A/N: Welcome to the new and improved Silent Songbird, Sing for Me, probably nowhere near the best college anthro AU! Complete with improved personalities, more cohesive relationships, better dialogue, and a slower, more realistic, less spastic/jumpy/random pace and perspective!
This story focuses on Golden Freddy/Springtrap, but this story is being written in arcs, so an arc may be about other characters as well.
All information about this story can be found on my profile. I'm only posting the most important information here!
Pairings: Goldie/Spring, Foxy/Mike, Freddy/Bonnie/Chica, Alfred/Bonsai, Marion/Jeremy.
Note: I've dropped PG/PG because meh, I've grown to highly dislike that pairing. Plus the related arc just doesn't seem interesting to me.
Note 2: The setting is somewhere along the east coast, either in North or South Carolina. This is because I grew up in the southeast of the USA and I know its geography/climate/weather patterns/etc better than I know anywhere else.
Warnings: Homosexuality, polygamy/polyamory, human/non-human, transgender and transphobia issues, depictions of depression, abuse, self-harm, potentially suicidal characters, mental and physical illnesses, angsty backgrounds for many characters, strained parental relationships
Music is a major part of this story. I myself am actually a studio art student, but I've spent most of my life in a music program of some kind, so don't worry, I sort of know what I'm doing!
Disclaimer: I own nothing! Everything belongs to Scott Cawthon!
Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies.
Edward Bulwer-Lyton
ARC I, PART I
Moving In
"Please!"
"I told you to go at lunch!"
"Lad, that was three hours ago!"
"We were at your house three hours ago! Come on, Foxy, it's ten minutes until we get to campus, can't you hold it?"
"Nay! If you don't stop you're gonna have a soiled seat!" the fox in question whined pathetically, wiggling in his spot on the sienna's back seat. The person sitting on the seat with him, a light brown bear with bright blue eyes and naturally rosy cheeks, made a face and tried to inch away, although his hip was already pressed against the armrest.
"Goldie, just pull into a gas station or something, I'm sitting right next to him!"
"There's an entire seat between you two," the golden bear pointed out, glancing into the rearview mirror. There were four people in the Sienna besides the driver; two bears, a purple rabbit, and the fox. The bear with the rosy cheeks was sitting in the very back with the fox, though neither had taken the center seat, and the darker brown bear was sitting in the seat right behind the golden bear, looking both amused and disgusted at once. The purple rabbit, in the other center seat, was very clearly simply amused.
"Just pull over!" the fox begged, drumming his hand on his knee. "My bladder's about to explode!"
Goldie sighed dramatically and pulled into a turn lane to a gas station. Thankfully they were already in town, but their destination was still eight minutes off and he'd rather not have a car smelling like Foxy's accident. As soon as he pulled into a parking space, Foxy was out the door and inside the store before any of them could even so much as blink.
Goldie turned around in his seat to look at the others. "I will kill him if I have to room with him again," he warned them, a serious expression on his face. "Love him to death and all that, but I will murder him."
The darker brown bear chuckled, shaking his head. "Ah, Goldie, you said that halfway through last semester."
"And the semester before that," the other bear added.
"And at Christmas," the rabbit put in, a small grin on his face. "Then again, he said the same thing about you."
"You can always room with me this year," Freddy added with a glint in his eye. Goldie made a face.
"Uh, no!," he mock-sniffed haughtily. "Foxy's filth might invade my side of the room, but your OCDness does too."
"I'm not OCD, I just like having a neat space. Everything has its place, and then at least your music stand would stay in its spot."
"Too bad, though," Bonnie interrupted, giving Freddy a grin. "I already staked my claim. My best friend, my roommate."
"I think brother is one step above best friend," Alfred pointed out from the back. "Twin brother even more so."
"What about a triplet brother?" Bonnie asked. "Doesn't that devalue the brother deal, since there's more? Besides, don't y'all three get sick of each other?"
The three bears all exchanged glances, as though considering this. Then, at the very same time, they said, "Not really," in the most flat, matter-of-fact way possible.
Bonnie laughed at the bear triplets and shook his head. "That's exactly what I expected you to say."
"I wouldn't mind not sleeping in the same room as Mr. Cleans-a-Lot though," Alfred said thoughtfully. "Or Mr. Leaves-His-Stand-Everywhere. Then again, I wasn't in your dorm at all last year," he added with a laugh. "I hope I'm not with that guy again- what was his name, Paul? Every time I went to sleep I swore that guy would smother me."
"Paul ain't so bad," Foxy interrupted as he climbed back into the Sienna, a bag of 20-ounce drinks in his left hand. "Great actor."
"He's a sociopath, I swear," Alfred shot back. "Always smiling and bright and cheery and just- eesh."
"Smiling and nice isn't sociopathic, Al," Freddy told his youngest brother, accepting the offered root beer from the fox. Bonnie took his cherry soda and passed Goldie a pepsi, and the fox handed Alfred the bear's preferred orange fanta while settling down with his own grape fanta.
"I'm pretty sure it is, actually," Alfred retorted, opening his bottle. "So, we're, what, an hour behind schedule because of Foxy?"
"Two," the elder bears chorused, with Goldie adding in, "One was Foxy oversleeping and not being ready when we went to pick him up, at least twenty minutes was him being hungry or needing to use the bathroom, and the rest was Freddy being anal about his bedroom."
"I didn't take forty minutes on my bedroom."
"Oh my bad, you took thirty-nine minutes on it."
"Thank you."
The friends all began laughing at the simple response, and without a fox to gripe and beg to use the bathroom, Goldie switched the radio back on. Almost immediately, everyone in the vehicle burst out singing, badly, along to I Need a Hero, which was on the burned disc in the CD player. The disc had been filled with music from the 70's and 80's, and there were some other discs in the glove compartment with music from other eras- including modern, of course- but it had just so happened that they had reached the eighties when Foxy realized he had drank too much.
The last eight minutes passed quickly for the laughing, singing friends, and when they finally arrived to the sprawling, open-space college campus on the edge of the city, each of them were eager to meet up with the rest of their friends and go to their dorm rooms. Goldie pulled into the campus' east parking lot and pulled into his designated spot. "Alright, come on, guys, let's go see where our rooms are and get our keys," Goldie laughed, turning the radio down before shutting the car off.
The five friends climbed out of the van, but they left their suitcases there for the time being as they headed towards the boys' dormhouse, to the lobby and office on the ground floor where they would receive their room keys. It was closer to the southern and western parking lots than the eastern but none of them really minded. The part none of them would like was actually carrying their bags across campus to the dorms on the west side.
"Please oh please don't put me in the same dorm as Goldie," Foxy sighed overdramatically, draping an arm as best he could across his taller friend's shoulders. It was a rather funny sight, actually. "I'll just die if that happens!"
"Oh don't be so dramatic," Alfred called over with a smirk. "You won't die immediately, it'll be slow and gradual and painful."
"Thanks, Al, thanks!" Goldie laughed, shoving the fox off of him and causing him to stumble into Freddy. Freddy steadied the fox as they walked across the grass.
"Woah there, careful," Freddy chuckled, looking at his brother. "Foxy's fragile, you know."
"I'll have you know I am not fragile," Foxy complained, then promptly pulled his right hand from his wrist. "Hm, what do you know, I am fragile." A surprised gasp caught the group's attention, and they looked over at a group of girls, walking along the sidewalk and staring in shock at Foxy's hand.
They watched as the group of girls passed by, their eyes wide and horrified as they stared at the very realistic prosthetic. When the girls were out of earshot, all five boys burst into laughter. "Did you see their faces?" Goldie wheezed between laughs, wiping an imaginary tear from his cheek.
"Imagine their reaction if I had pulled my eye out instead!" Foxy laughed, attaching the hand back to his wrist. "Oh man, I should try that one day!"
"I thought you did that last year. Twice!"
"I should do it in front of the freshies this time, not many of the juniors or seniors reacted last year…"
The group sighed as their laughter finally died down. "So real talk, what's the likelihood of us five being in dorm rooms together?" Bonnie finally asked. "There's five of us and only four to a room."
"Well, you guys've always been together before," Alfred pointed out dryly. "Last year Foxy, Freddy, Goldie, and you were in one dorm and I was right next door with the sociopath. I wonder who I'll be with this time…"
They all chuckled as Freddy opened the glass doors to the dormhouse, allowing the entire group to enter before following. There was a rather long line to the counter, and they all knew it wasn't going to shorten as more people came in, but they chose to find out which dorms they were in first anyway.
They walked over, as a group, to the list on the wall, where two or three people stood. Bonnie, being the tallest, scanned the list until he found their names about halfway down.
"Here we are!" he grinned. "It's me, Freddy, and Foxy in 2B. But Alfred and Goldie are in our old room, 2A."
"Woah, wait, what?" Foxy none too gently pushed his way between two of the other students looking at the list. He scanned the list, and after a moment of intense silence he said, "Mike Schmidt? Who the hell is Mike Schmidt?"
"Mike Schmidt took my place," Goldie whined, though it was more teasing than truly upset. Then he said, "Thank goodness, be sure you warn him about Foxy!" He didn't mind not rooming with them, considering who he'd be stuck with. He pulled the red fox out of the way of the two students, who were glaring at Foxy. "Who's with Alfred and me?"
"Someone named Marion Strings and someone else named Durrell Franks," Bonnie answered. "Funny, three out of four people in our old dorm room weren't there last year. Give those two strangers a hell of a story when explaining the gouge on the television!"
Freddy groaned while the others laughed. "That ugly mark," he grumbled, rubbing his forehead. "How embarrassing that is."
"Oh come on, Freddy, you know it's a part of that room now," Bonnie laughed, lightly nudging him in the ribs. "Even you stopped trying to find ways to cover it and just accepted it as part of the decor!"
"Come on, guys, let's get in line now," Goldie suggested. "I want to get to our dorms and claim our rooms before tomorrow, please."
"Yeah yeah, we're coming, Goldie, hold onto your horses."
"That horse done bucked me off, trampled me, and run off like the wind, Bonnie."
"Pity, it was a nice horse too."
The dorm rooms weren't anything fancy. There was a simple room which could comfortably fit the occupants and then some friends; there were two couches, one sitting pressed against a wall and the other, smaller couch was caddy-corner. In front of the wall-couch, within reaching distance of the caddy-corner couch, was a simple wooden coffee table, short enough to prop your feet up on but tall enough to sit on the floor leaning against the couch and work on if your desk was a total wreck. On the other side of the coffee table was a clunky but decent television, a deep, obvious almost-white gouge on the black top. There were four doors in the room; two spaced evenly apart on the far wall, and two opposite each other on the side walls, close to the other doors. Bedrooms and bathrooms, respectively.
However, Goldie didn't pay this familiar sight any attention.
Instead, when Goldie finally reached 2A on the third floor of the boys' dorm, he dropped his three suitcases, music stand, and bookbag right there in the middle of the common room with a pained, exhausted groan. "Why can't we get southern parking lot?" He complained as he stretched his arms, glancing in the direction of the parking lot he knew was less than a football field away from the dorm.
"Not everyone's a lazy ass like you," Alfred told him, looking at the bedroom doors. "I'm gonna see if the left room has availability."
"Has availability, what are you, a hotel advertisement?" Goldie snorted and walked towards the door on the right, hoping that no one had yet arrived. When he peeked in, he saw that someone had already arrived but was not currently in the room, but one of the beds was still bare and unclaimed.
The room wasn't big, but it was big enough to comfortably fit two people. There were two beds pressed against the far corners with a window between them, each with its own nightstand, lamp, and alarm clock. The beds also happened to double as dressers, with the dresser-drawers underneath the bed. There was no closet, considering it was a school dorm, but Goldie didn't mind that much. At the end of each bed there was an empty space, as though the school expected students to bring a trunk- which, Goldie was sure, no one did in this day and age- and tucked into the corners on either side of the door were desks large enough to work on but too small to really spend any time at. A metal corner-shelf was above the desks on each side of the room for extra storage space, which was good because the room didn't have much to begin with.
It was just the way Goldie remembered it. Well, except for the unfamiliar, scuffed brown suitcase sitting on the unfamiliar blue and gold comforter, with the unfamiliar shirts abandoned and a drawer slightly open as if the owner seemed to have realized he had somewhere important to be right in the middle of unpacking. In the space at the end of the bed, where Goldie assumed a trunk was supposed to go, there was another suitcase covered by a blue "cosmos" blanket. There were two neat stacks of about a million sketch books on top- okay, it was more like eight, but still. Goldie barely glanced at the desk, noting that it too had a few sketchbooks sitting on it, as well as a cherry wood antique box and a tabletop easel.
Studio art student, Goldie surmised, turning his gaze back to his own side of the room with a gleeful grin. It was the same room he'd had last year, and he even got his bed from last year too. Better yet, there was no Foxy leaving stuff around on his side of the room, in his objects' designated spots and blaming him when Goldie's music stand got in his path.
Goldie went back to the common room and grabbed his suitcases, dragging them into the room before doubling back for the bag and stand. He settled down next to the bed and pulled his drawers open, sorting his clothes into their proper places; underwear and socks on the bottom left, sleepwear on the bottom right, shirts in the top left, and pants in the top right. Sure, this meant he'd have to open all four of them every day but at least then he wouldn't be like Foxy or Bonnie, having to pull everything out to look for that single pair of clean socks buried under everything else somewhere in the black hole of their drawers.
It only took him twenty or so minutes to have everything ready; his blue sheets and violet comforter neatly made up on his bed with his two navy blue pillows at the top, his suitcases neatly stacked at the end of his bed, and his music stand proudly sitting next to his desk beside the door. His bookbag was leaning against the bed, as he still needed to buy his books. He didn't dare put his suitcases on the metal shelf; he had paid the price for that the year before, and he would claim to anyone who listened that he still had nightmares about bear-eating suitcases falling from the sky to sabotage his homework.
He looked around, satisfied, and headed back to the common room. Alfred was standing there, waiting, with a quizzical expression on his face. "Something wrong, Al?" Goldie asked him, frowning a bit.
"My roommate had these pitch-black curtains over the window," Alfred told him, not bothering to answer the question. "He asked me not to open them during the day, too, and leave something out on the doorknob to let him know they're open…"
"Photosensitivity," Goldie guessed with a shrug. "I get the feeling my roommate is distracted easily, he seems to have abandoned unpacking to do something else. Like he had somewhere to be."
"Probably buying his books before the rush," Alfred suggested. "Probably smart."
"Yeah, let's go get the others and get over to the bookstore," the elder brother agreed, and the two bears left the dorm room and went across the hall to room 2B.
Alfred knocked at the door. It was only a moment or two before their middle brother answered, an amused expression on his face. "This time, I am not the hold up," he stated almost proudly as he looked back over his shoulder. Then he stepped aside, letting his brothers see what was going on.
In one hand, the purple rabbit held his guitar. In the other, he held the guitar's display stand. He was walking around the common area, looking for the perfect place to set it. He seemed to be on his third circuit around the room, if Foxy holding up three fingers from his place by the right bedroom door was any indication.
"Why doesn't he just put it in your guys' room?" Alfred questioned, raising a brow as the bunny paused in a corner and seemed to debate putting it there before shaking his head and moving on.
"No space," was the simple response.
"Hey Bonnie!" Goldie called, getting the rabbit's attention. "Just stick it somewhere for now and let's get to the bookstore to get our materials. It's almost three o'clock, you know that means the rush is about to happen."
Bonnie looked conflicted for a moment before sighing and setting the stand down between the bedroom doors. After making sure the stand was secure, he set his precious red-and-white guitar down on it.
Goldie let his gaze shift to the right, where Foxy was taping a note to the door. "Foxy, what in the hay are you doing?"
"Puttin' up a note for Mike Schmidt, so he knows which room's available," the fox answered with a grin. "Don't want him walkin' into the bear's den."
"So instead you'll lead him into the fox's den," Goldie snorted. "Come on, let's get going."
"Let's swing by the girl's dorm first," Bonnie suggested as he grabbed his wallet off of the coffee table. "I already texted Chica. We can walk Chica, Chick, and Vixy over there, maybe we'll even see my brother along the way."
"Brother?" Alfred raised a brow. "Your brother's attending here now?"
"Yeah, he finally got the transfer," Bonnie confirmed, nodding. "Only took him all of spring semester and the summer…"
"Heh, cool. About time we get to meet him in person."
Goldie hummed a bit as they walked, taking the stairs since the elevator was in high demand at the moment, and when they walked down the front steps of the dorm house, they hooked a right through the grass and past the trees separating the two dormhouses. When they caught sight of the girls' dormhouse's porch, they saw that there were four people standing there; two yellow chickens, a white and pink fox, and a bright blue rabbit. Goldie just barely recognized the rabbit from Bonnie's photographs, and he wondered for a moment why he was at the girls' dorm. Then he realized why.
"Chica!" Freddy called out, getting the attention of the chatting four. The blue rabbit's eyes lit up when he spotted Bonnie.
"Bonnie!" The blue rabbit leapt down the front steps and dashed over to the larger bunny, who was quick to scoop the shorter rabbit up into a tight hug that lifted him off of the ground.
"Bonsai!" Bonnie laughed, grinning practically from ear to ear. Not that Goldie could blame him; he was sure that, had he been separated from his own twins for years and then was reunited, he'd be the happiest bear in the world.
Goldie gave a grin. "So you're the fabled Bonsai, huh? Nice to finally meet'cha!"
Bonnie set the blue bunny down, and the blue bunny straightened his shirt. He gave the golden bear a grin. "That's right! You guys must be, um, those people Bonnie keeps mentioning in emails. Don't tell me, lemme guess…" He scanned over the boys and started pointing at each one. "Dark brown fur, you're Freddy. Lighter rosier fur, you're Alfred. Golden fur, you're, um… Frederick, yeah? Red fox, totally Foxy."
"Call me Goldie," Goldie told him with a grin. "But good job, I'm surprised Bonnie referred to me by my first name."
"I find your nickname strange," Bonsai admitted with a shrug and sheepish grin. "Who calls someone Golden Freddy as a nickname, anyway?"
"All of our classmates," Goldie deadpanned, causing the others to snicker and laugh. "It's not funny, I'm the oldest. If anything he should be Brown Frederick."
"Golden Freddy has a better ring," Freddy stated matter-of-factly.
"Plus, two out of three triplets has brown fur and one has gold? One of these things is not like the others~" Alfred sang, eliciting more laughs and a grin from Bonsai.
"So how did you guys all meet, anyway?" Bonsai asked as they started towards the bookstore. "From what I understand, not all of you were even friends until high school or something."
"Middle school, but yeah. We all bonded over our mutual twin-ness," Foxy answered with a grin. "Though I'm the only one, 'sides Chica and Chick, with a twin sister," he added, although none of them were blind; it was obvious when they first saw the blue rabbit up close that he was transgender, something Bonnie had never mentioned to them before. Goldie had a feeling Foxy had only added him being the only one from a male-female twin set as a way to assure Bonnie's brother that they were fine with it, that they recognized his identity.
It seemed to work, as Bonsai relaxed slightly and gave a grin. Goldie hadn't even noticed the rabbit was tense. Must have been nerves, he decided. "Mutual twin-ness? What does that even mean?" The bunny laughed, glancing up at Bonnie.
"There aren't a lot of twins in Cayden," Freddy answered before Foxy or Bonnie could. "And then you had us Fazbear triplets. We were really close, but, you know, it's one thing to be close to your brothers and another to be close to the other kids. Which, well, we weren't."
"None of them exactly saw us as individuals," Alfred added with a frown. "Frederick was as good as Freddy was as good as Alfred. Only, Freddy was a little smarter and a little nicer and looked a lot like me at the time, you'd almost think we were identical. They even started calling Goldie Golden Freddy because he didn't look like us."
"So it was pretty lonely, in our circle of three," Goldie concluded with a sagely nod. "No one to talk to but the people we lived with and we didn't even have our own identities, really. But then Foxy and Vixy moved to Cayden, and they were twins too even if they look absolutely nothing alike."
"Because those three knew how it feels to have twins, we immediately gravitated towards them," Foxy continued with the story. "The other kids treated us not very nicely, because, ah, I'm sure Bonnie told you about our hands and eyes..."
When Bonsai nodded, Vixy continued in her much softer voice, "Goldie, Freddy, and Alfred treated us really nicely, despite that. They were really lonely and we were too, in a new town with a new family, so we were glad to be welcomed so easily into even a small circle. We were in fifth grade, the tail-end of elementary school."
"I came in sixth grade," Chica picked up. "I lived in Cayden my entire life, but I'd gone to a different elementary school, so when I went to this middle school I was a bit alone. I had also just discovered I was actually adopted, and I had a twin sister living in California. We connected online, but we never met in person until we came to college. Until then, though, the others had welcomed me into their little group of twins, even if I was a twinless twin."
"Halfway through seventh grade, as you already know, our parents and I moved to Cayden," Bonnie told Bonsai. "I was pretty bitter over the whole "separation" thing our parents did so I was a bit harder to approach… but Chica didn't give up. I don't think the others warmed up to the idea until they found out I had a twin too, then they were all gung-ho for it. Eventually I joined the circle, too. And in ninth grade, Chica and I started dating-"
"-and we still are to this day," Chica added, holding onto her boyfriend's arm happily as she received a warm look from the purple rabbit. Goldie mock-gagged.
"And that brings it up to me," Chick giggled, smiling kindly at Bonsai. "I didn't know I had a twin sister until Chica e-mailed me. I didn't believe her at first but then I asked my parents and they told me everything, and so Chica and I started talking. When we were sophomores, Chica told me she and her friends had decided to all go to the same college here is Preston, and I decided to join them, so here I am now, united with the sister I hadn't even known existed on the opposite coastline!"
Bonsai had listened quietly and respectfully as they told the story, taking turns and transitioning into each other's sections as though they were all of one mind. He grinned after they finished. "Quite a story. What's the likelihood of it, huh?"
"Not very high," Chica and Chick chorused, and then started giggling together as they realized they had spoken in unison. Such a stereotypically-twin thing to do!
The group of friends reached the door to the bookstore at that moment, and without hesitance the group split up so it was easier to maneuver around people. The music section of the store was in the back left corner, so Goldie began making his way there. It was while he was going through the aisle where the artbooks were at that he saw him.
He stopped in his tracks, eyes widening in shock at what he saw. There was a golden rabbit standing there, looking through an art book with a peculiar expression on his face, brow scrunched together as though trying to figure something out. But that wasn't what had really shocked the bear.
The rabbit was very tall for a rabbit, although most of his extra height seemed to be his ears, which were large and at least a foot long. But more importantly than the rabbit's height or ears were the sheer amount of scars that covered him, from the tips of his ears to the tips of his fingers, running in jagged, thin but noticeable lines down his neck to his arms, across his cheeks, even across one of his eyes and up his ears- his ears where the right one abruptly ended an entire quarter short of its complete length, like something had, not very neatly, lopped it off.
Goldie quickly backed away from the intimidating rabbit and hurried down the next aisle to get to the music supplies. Normally scars wouldn't bother him- Foxy and Vixy both had their fair share of scars and the were even missing a hand and an eye each. But that rabbit had more scars on one arm than the two foxes had on their entire bodies, and Goldie couldn't help but feel like he wanted absolutely nothing to do with that rabbit or whatever it was he was getting into.
It wouldn't be that hard to avoid him, though. Judging by the book he was looking at, he was obviously a studio art student; complete opposite side of campus from the music center, across the pond even. Yes, Goldie figured he wouldn't see that rabbit again, and if he did, it would only be from the corner of his eye in the cafeteria or the dormhouse. Nothing so terrifying as coming face-to-face with the Franken Rabbit.
It'd be a piece of cake.