Springtrap found them. Damien could easily hold his own against the torn up animatronic, but he couldn't protect Clem while fighting this thing. Besides, the less Clementine knew about Fazbear's Fright, the better.
It wasn't hard to find Clem at all. She was just standing in the same position, waving at the camera. "Clem!" He whisper-yelled at her.
Clementine yelped and dropped her paper bag. She smiled nervously when she saw him. "Hi, Dami!" She sounded scared and nervous, but at least she was smiling. Good, that means that she still knows nothing about the place that she's in.
"What are you doing here?" He hissed, forgetting how emotional Clem was. She flinched at his harsh tone, her body went rigid at his glare. Too harsh, he thought. Wait, why should he consider her feelings at a time like this? She was in this hellhole at night! She could be dead because of her stupid actions!
Still, he felt just the tinest bit bad for yelling at her when she scrunched up her face like she was going to cry. Wait, if she cried, then the noise would attract Springtrap and- Clementine took a few deep breaths and her eyes fell onto Damien's shoes.
"I w-wanted to see you." She said in a shaky voice, trying hard to keep her composure. "I-I thought you might be h-hungry, so I-"
Damien couldn't believe his ears. "You came here to bring me food?"
She gave a sheepish nod.
That was a fucking stupid excuse, but Clementine's sincere expression made him feel like a jerk. He remembered Springtrap and the dangerous situation that they were in and grabbed her wrist and dragged her behind him.
"D-Damien! Where are we going?" She yelped, giving the paper bag full of uneaten hashbrowns a longing look before allowing Damien to lead her through the building.
"I'm leading you to the exit." He said, as if it was obvious.
"What? No!"
"Clemmy, I promise that if you'll just go home that as soon as that clock hits 6:00 a.m., we'll go and eat anything you want for breakfast." He promised.
"Why can't I stay?"
"I'm protecting you." He firmly stated. Normally, Clem would just back down and give in to Damien's demands, but she was fighting him off frantically, as if giving in wasn't an option. Damien was proud that she was finally standing up for herslef, he was just pissed that she had to do it here, of all places.
"Protecting me from what, Damien?" She asked, digging her heels into the tiles of the floor. It slowed him down, albeit not by much, since Damien was pretty strong for his age.
He couldn't say 'I'm protecting you from a psycho-killer animatronic that will literally dismember you limb-from-limb' to her. Hell, this was the girl that covered her ears when anybody said the word 'penis'! He wasn't just going to just reveal the truth of how shitty and awful the world was to someone as sweet and innocent as her. It wasn't his place.
So, he just ignored her question. "Just trust me, Clem. Go home."
She shook her head and yanked against him. "Not until you tell me why I can't stay!" She yelled. Clem couldn't yell in a place like this, noise attracted the animatronic.
Damien instinctively clapped a hand over her mouth, ignoring her muffled complaints. He heard the faint clicking of metal on the tiles and cursed. Clementine, of course, covered her ears at the long string of obscenities that flowed from his mouth. "I've got to get back to the office, now!" He told her, removing his hand from her mouth.
"We have to get back to the office," She corrected stubbornly.
Damien didn't have the time or patience to argue. He didn't have enough time to get her to the exit, so she would have to stay until he could track Springtrap's movements and find another oppertunity. He gave her a serious look, which she tried her best to return without too much of a smile edging itself onto her face. She knew that he was desperate to get out of the hallway, so she had won for now.
"Don't stop running, okay?" He told her.
She nodded and they sprinted towards the office. As soon as Damien and Clem made it into the office, Damien snatched up the tablet and played the audio in another part of the building. If Damien was lucky, then Springtrap would stay away from the office and he could keep Clem away from the cameras, so she wouldn't see Springtrap. He wouldn't be able to do any research with Clem there, so he would just have to keep her away from everything. But why was Clem so determined to stay with him?
"So, Clem, explain why you were so adamant that-" He looked up to find her looking in the crate of salvaged things. She pulled out a Marionette mask and rubbed her fingers over the polished surface. Lucas always made sure that everything in that crate was in mint condition for the attraction. She seemed fascinated by the chosen design and peeked at Damien through the eyeholes.
"Isn't this mask cool? I really like it." She said, holding the mask in her arms. Damien wanted to take the porcelain mask and smash it into the wall. He wanted to crush the puckered lip smile that was painted onto its surface into dust.
He refrained from going into a fit of rage, only because Clementine was looking at him with such a sincere expression. He gulped and forced a smile onto his face, which made it look like he was baring his teeth like a dog. Clementine tentatively took a small step back and set the mask back down into the box.
"What were you going to ask me?" She asked, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet.
"Why did you want to see me so badly?" He asked, trying to tear his gaze from the Marionette mask that he hated so much.
"I-I told you w-why." She stammered.
He locked gazes with hers. She wasn't telling him everything. "Clem."
"I-I'm serious! I'm telling you the truth!" She stuttered. Then she dropped her gaze and sheepishly added, "I love y-you.."
Damien knew for a fact that she was lying now. She only told him that she loved him if she was lying, as if saying those three words was a secret apology for lying. It was a habit that Damien hoped that she would never break, because knowing when Clem was hiding something from you was important.
"You want me to believe that you snuck into this building just to eat breakfast with me?" He asked.
She nodded vigorously, but didn't say anything for fear that she was caught lying. Again.
Damien didn't look convinced. "So, if I eat breakfast with you, then you'll leave?" He asked.
She thought for a moment. "How about you let me stay until the nightshift ends?" She bargained. "And then we can get a real big breakfast?"
"Not on your life." He said dryly. He immediately regretted his choice of words. Why did he have to say those words?
"I'll pay for it." She pressed.
"No."
"I'll bake you as many lemon cookies as I can make." She offered.
That actually was quite a tempting deal, but he couldn't. "No, Clem. You're going to leave as soon as-"
"What's a Springtrap?" She asked. Damien turned to see Clementine looking at a poster in the office. Goddammit, he should've remembered that there were posters about the place everywhere.
He had to think of something, quick. He couldn't tell her that Springtrap was an animatronic with a human being stuffed inside of it, you know. He wanted to make sure that Clem never had to know about the dark secrets of the old restaurant chain. And Clem practically would believe anything you would tell her because she was that gullible. In fact, it was concerning how trusting she was.
"Dami? Damien!" Her voice snapped him out of his thoughts. "What's a Springtrap? You're making me nervous." She twisted her purple shirt in her hands.
"Well, Clem, a Springtrap is a foreign word that means 'worthless piece of shit'." He lied. She brushed off his minor swearing and pulled at her ears.
"Oh, okay. What language is it?" She asked.
Shit.
"Uh, it's... Gaelic." He blurted.
She nodded like she understood and dropped the subject. Damien sat her down in the corner of the room and covered her to her neck down in a blanket that was laying around. She was out of the way and she was safe. That's all Damien needed. He checked the clock on the desk.
4:30 a.m.
An hour and thirty minutes left. Hopefully, he could get her out of here before then. He had an urge to beat a certain golden bunny's face in with his metal pipe and he didn't want Clem around long enough to see just how violent he could be.
Clem screamed. He turned his focus away from the camera screens, where he had just managed to locate Springtrap, and looked over to an extremely pale Clementine. She was breathing extremely heavy. Abandoning his tablet, he ran over to her.
"Clem, what's wrong?" He asked.
Clementine curled herself into a ball and looked out at the window that linked to the outside hall. Her breathing was shallow and she was tearing at her ears.
"Clemmy?" He tried again, slowly reaching out to her. She flinched when he layed his hand on her shoulder.
She looked up at him with fear-filled eyes. She pointed to the window, where a top hat was just barely sticking up into the window. "Damien, I saw something." She choked.
Dammit, he knew something like this would happen. "It's okay, Clem." He told her. He was about to reboot the ventilation system since he was sure that that would help Clem's predicament. Now he can't leave her alone after she saw a hallucination. She might do something crazy.
"What was that?" She asked, still stark white.
"So, you wanted to go to a big breakfast on my first break, huh?" He asked, trying to calm her down without explaining that she had just seen a hallucination of an animatronic. "I'll tell you what, if you can stay out of trouble and keep that little button nose from nosing around, I'll let you make me those lemon cookies."
She gave a small laugh, one that he could faintly hear over the rustling in the vents.
"Shi-" He turned to Clem, who still looked pathetic and pale. He could bend his language a little if would calm the girl down. "Shi... Shitake mushrooms!"
The girl curled up in the corner gave him another small laugh, but the smile lingered on her face for just a few seconds more. She was starting to calm down.
Damien spotted Springtrap in the vents and quickly sealed that vent. Then he rebooted the audio system, just in case.
"What was that noise?" Clem asked, looking around. Did that mean that the Freddy hallucination was getting closer?
Damien turned his chair around to face Clem, who was cowering in her corner. "Listen to me, Clem. Keep your head down and don't look up until I saw so, okay?"
Clem wasn't listening. Her gaze lingered just above Damien's head. She was shivering again.
"Clemmy?"
No response.
He slowly turned his chair back around to see what Clem was looking at and had a faint idea of what it was. Sure enough, he came face-to-face with Phantom Freddy. Strangely, Freddy's narrowed gaze was focused on Clem, not him. The hallucination lunged at Clem, who kicked her blanket off in a hurry before jumping up. Screaming and crying, she fled from the office.
Damien was about to scream at the hallucination for what it did, but the Phantom animatronic faded away into the air before Damien could so much as open his mouth. Then he reaized: they were just trying to scare Clem off into the building so that Springtrap could find her. "You goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch!" He yelled at the place that Freddy was moments before.
He fixed the air ventilation to make sure he wouldn't start getting lightheaded and tried to track Clem down, while still trying to keep an eye on Springtrap. He hadn't warned her fast enough.
He made sure that Springtrap was far, far away from where he thought Clem was before picking up his metal staff and running after Clementine.
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Clementine ran blindly through the halls, occassionally bumping into walls and tripping onto her face. Not only was she extremely clumsy, the purple heels that she wore didn't help her at all. She hoped that whatever that thing in the office was had stopped following her. She turned a corner and she nearly lost it.
A giant red metal fox launched itself at her. She ducked down, clutching her head with her hands. She tried to get up, to continue moving, but her legs were refusing to listen to her demands. She glanced around through her strained tears. The wolf-fox thing was gone.
She got up and started running aimlessly. If she was lucky, she would manage to find Damien or the exit. Whichever came first. Maybe Damien was right. She should've never come here. She had no idea what was going on, yet she felt like she should know. If she could gather simple context clues, maybe she would find her answers.
What was she thinking? Why did she willingly come into this place because of her stupid fear of being alone? Why did Clementine stupidly enter a horror attraction? She couldn't even read a Goosebumps book without having nightmares. She was a coward, a baby. She was seeing things, scary things.
Am I going crazy?
She didn't know. She just needed air. She couldn't breath with all of this pressure on her chest. She closed her eyes, shook her head, and kept running. She barreled into a wall. Maybe closing her eyes wasn't such a good idea.
She picked herself up and continued to run. She ran in random patterns, making her feel even more lost, as if she had any idea where she was going, anyway. Her vision was fuzzy from running into the wall, but she tried to focus on getting out of the building. Damien was right, this place was too scary for her.
When her vision cleared, a masked face gave her a puckered smile. It was the mask that she had been admiring in the office not too long ago. She tried to move around the Phantom, but the Phantom moved to stand directly in front of her. She turned around, realizing that she was trapped. Unless she somehow made it past the puppet in front of her, she was at the mercy at the strange creatures around her.
She shrank against the wall as the puppet hallucination drew closer. Now she knew she was crazy. She swore that the puppet-thingy was sizing her up. Each step that the Marionette drew closer, the harder Clem fought to breath. Her vision started to get blurry. She tried to process everything, but she found that she couldn't even lift her arms or legs.
Her vision started to fade into black and she lost consciousness.
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Damien hurried off in the direction that he thought he saw her run in. He came to a dead end. He tried circling around the perimeter, but he never once saw her. He stopped occasionally to listen for the tell-tale sobs or heavy metal footsteps. He had to find her before Springtrap. He didn't know what Springtrap wanted with her, but Damien was pretty sure that whatever they would do to her would be to spite him. Because they just loved to fuck him over.
Fucking hell, this is one of the reasons that Damien doesn't let anybody near the building when the night shift starts. Because people slow him down, people became another liability that he has to keep track of, people get in his way! People... made him worry.
He could protect himself. He could tolerate how the job slowly chipped away at his sanity. Clem, however, could not. Which is why she should've left when she had a good oppertunity to run. But instead, she stayed. Like an idiot.
She was like a kid in a death store.
And Damien certainly wasn't going to have any fatalities on his watch. He slowed his pace when he saw the purple shoes on the ground. They were the same ones that Clem had worn earlier. Did that mean he was on the right track? He froze for a moment, listening for any noises that would give him an idea of what was coming. He heard a small pitter patter on the floor and he assumed that it was Clem. He followed the soft noises, stopping occassionally to make sure that he was heading in the right direction.
Then that's when he noticed that the fucking golden rabbit with a sadistic grin forever plastered on its face leaning over something in the hallway. There was a pool of red liquid from a spot on the floor. Springtrap's exposed metal fingers had the liquid dripping somewhat rhythmically onto the yellowing tiles.
Drip... Drip... Drip... Drip... Drip... Drip... Drip...
He hoped that this was just a hallucination. Utter shock and confusion prevented him from beating the shit out of the torn apart animatronic. He glanced past Springtrap, who still had his back to Damien.
His heart stopped when he saw the familiar purple color of Clem's shirt covered in the crimson fluids.
It's not what it looks like, he tried to reason with himself. Clem's okay. She probably stumbled back into the office and cried herself to sleep in the corner.
Springtrap turned around, revealing its blood soaked exterior. The most disturbing part was the fact that Springtrap's mouth area was covered with the same liquid that was on his hands, as if Springtrap had ripped his victim open with his-
Damien shook his head in denial.
Clementine Penrose was too young and too innocent to just end up as another stain on the walls.
Springtrap's eyes glinted and he tilted his head to the side, as if daring him to look at the masterpiece that he had just created.
And there she was, the girl that Damien had been looking for. Her eyes were wide open and glazed over, her mouth open in a silent scream. Fresh tears were still falling from her face. Her stomach was torn open and Damien assumed that, by the markings he saw, Springtrap had ripped her open with his metal teeth.
Damien was about to attack the stupid animatronic when the animatronic simply walked away, as if he had satisfied his desire to hurt Damien for the night. Damien looked down at his watch.
5:40 a.m.
Only a few more minutes until the nightshift was over. He decided that Clem was more important than beating Springtrap into a bunch of spare parts. He bent down beside her.
"Clem?" He asked, knowing that there would be no response. Still, he wanted everything to be okay. If he had only been a few moments faster... "Clementine?"
Damien could've sworn that she slightly moved her head, but that might've been just hope. "C'mon, Clem! Wake up!" He yelled, no longing caring where the fuck he was. "W-We're supposed to go and have that big breakfast you wanted, remember?"
She responded to his words, somewhat. Her eyelids just barely opened. If she wasn't dead yet, she would be soon unless he got her to a hospital. "Dami...?" She asked, albeit weakly.
"Yeah, that's right. I'm here." He responded, trying to be as calm as he could. Clem didn't need any kind of excitement right now, especially in her condition. And by condition, he meant her having her fucking stomach ripped open.
"I-I'm sorry." She choked out. She forced herself to sit up, while Damien was trying everything in his power to lay her back down. Sitting up would put a lot on unpleasant pressure on her lower abdomen and Clem would be able to see that her blood was everywhere. Clem was hemaphobic, and the last thing he wanted to do was to have Clem freaking out.
"What are you sorry for?"
"I'm sorry that I made you mad." She answered in a shaky voice, still attempting to sit up. She was getting much weaker and could hardly prop herself up on her elbow.
"I'm not mad at you. Not anymore." He said. "But why did you come here?"
Clem went silent for a moment and Damien was afraid that he had lost her. "I didn't want to be alone." She finally answered. "But I'm not alone anymore. I have you." The faintest smile graced her lips and her eyes had this distant look in them. And then she went still, her face frozen with tears still falling, a small smile, and eyes still open. It was an image that would haunt Damien. He closed the girl's eyes with his fingers.
5:59
How fucking ironic.
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I'm sorry if Damien seemed a little OOC... I don't really know his character really well yet. And I'm sorry if you guys hate my OC, Clem, but I just had this idea and I wanted to share with you my first attempt ever at writing something!
I'm sorry that this isn't the best. In fact, the ending sucked because I couldn't think of a better ending. It may seem rediculous, but this little fic was supposed to be Clem meeting Damien at work, him getting upset but he gets over it, and then the two have breakfast in the office together.
IT DID NOT TURN OUT THAT WAY!
I don't know why, but I can turn a happy idea morbid faster than Jeremy can say "Severo Admin Gotto", and that's pretty fucking fast.
So, I hope you guys liked it!