Vincent stood outside the pizzeria staring across a horizon stained with eventide colors. The grey buildings of the city way off in the distance gave off a strange, surreal glow, slight orange and pink with a dusty coating of fog. The clouds, he thought, looked nice, too. This was one of those rare twilit moments where he took a second to stare off into the distance and reflect on how miserable his life was.

Leaning against the cement wall, his gaze drifted skyward, a wave of exhaustion flowing throughout his body. He allowed his arms to sag and a yawn to leave his mouth, closing his eyes for a moment. Somewhere off to his right, he heard Scottish speaking to some anonymous employees, congratulating them on a job well done. He supposed they deserved it-after all, it'd been a busy day at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria.

"Hey, Vinni!"

Vincent cringed at the nickname, taking into account that only one person would dare call him that and that aforementioned person was right behind him. He glanced behind him to find a man with a pink day security guard uniform standing there, a broad smile on his face. He snickered, voice thick and lazy.

"Aww, did I scare you? I'm so sorry, Vinni."

A distasteful scowl almost made its way to his face, but he forced himself to retain his neutrality. Of all the employees who remained largely anonymous,there were only two that he could recognize without looking at their name tags: Scottish and Winston. Scottish, because they lived (ironically) in the same district, though Vincent had a small, crap apartment he could barely afford for all that the repairs cost. And Scottish (who worked shorter hours, for God's sake, and got better pay) lived in a mobile home. Of course, he lived with his little brother, which probably helped a great deal.

And Winston because... well. There wasn't much to be said about him.

"Please don't call me that," Vincent said, his voice quiet as it always was after working the day shift.

He laughed again, reaching a hand up to pat Vincent's shoulder. He shivered, not from the cold or that Winston patted his shoulder so slowly, as if he knew something Vincent didn't. For all he knew, he did-Vincent never made a big effort to stay after hours until his night shift started, preferring to go home and get some much-needed sleep. No, it was how Winston always-always-smiled, even after two children disappeared under mysterious, unknown circumstances.

It'd be fine, he thought, if they had been kids that were forever selfish... but they were good children. They always said hello and how are you, and Vincent enjoyed the time he spent with them.

Granted, yes, he had killed kids, but that was in the past. The guilt would haunt his nightmares for as long as he lived, and although he knew that justification had to be done, he didn't much like the thought of going to prison and submitting his freedom.

"Sorry, Vinni," Winston said. Nothing in his voice was apologetic. Vincent's insides winced with the desire to shove him.

"Hey," he said suddenly, shocking Vincent out of his subconscious thoughts. He had a knack for doing that, putting everyday words in a sense that was so abrupt that without even changing his tone of voice, everybody paid attention. Imagine a dog barking at night while you're trying to get to sleep-it's the same bark, but it seems more piercing because you don't want to hear it then. Winston continued: "I saw you take a kid into the safe room yesterday."

Yesterday was a Monday. Vincent only remembered it because of the mental breakdown he'd suffered at home that morning. ...And also because of the girl he'd snuck in there to kill, but she 'got away'.

"Uhm... yeah. I know it's against the rules, but..."

Winston smiled curiously, eyes watching him like a disappointed animal. The contradiction on his face made Vincent stop for a moment, unsure what to think. Not for the first time, Vincent wondered if this new string of murders was the effect of him-Winston, the man who always smiled, the man who accidentally tossed his uniform with his sister's clothes before she died and ended up with the only pink uniform in the Fazbear chain of restaurants. He dismissed it: There was no way such a lazy man could find the strength in him to kill a child, right? Always complaining about work, how he has to clean the bathroom when he's just paid to stand around all day and watch the kids. He'd even demanded overtime payment on occasion, always lazily, always as if he didn't care, but the strangeness in his voice made it clear that he did. Always smiling.

Always smiling.

"...She, uh... needed a quiet place to study. And do her homework," he added hurriedly. Why had he started with a lie? After he brought pizza into the break room, Vincent watched... 'Clarence', if he recalled correctly, unfold a sheet of paper from her jacket pocket and get started on her homework. It was math, and Vincent couldn't help but correct her on her synthetic division.

Winston's smile became crooked, like it did when he was either irritated or entertained. "Watch yourself, Vinni," he said, putting his hands in his pockets. His voice hadn't shifted from that ear-catching... way that he talked. "With all the disappearing kids that the company's been covering up, taking kids to a place with no cameras might make people think you're the murderer of 1983.'

1983.

"Of course," Winston laughed, his eyes twinkling like emeralds, voice relaxing to its previous state, dripping with laziness, "it was an accident. The springs got wet. But, oh... weren't you there when it happened?"

Please get away from me.

"Winston." The voice came from behind Vincent, and he straightened reflexively, looking behind him. Scottish stood there-bronze skin, black hair, tall, strong figure. The evernoon light cast a glint over his glasses that could be defined as only intimidating. The trademark purple uniform that he always wore at work had been loosened and his posture was akimbo. "Stop patronizing your coworker. You both work for the same company and you both need to treat each other with all due respect."

Vincent breathed a sigh of relief. Behind him, Winston chuckled. "Of course," he said. "Forgive me for my impudence. Have a great night, Vinni~ Scottie~"

"Don't-" Scottish said, but it was too late. Vincent heard Winston skipping down the sidewalk, and even saw him out the corner of his eye, acting like a child with his arms outstretched like an airplane.

"It's the-eye of the tiger, It's the thrill of the fight!"

Scottish sighed, shaking his head. Vincent looked down at his feet for a moment, heart thumping painfully. A feeling of nausea wormed its way up his esophagus. "God, I hate that man," Scottish grumbled, another sigh coming through his throat.

"I don't like him, either," Vincent admitted. When his statement was met with silence, he glanced up, frowning. Scottish was looking off after Winston, a look of disapproval on his face. He hesitated. "Scott, I don't like him either."

Scottish glanced over at him, then looked over at Winston, shielding his eyes from the sun as he watched. "What do you not like about him most, his stinginess, his hypocrisy, or how he treats the other employees?"

He said nothing about Vincent's nickname, he registered vaguely, and that made him smile faintly. 1983 still loomed in the back of his head, but it wasn't as imposing anymore. "I don't like him at all."

"I think that he thinks that you like him," Scottish said, looking away from the corner that the pink uniformed man just went around and turning to Vincent. A troubled look was on his face. Scottish and him, they didn't talk very often, only to greet each other in the morning and occasionally to say their farewells after hours. Scottish knew little about 1983, knew little about 1985, and definitely didn't know anything about 1981, mainly because he didn't start working there until 1984, the period of rediscovering the destiny of the once-disbanded now-rebranded Fazbear franchise, but also because he didn't really want to know. Vincent was thankful for that-it meant that he didn't have any reason to doubt the legitimacy of the chain.

Ignorance was Vincent's ally right now.

"I don't see why he'd think that. I really... really don't like him." He kept bringing up bad memories, kept doing so intentionally just to see the reaction on Vincent's face. He hated him.

Scottish shrugged. "You're not a bad person, yet someone like that's gravitating toward you. How long's he been working with the Fazbear organization?"

"Since the late '70s." 1978, if Vincent wasn't mistaken. He remembered seeing that pink uniform in the back of Fredbear's Family Diner, way back when, watching the kids and the parents with a faint smile on his face, when he was a teenager himself. Always with the smile. He shuddered.

The taller man hummed a little bit, lifting a hand up to scratch the side of his head before adjusting his red glasses. The shadow of his hand shielded his face from the sun, showing that his coffee brown eyes were now directed to the wall of the pizzeria, and then flickered to the overly-large vent cover. For the overly-large ventilation system that wound around the party rooms. Large and clunky, Vincent thought. "What about you?" he asked a little awkwardly. "How long've you been working at Freddy's?"

Vincent shrugged, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest, a shiver passing through him. "Maybe, um… since I was in high school…. And when I was in that crummy community college." The college that practically handed out engineering degrees to anyone who knew the difference between a wrench and a chainsaw. It'd been enough to up his pay an extra dollar an hour in return for doing engineering work on the animatronics at Freddy's.

Scottish nodded his head sagely, a look of contemplation crossing his features again. Vincent felt a smile begin to form, soft and tentative. He always found it rather interesting how Scottish always acted older than he really was. Well, he had a little brother, but Scottish was still a year younger than Vincent, as far as he knew, and he'd been working at Freddy's for a much shorter period of time than he had been.

"Do you think you'll be good for another night here?" Scottish asked, looking over at Vincent, his eyes half-lidded. The smile drowned slightly, and Vincent nodded.

"Yeah, I'll be fine."

There was no conviction behind his voice. In all actuality, he didn't really believe it—and Scottish didn't believe the reason why he was never even able to sleep on his graveyard shift, because Vincent needed it and no one would dare sneak into Freddy's Pizzeria after its bad history (All Scottish knew about the legacy was the urban myth his little brother told him, and he didn't believe in those old rumors anyway.). He stared at him before shaking his head, disappointed.

"You need to get to sleep, Vincent," he said. "You work practically non-stop. Are you trying to prove something to someone?"

His jaw clenched and he stood upright. Rage bubbled in his chest, but he stifled it like he always did, forcing himself to neutrality. "Why'd you ask that, Scott?"

"It's not good for your health, is all. As your stand-in boss" –full-time boss, Vincent corrected in his mind, and he saw the same thought flash in his boss' posture—"it's part of my job to concern myself with your well-being."

"Scott, I live alone. I'm a single child. If you're suggesting that I'm trying to do better than my dad or something, get rid of that trope." He wasn't able to withhold the bite in his tone. "I never even knew him."

Scottish was a good person. But sometimes he didn't know when to keep to himself.

Scottish nodded sagely, not realizing the tender spot that he'd just scratched. "All right, then. Just get home soon and get some sleep. You still have the night job to do."

Vincent gulped, inwardly cringing, and Scottish glanced over again. He gave no indication that everything was wrong, and only smiled his best smile to him and nodded. "All right. Will do."

"All right. I'll see you tomorrow."

When Scottish left, Vincent went over to the corner and looked around it, eyes narrowing drowsily when he noted the others entering their cars and saying farewell to each other. Their faces were blurry in his memory, like always. All he could distinguish from them were their genders, and even then sometimes it was hard.

Upon seeing the cars leave the parking lot and leaving frigid air in its wake, he sighed, letting his back rest flat against the wall and sliding down. The dim hum of the air conditioner and the sound of the outdoors was a welcome comfort, and one that he was sure he wouldn't know for very long. He'd been at this place for too long; he knew the hidden terrors that lurked around each corner and in the eyes of the mechanical animals. He felt his heart pounding painfully in his chest, so he rubbed over it, hoping to soothe it. All that it did was allow him to feel it in his fingertips, too.

1983. Vincent hated that year more than anything.