CHAPTER THREE
Ana somehow managed to roll herself two joints from the scruff in the bag. She took the first one on her feet, pacing from the back of the stage to the front two hundred and fourteen times—Foxy counted—as she waited for the building to fall in on itself. Her anxiety visibly rose with each roll of thunder and every step one of the others took away from the back wall, but faded with each puff, although Foxy was sure that was a result of the ritual of smoking more than anything else. He lacked certain essential biological attributes to be an expert, but fifty years of watching kids break into his house and get high meant that he was no slouch on the subject either; he knew dudbud when he saw it.
And Freddy could give him all the dirty looks he wanted, it did her good. Before the joint was half-gone, her restless pacing had slowed until she was only going to peek through the curtains when the thunder crashed and not as part of an endless circuit of nerves. As she lit the new one from the butt of the old, she actually found a space against the back wall next to Bonnie and sat down. Even after it was gone, she continued to sit, one knee drawn up for her arm to hug and the other leg stretched out, watching her toes as she flexed them.
"How ye holding up-p-p?" Foxy asked at last.
She glanced left at Chica, right at Bonnie, then up at him. "You talking to me?"
"Aye."
"I'm fine."
"Ye sure? Ye look…tired."
"I know what you're thinking, but the only thing I got out of that bag was a sore throat." She was quiet a moment, then laughed a little. "I've been smoking the good stuff for so long, I've forgotten what total dicks dealers can be, especially when they're rooking money out of backwater dumbasses who don't know real weed from pencil shavings." She motioned toward the baggie lying out in the middle of the stage. "Rider would shoot the man who brought him a bag of that and called it pot. He'd probably shoot me just for smoking it, especially when I've got plenty of prime Black Diamond sitting back at the—fuck me!" she finished with a groan, smacking both hands over her face. She breathed quietly for a while, then let out a snarling, simply adorable human scream into her palms. She breathed again.
"Are you ok-k-kay?" Bonnie asked, reaching timidly down to tap her shoulder.
She scowled up at him, covered her face for another second or two, then let her arms drop, relaxing her knees so that her hands could dangle hopelessly between them and giving Foxy just one hell of a view of that cartoon kitty on the front of her panties. "Yeah," she grumbled. "I just realized I left my tent open. Every fucking thing I own is now soaked. Not to mention scattered over the entire fucking yard."
"GO. HOME," said Freddy.
"No."
"WHEN YOU MAKE A MESS, CLEAN IT UP," Chica agreed.
Bonnie glared at her. "It's d-d-dark. Wait until morning-ing-ing."
"Aye, no hurry," said Foxy.
Bonnie looked sharply around, justifiably suspicious of support, but it was Freddy who tracked Foxy's gaze.
"THE RESTAURANT IS CLOSED," he said again, stepping away from the wall to put himself between Foxy and the point of his present interest. "YOU SHOULD LEAVE."
"No," said Ana again, patting Bonnie's leg first and then pointing. "Step it back, big bear. No one told you to move."
Freddy looked at her while Chica tapped her fingers and Bonnie fidgeted, but Foxy just grinned, enjoying the show. It had been a hell of a long time since anyone had told Freddy what to do, but in the end, he just moved back against the wall and folded his arms. His eyes weren't lit and his music wasn't playing. If he was annoyed, and he surely was, he kept it quiet.
"I'm not going anywhere," Ana was saying now. "It can just wait. My wallet and my phone are in the front and still buckled down, so they're okay, and my stash is all in bottles and probably fine. If not, fuck it, I have to refill my prescriptions pretty soon anyway."
Freddy grunted.
"No one asked you," Ana replied, then glanced up at Foxy. "Where'd you get that stuff anyway?"
"Found-d-d it."
"Well, I didn't think you bought it and I guess I can understand why no one would come back for it, even if they could remember where they'd dropped it, but why'd you keep it?"
Because tossing it out on the floor in front of the stage was a surer way of bringing the sons of bitches that made a habit of breaking in close enough to catch with one jump, rather than chasing them through the whole bloody building. Foxy wasn't as fast as he used to be, and more, now that both casings from the knees down were gone and his bare bones were exposed, his feet were apt to go skidding out from under him at a run.
All of this wound lazily through Foxy's mind, but what he said was, "Found it. Kept-t-t it."
"I guess pirates don't turn things in at the Lost and Found, huh? On an entirely unrelated note, you seen my lantern around, Captain?"
"No idea what-t-t yer talking about, lass," Foxy said. The lantern was hanging in his cabin, above his bunk. He used it sometimes.
"Yeah, right." She flexed her toes some more, then gave his cabin door a speculative stare. "What else have you got in there?"
"Ye want-t-t to know, ye'll have to come on up-p-p and see."
Bonnie fidgeted again, actually putting one foot out in half a step before taking it back, which Ana didn't see, being fully occupied in a bone-cracking yawn at the moment.
"But ye ain't-t-t tired," Foxy said at the end of it.
"Of course I'm tired. It's…What time is it?"
The simple question kicked Foxy straight in the brain, and he spat out a stuttering, "YAR, IT'S TIME TO SAIL!" along with Chica's, "IT'S TIME TO EAT!" and Bonnie's, "IT'S TIME TO ROCK!" Freddy, caught by surprise with the rest of them, let out one of his booming laughs and chimed in, "IT'S TIME TO PLAY!" before shaking it off, growling and spilling out half a bar of the March.
Ana waited.
"It's a qu-qu—QUARTER ASKED AND NONE GIVEN!—quarter o' three," Foxy answered, rubbing at the back of his head like the damned triggers were an itch he could scratch away.
"Okay, so it's three in the morning. I've got every right to be tired, is my point."
Foxy gave Freddy an assessing sidelong glance and, with surprisingly genuine regret, said, "G-Go home and go to sleep-p-p, then."
"No. Hell, even if I did go home, it's so late, I might as well stay up." She shifted, drawing up both legs now and resting her chin on her folded arms. Her eyes slid shut. She mumbled, "I got work in the morning and not a damn thing to wear."
"Go home and st-st—STEER HARD TO PORT—stay up, then. Reckon I don't c-c-care what ye do, as long as ye do it at home."
"Sounds like you're trying to get rid of me."
"Caught on, d-d-did ye? Here I thought I was b-b-being so subtle."
"Subtlety isn't your strong suit, Captain."
Foxy chuckled, but Freddy's dark mood only darkened further, so he cut it off short. "Lass, I'm g-g-going to say this as gently as I know how. Get the fuck out o' here."
"Wow, gentle isn't your strong suit either."
"I weren't made to b-b-be a gentleman. I were made to be a pirate. Besides." He winked, more at Bonnie than at Ana. "Some lasses like it-t-t rough."
She laughed.
Bonnie's ears rotated around and lay flat.
"But suit yerself," said Foxy. "Stay if ye want-t-t. Just g-g-get some sleep."
"No."
"Yer just-t-t being stubborn now. Come on, lass, I got-t-t a bunk up here where ye can lay yer b-b—BONES TO DAVY JONES—bones down."
Bonnie took that half-step again, this time stopped by Freddy's hand on his shoulder and a grunt. His hands clenched and opened, mirroring the lenses of his eyes irising big and small, seeming to shift from black to green and back to black.
"It ain't very b-b-big, but it's dry," Foxy continued, eyeing Bonnie with amusement. "I'll even t-t-tuck ye in."
"I'll bet."
"I'll be on me best b-b-behavior, I promise," he said, tracing an X in the air over his chest casing with the point of his hook.
She gave him a quizzical look, the effectiveness of which was somewhat spoiled by her crooked smile. "This would be your best pirating behavior when I'm alone with you, half-naked in your cabin? Why am I not convinced?"
"Hell, g-g-girl, it's been so long since I had-d-d a skirt hung up in me berth, I wouldn't know what-t-t to do with ye."
"I'm not wearing a skirt."
"We'll just-t-t have to make do without one," he told her gravely. "They usually d-d-does, in me cabin."
"Not that you can remember that, it being so long ago."
"It's all c-c-coming back to me, luv."
She laughed as Bonnie glared and Freddy pressed the heel of one hand into his forehead and sighed.
"Thanks anyway, but I'll pass," Ana said and yawned again. "When I said I had work in the morning, I meant five in the morning."
"Better than nothing, ain't it?"
"I don't drop off that easy. Not when I'm sober, at any rate."
"Oh, if that's all that's b-b-bothering ye, I know a sure-fire way to relax ye."
Still holding one hand over his eyes, Freddy swung the other out and gave Bonnie a staying check to the chest even before he'd taken a full step forward.
This finally succeeded in getting Ana's attention, although her frown as she looked up at Bonnie was more puzzled than anything. "What's wrong?"
Bonnie did not answer for a long time, keeping his eyes locked on Foxy and his hands in fists, but at last grumbled, "Nothing-ing-ing."
"Is it your leg?" she asked, now leaning over to run her hands over the visibly battered joint and providing Foxy with a whole new angle to admire.
"My leg-g-g is fine," said Bonnie's mouth while his eyes said, 'You're lucky my girl's here.'
Foxy laughed.
Ana looked at him, distracted, then got up and fetched her flashlight. "Stay here," she ordered, pointing it at them one by one. "Don't move. I'll be right back. Stay."
They all nodded, except for Freddy, whose fingers flexed once on his plastic bicep. This was agreement enough for Ana, who turned and jogged out, all the right bits of her jiggling and all the others firm.
Freddy waited until the sound of her footsteps had entirely gone, then went to the curtain and looked out.
"I swear to G-G-God, I will kick your ass," Bonnie snarled.
"RULE NUMBER SEVEN," Chica said, her eyes darting anxiously between them. "DON'T HIT."
"I don't c-c-c—CARING MEANS SHARING!—care about the fucking-ing-ing rules!"
"I. DO," said Freddy. He let the curtain drop and turned around. "BONNIE. CALM. DOWN. FOXY. MIND YOUR MANNERS."
"Ain't-t-t the one making threats, am I?" Foxy settled himself on the rails and propped his chin up on his hook, gazing off at the backs of his stage curtains as if he could still see the girl there. It occurred to him for possibly the first time in his life that it had been a long time since he'd been with a woman. Years. Decades, maybe. It wasn't quite the same as, say, wanting to alter the situation, but he was definitely aware of it. "She c-c-coming back, ye reckon? Or has she g-g-gone home?"
Freddy grunted and lifted the curtain again, his ears rotating on their wheezing pins. "I. DON'T. HEAR. THE." He stopped there, clicking as he tried to find a word approaching 'truck' and finally settled on. "CLUCK."
"Can't hear anything over this r-r-rain," Foxy remarked, politely ignoring Chica as she stuttered through some cluck-clucks here and cluck-clucks there down where Brewster Rooster apparently had a farm. "I didn't even know she were here until ye all c-c-came barging in. And why did ye d-d-do that again? I never got-t-t a clear—SKIES AND WESTERLY WINDS—answer."
"IT'S. RAINING."
"Aye, I got-t-t that bit, but—"
"She thinks the roof is going to come d-d-down," Bonnie said, still scowling, but at least attempting to be civil, although more for Freddy's benefit than Foxy's own, he was sure.
Foxy took that in with an admirable display of outward calm, while inwardly, his mind was alive with thoughts of Mangle…Foxanne…crawling out of the rubble and into the world. Freddy was no doubt thinking of the Purple Man and those who served him, but they'd be all right. Hell, buried under a broken building was even better than locked up in a standing one, as far as Foxy was concerned. At least until someone noticed the building had fallen down and sent someone to scrape it up, he supposed. And dug him out.
Foxy mused on this until every possible scenario had played itself out, before he finally looked at Freddy. "Is it?"
"NO."
"Ye sure?"
"YES," said Freddy, but there was half a pause before he said it. He knew it and scowled, coming away from the curtain.
"What-t-t do ye reckon makes her so sure th-th-then?"
"SHE. WANTS. TO. BE. HERE. SHE'S. LOOKING. FOR. A. REASON." Freddy gestured vaguely at the ceiling as he settled himself against the wall. "MAYBE. SHE'S. SCARED. OF. THUNDER."
Foxy snorted. "Aye, that's it," he drawled. "Wee mouse of a thing, she is. Always fetching up-p-p the frights and flitting off at every bump-p-p and bang. She were p-p-probably hiding under her b-b-bed a goodish hour before she run off here to hug-g-g on yer hip, mate."
Freddy glared at him, said, "THE. WOOF. IS. FINE," and folded his arms again.
"Ana d-d-doesn't think so," Bonnie muttered, patting Chica's shoulder as she fell back into the farm routine.
"THE. WOOF. IS. FINE."
"It's g-g-gotten a lot worse in just this last year," Bonnie argued, even turning to include Foxy. "You should-d-d see the dining-ing room right-t-t now. It's ankle-deep from the kitchen to the lobby, I kid-d-d you not."
"THE. WOOF. IS. FINE."
"Ye know, ye c-c-can say that all night, but saying it-t-t don't make it true," Foxy pointed out. "We all got eyes."
"IT'S. WET," Freddy said crossly. "BUT. THE. WOOF. IS. FINE."
"WITH A WOOF-WOOF HERE AND A WOOF-WOOF THERE—"
"SORRY, CHICA," said Freddy, not sounding the least bit sorry as he glared at Foxy. "IT'S. FINE."
"Fred," Foxy began, laughing.
Freddy, not laughing, suddenly started up the Toreador March and spat, "IT'S. FINE," loudly enough that his speakers squealed out feedback, and now Foxy finally understood. Freddy wasn't saying it was fine because he believed it. It was fine because it wasn't fine and there was nothing Freddy could do about it. He wasn't angry; he was scared.
"IT'S. SUMMER," Freddy said as Foxy stood silent, frowning. "IT. WILL. ALL. DRY. OUT. AND. EVERYTHING. WILL. BE. ALL. RIGHT."
Somewhere in the hall outside the Cove came a crash, not of the roof putting a hilarious exclamation point on the end of Freddy's sentence, but more like someone dropping a tray full of silverware, followed by the rain-muffled and somewhat distant sound of Ana cursing up a blue streak.
"This isn't-t-t over," Bonnie muttered, moving back into position on the wall.
"YES. IT. IS. NOW. HUSH."
They waited. Through the rain, Foxy could eventually make out Ana's little bare feet coming down the amphitheater steps and then splashing through the puddle that had collected at the foot of the stage. The curtain billowed, then opened up as she pushed something through. Metal box. Toolbox.
Freddy's head cocked.
Ana climbed onstage with it and stood up. Her shirt, freshly watered down, was nigh-on invisible and deeply distracting from the far more significant fact of the toolbox as Ana picked it up and brought it over to Bonnie. She knelt down.
"What are you d-d-doing?" Bonnie asked, ears up.
"Nothing, probably, so don't get your hopes up," she answered and opened up his thigh, knee, and shin casings, one at a time.
She just looked at it for a while, moving her flashlight up and down along the bones and paying particular attention to the mechanisms affixed to his endoskeleton. It didn't take her long to home in on the knee, but the part she kept coming back to was the external piston that plugged into his bones above and below the joint.
"Well, you've good and fucked that," she said finally.
Bonnie's ears lowered sheepishly. "I tried to fix it."
"You hit it." Ana touched one of the more obviously dented pieces of the piston. "A lot."
"That's…how I fix things."
"Uh huh. Freddy, I need you to come around to this side and hold him up."
Freddy's grunt held just a tinge of nobody-tells-me-what-to-do, but he obeyed and Chica waddled gamefully closer on the other side and offered her shoulders up as well.
Without taking her eyes off Bonnie's knee, Ana opened her toolbox, found one of those modern motorized screwdrivers, then changed out the head, all by feel. "Captain, can you come down—"
Foxy hopped the rails and hit the stage right next to her.
"And hold a light for me," she concluded, amused. "Do you have any idea how unnerving it is when you do that?"
"Why do ye think-k-k I do it, luv?" He took her flashlight and aimed it at Bonnie's knee, allowing Ana to correct the angle of the beam by moving his hand.
"That's good," she murmured, frowning at the piston. "Huh."
"That's an uncomforting sound-d-d," Bonnie remarked.
"I've never seen one like this before. How is it…? It almost looks like it's…Is it plugged into you?"
"Yeah." Bonnie bent, moving her hand aside to tap at a recessed and heavily grimed button on the bottom end. "You p-p-push that in and hold it until you hear th-th—THE BAND!—the beep. Then it's safe to d-d-disconnect. What-t-t?" he said defensively, glaring at Freddy, who was glaring at him.
"If I take it off, are you going to shut down?" Ana asked.
"What-t-t do you mean?"
"You know, like on Christmas lights." She shrugged. "One bulb goes out and they all go out. If I unplug that—"
"My knee will quit working-ing-ing, but I'll be fine."
"Will it hurt?"
Will it hurt. Foxy snorted. Neither she nor Bonnie looked at him.
"Pain isn't-t-t really a thing for us," said Bonnie. "I'll b-b-be fine."
"Okay. Well, I think I can do this with what I've got, but I warn you, you won't be trying out for the Fazbear Track Team anytime soon. Maybe once I've got my precision tools, I'll take another crack at it, but for tonight, all I can do is clean you up and put some stuff back into alignment." She looked up, one hand on his thigh-bone and the screwdriver right up snug against the first screw holding the piston on. "I really feel like we ought to have a safe-word, just in case I hurt you."
"Sure. How about I flail around-d-d a lot and scream?"
She grinned. "That'll do."
"Hold up," said Foxy as her thumb moved to the switch on her gadget. "Yer not-t-t really letting her do this, are ye?" When Bonnie just looked at him, he turned the question on Freddy, not quite laughing because it was not quite funny. "Well, are ye?"
Freddy frowned, but didn't answer. There stood Bonnie, leg open to the air, about to be dis-a-fucking-sembled, and Freddy wasn't lifting a finger to stop it.
"What's the problem, Captain?" Ana asked, seemingly genuinely confused.
"The p-p-problem? Lass, do ye have even the foggiest notion what yer looking at?"
She looked at the piston, then up at him again. "Nope."
He spread his arms, inviting the obvious.
"But I can see how it works," Ana said. "Keep the light on my hands, Captain. Hold it steady." As Foxy grumblingly obeyed, she patted the bone beneath her hand and smiled up at Bonnie. "Find your happy place, my man."
Bonnie, staring down at that smile, said, "I'm there."
Foxy and Freddy exchanged a glance. Foxy rolled his eye slightly. Freddy gave his head a minute shake.
Chica did nothing.
"Here we go," said Ana, and turned her gadget on.
In one minute and thirty-eight seconds, she had the piston laid out in pieces on the stage beside her. One-thirty-eight. A better time than the man who'd designed them. Of course, she had the advantage of that motorized gadget with all them adjustable heads, but still.
Once she had the knee exposed, Ana sat back with a different motorized gadget and in two minutes stripped away years of accumulated gunk, restoring each part to a near-pristine shine. Then she changed out the head and started teasing it back into shape where hard use and Bonnie's propensity to punch it until it worked had worn it down. Now and then, her eyes shifted from her hands to Bonnie's other knee, also exposed now that he'd broken off his right shin casing, but she never needed more than a glance before she was back at work, grinding and picking and polishing. That part took a while, but by God, she did it and she did it having never seen the bloody thing before.
"Ye g-g-got a real knack for that," Foxy remarked and Freddy grunted agreement.
She laughed, lifting the spinning bit of her tool until she'd stopped before making contact again. "Yeah, so I've been told."
"Can I ask ye something?"
"Sure."
"What are ye d-d-doing here?"
"Christ, can't this be a math question?"
"I mean it," said Foxy, ignoring Bonnie's glare. "Ye g-g-got nothing better to do with yerself that ye got to keep coming here?"
"I like it here."
"No, ye d-d-don't. No one does. Look around." He gestured with his hook, keeping the flashlight steady on her hands. "This p-p-place be fucking awful."
She laughed again.
"Go home, lass," he said, ignoring Bonnie's glare. "Go home and st-st-stay there, for the l-l—LOVE O' THE SEA!—love o' God. This ain't-t-t no place for ye."
"You have no idea the kinds of places I've been in my life, Captain. Being here is practically coming up in the world. But I'll tell you what," she went on with a bitter lightness to her tone. "I'll go home if you all come with me. Deal?"
"IT IS UNLAWFUL TO REMOVE FAZBEAR ENTERTAINMENT PROPERTY FROM THE PREMISES."
"We are home," said Foxy when Freddy finished. "Ye ain't-t-t. Go home, girl."
"No."
"Ye think we c-c-can't throw ye out?"
"I'm sure you can, I just don't think you will."
"Ye don't know us like ye think ye do."
"That's for d-d-damn sure," Bonnie muttered, now glaring at Freddy, who gazed back at him coolly and without apology.
There was a story there, one for later telling. For now, Foxy merely marked it, then looked back at Ana and said, "Why are ye so set-t-t—SET SAIL FOR ADVENTURE—and determined to be here, lass? Tonight-t-t of all nights. It ain't-t-t fit out for man nor beast, and here ye are, practically in yer altogether, letting the weather g-g-get in on yer goods back home while ye sit up with us."
"I love it when you talk like a pirate."
"Never ye mind-d-d how I talk," Foxy said as Bonnie scowled. "What have ye g-g-got to say for yerself?"
She shrugged. "I make bad decisions."
"Go home!"
"No. Keep the light steady."
Foxy adjusted the flashlight. "I can appreciate ye d-dr-dr—DROVE HIM BACK, STEP BY STEP, TO THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF—drove all the way out here to see us safe, although I would-d-d love to know just what ye thought-t-t ye could have done to stop it if the place dropped-d-d on yer wee fool head, but never ye mind-d-d that. Storm's over and the roof ain't-t-t going nowhere."
She laughed. "How do you arrive at that ass-headed conclusion, Captain?"
"It b-b-be—A GREAT DAY TO BE A PIRATE—summer," he shot back with a wave in Freddy's direction that, in retrospect, could have made no sense to her even if she'd seen it. "This here could-d-d be the last storm we have for a three-month or so, and in the meantime, it'll all d-d-dry out, won't it?"
"Wow." She shook her head without looking up from her hands. "That is so not how it works, Captain."
Foxy's smile went crooked as his lower jaw slipped its left pin. He snapped it back into place and said, "Ye don't-t-t need to tell any of us how b-br-breaking down works."
"Buildings are different." She dislodged a largish chunk of dried mud from Bonnie's knee, shook it out, blew on the joint to clear it of dust, and resumed cleaning. "Okay, for the purposes of this explanation, let's pretend you've got a roof that weighs ten tons and a building that can support fifteen tons. That's considered the standard safety cushion for weather. So it rains. Rain slides off the shingles. Building stays safe and dry. All is well."
"THIS IS MY FAVORITE STORY," said Chica, flashing her eyes at Foxy. When he looked at her inquiringly, she shifted her gaze pointedly to that chunk of 'mud', now lying on the stage floor.
There was a pale sort of nobby thing sticking out of it.
It was a toe.
Foxy looked at Bonnie, but the damn fool was swimming in Ana's eyes and hadn't even noticed he was dropping bits of human-bleeding-remains all over the bleeding stage for his lady-love to spy. He looked at Freddy, but Freddy was just as lost, in her words if not her eyes.
"Now summer rolls around," Ana was saying. "It gets hot. And around here, that means it gets super-hot. Shingles get hot, get soft, expand. Winter. Snow falls. Shingles get cold, get hard, crack. Snow melts. Water gets in. Building gets wet, but it dries. Mostly. Spring comes. It rains. More water gets in, but it dries. Mostly."
Freddy shrugged himself abruptly out from under Bonnie's arm and limped away without a word, all the way over to the edge of the stage. He opened the curtain, turned his eyes on and looked out, looked up.
"Seasons keep changing," Ana continued, turning her head to watch him. Only for a second, which was time enough for Foxy to snap the toe up and toss it to Chica. She caught it, looked frantically left and right, then popped it into her mouth as Ana turned back around and resumed working on Bonnie's knee. The sound of it tumbling down her throat-sac into her stomach seemed bloody loud to Foxy, but Ana didn't seem to notice as she picked up her gadget and the threads of her story. "Shingles get hot, get soft, expand. A little more weather gets in, bringing mold spores, still dry, still safe. Winter. Shingles get cold, get hard, crack wider. More snow gets in. Mold gets wet and holds on to the water. Roof gets heavier and nobody sees it. Weather gets warmer. Mold starts to grow, drinking in more and more water, eating at the lumber, rusting out the hardware and breaking down the sheetrock. Years pass, hot and cold and rainy, hot and cold and rainy, mold and rust and rot."
Freddy dropped the curtain and just stood there, staring at the back of it.
Ana's voice rolled on, unconcerned, just loud enough to be heard over the whining of her little motorized cleaning toy. "Now you got a roof that weighs twelve tons sitting on a building that can now only support maybe ten, and that's when it's dry and the sun is shining. When it rains, that roof will swell out to eighteen tons, easy, and when winter rolls around, you can start factoring in the weight of ice and snow. It doesn't have to be raining at this point, just a shiver in the right place and everything lets go. It's the thunder that scares me," she said, her hands as steady as a surgeon's, she was so scared. "This whole building is no better than a house of cards at the moment, and that thunder is shaking the table."
"Storm's over," Foxy pointed out. "So I reckon ye c-c-could go home."
"You're starting to hurt my feelings, Captain."
"Come on now, luv," said Foxy in his most cajoling voice, the success of which was nicely measured not by Ana's complete indifference, but by Bonnie's flat ears. "Ye d-d-don't want to be under this roof when it falls, do ye?"
"Do you?" she countered.
"ENOUGH."
Foxy and Ana both looked back at Freddy as he turned away from the curtains at last and made his laboring way back to the wall. It wasn't clear which of them his command had been intended for and he could tell Ana wasn't sure either, but he was willing to drop it and so, it seemed, was she.
In silence, she finished cleaning the knee and moved on to the piston. Her little gadget alternately whined and grated, filling up the awkward quiet with noise other than Freddy's intermittent pacing. With a few squirts of WD-40, she put the whole thing together again. It only took her fifty-two seconds that time. She plugged it in, put her ear right up against Bonnie's knee to listen as it presumably powered up and reintegrated, then screwed it down tight and wiped it off.
"How's that feel?" she asked, scooting back to give him room to try it out.
Bonnie flexed his leg one joint at a time. "No friction errors. No integrity alerts or balance corrections." Tentatively, he pulled his arm back from Chica and stood on his own two feet. He took a step, clicked through an internal diagnostic, and took another.
"You're still limping," observed Ana.
"Yeah, but I'm not dragging it." Bonnie headed across the stage, his left leg stiff but lifting clear off the ground with each step. When he reached the curtain, he turned around and came back, walking even faster, almost normally. "GREAT JOB! Goddammit, I mean…uh…"
"Great job?" Ana suggested, moving on her knees over to Chica and settling again.
"What do ye think-k-k yer doing?" Foxy asked.
"Not in love with your tone, Captain," she replied, trying to open Chica's thigh casing. It appeared to be stuck. "I can appreciate this is your Cove and all, but it's not your building and you're not the boss of me."
"WHAT. DO. YOU. THINK. YOU'RE. DOING."
Ana sat for a moment or two, then looked up at Freddy.
He waited, arms folded.
"Look," she said finally. "I might as well, right? I'm here, Chica's here, the tools are here…it's a long night. Let's just make the most of it!"
"NO. IT'S TIME TO SAY GOODBYE. LEAVE." He opened his mouth as if to continue, closed it, shook his head, then said, "I. DON'T. HAVE. TO—"
"—let me leave," she finished for him, like it was just something Freddy said, like it was a chance he gave to everyone. "Yeah, yeah. I remember. Give it a rest, would you?"
"GO. HOME. THE RESTAURANT IS CLOSED. YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE. GO. HOME. IT'S TIME TO SAY GOODBYE."
"If that didn't work the first thousand times you said it, why would it work now?"
"YOU HAVE TO LEAVE. NOW. YOU ARE TRESPASSING. THE RESTAURANT IS CLOSED. RULE NUMBER EIGHT, LEAVE BEFORE DARK. GET. OUT. AND. GO. HOME."
"No. Sheesh, this is really stuck good, isn't it?"
The Toreador March began to play. "I. DON'T. WANT. YOU. HERE."
Ana's hands stilled, but only for a moment. She smiled, just a little, and resumed prying at Chica's leg. "I know."
Freddy bent over, thrusting one arm out in a furious point, and boomed, "GO. HOME," right in her face to the tune of the Toreador March.
She looked at him, then at the gadget in her right hand and Chica's thigh-casing under her left, and finally up at him again. "Are you serious? That's what you really want?"
He nodded once, grunting angrily, still pointing and still playing the March.
She held the gadget up between them, never blinking, never flinching, and actually moved her face even closer to Freddy's teeth. "You had to pick her off the floor, you remember that? You had to carry her down the stairs."
Freddy's pointing finger wilted slightly. The music died. He blinked.
"You just watched me clean out Bonnie's knee. You just watched him walk across the fucking stage. But you're sending me home. You won't even let me look at her much less try to help her out and why? Because I'm trespassing? Smoking? Not wearing pants? What? Seriously, what am I doing that's so much worse than your friend not being able to walk?"
Freddy straightened and stepped back. His arms twitched out once, palms up, imploring, and then mutely let them drop. He looked at Chica.
"IT'S OKAY, FREDDY," Chica said.
"No, it's not okay. What's wrong with you?" Ana demanded. "You ought to be kidnapping me and forcing me to do this, not throwing me out! Where the fuck are your priorities at?"
Freddy glanced down, through the stage and through the floor, to the basement where he kept his priorities. He took his hat off, started to rub his head, then just turned the hat over and stared into it for a while. Over the years, he'd pulled hundreds of paper bouquets out of that hat, thousands of plushie Bonnies, even live doves and birthday cupcakes with lit candles, but it was empty now.
Bonnie at once took Ana's arm, watching Freddy too closely as he tried to pull her away. "Please," he said, not to Ana. "P-Please d-d-don't."
Oh, there was a story there, all right, and Foxy was beginning to catch a glimmer of just what it was. Moving fast, he gathered her kit, plucked the gadget out of Ana's hand and dropped it all in her toolbox. "Ye said-d-d yer piece," he said, pushing it into her arms over her angrily confused protests. "Now ye need-d-d to go."
"NO."
"Freddy." Bonnie released Ana and stepped in front of her, hands up and useless before him. "C-C-Come on. Just…Just-t-t let her go."
"NO," Freddy said again. He put his hat on and looked at Ana. "AND ONE DAY," he said haltingly, paused to click through some sound files, and said, "YOU. LOOK UP. AND. REAL. EYES." Another pause, longer, but he wasn't searching for words this time. "IT'S ME."
Foxy, baffled, tried to catch Bonnie's or Chica's eyes, but they were both staring at Freddy. Chica's hands were pressed over the hole in the middle of her face, still cupped in the shape of the beak she'd lost years ago. Bonnie's ears were low and his shoulders slightly hunched. Whatever this story was, they both knew it.
He really ought to be leaving the Cove more often.
"No," said Ana, almost to herself. And then said it again, moaning it louder and louder: "No, no, no, no!"
"IT'S ME," said Freddy, watching her with a deeply unnerving lack of expression. "I'M. THE. MONSTER."
"No, you're not. No, you are not!" Ana shoved her toolbox back at Foxy, stepped around Bonnie and marched boldly right up to Freddy, and it suddenly struck Foxy just how small she really was, so much smaller than Freddy. A child, full-grown or not, standing in her underwear, alone in a dark place where no one knew to look for her and no human ear would ever hear her scream, looking up into the face of the monster looking down. "No, you're not and you do not need to be absorbing that into your files or whatever it is you do. I know who you are. You know who you are. Everyone knows who you are!"
"WHO?"
Ana made a few empty sounds, plainly at a loss, then said, "You're Freddy Fazbear."
"WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?"
"Wow." She raked a hand through her hair until it knotted up in her braid, muttering, "I am way too sober to be fielding the existential crises of an animatronic bear," but then she looked right at him and said, "You don't like me, do you?"
Bonnie reached out for her. Foxy caught his arm and Chica shook her head. This moment belonged to Ana and Freddy.
The rain fell on the roof and through it, onto the floor. In the distance, thunder grumbled.
Freddy said, "NO."
It was a blow, much as she tried to mask it, but she took it on the chin and simply said, "That's fine. You shouldn't. I am, without a doubt, the very definition of the kind of person you should be keeping out. I'm just a mess." She faltered, looking down at herself, then shook it off and looked at Freddy again. "But when I got sick and crawled into your house to die, you took care of me anyway. I hit you and yelled at you and called you names and you gave me a drink and put me to bed and didn't let me leave until you knew I'd be all right. That's who you are. Got that? That's what you remember here. You can take that other shit out and dump it in your recycling bin right now. You are Freddy Fazbear. You're still not the boss of me—"
He grunted, almost but not quite a laughing sound-bite.
"—but you're not a monster. Certainly not for wanting to keep half-naked, pot-smoking riff-raff like me out of your house in the middle of the night. But look." She heaved a sigh, flung out her arms and said, "I'm leaving, aren't I? I've got work in the morning and I've already decided that's where my priorities are at, so just…just give me a little more time, okay? I'm not ready. Please."
Freddy gazed at her without speaking, clicking, or even blinking. When his arm moved at last, Foxy had just enough time to know—not think, know—he was about to snap her neck, and then Freddy's hand came to rest on her shoulder. He gave her a pat and let his arm drop again. "STAY. AS. LONG. AS. YOU. WANT," he said, already moving away. He went to Chica, got up under her arm as she stared at him, shock-eyed, and nodded at Ana's toolbox.
Ana, either unaware that the Earth had shifted on its axis or pretending to be, found her screwdriver again and got back to work prying open Chica's leg casing.
For a while, the sounds of metal scraping on plastic and the rain were all the sounds to hear.
"Really?" said Bonnie.
"YES."
"No, b-b-but I mean—"
"I. KNOW. WHAT. YOU. MEAN." Freddy's fans wheezed out a sigh as he shook his head. "AN-N-A."
"Yeah?"
"WILL. YOU. FOLLOW. THE. RULES."
"All except the one about leaving before dark. And no trespassing, obviously," she said, giving up on the thigh and moving on to the shin. "And the one about yelling, probably. And I'm sure others will come up. You know what, let's just say no, but I'll break them with the best of intentions."
"GOOD. ENOUGH," said Freddy.
Bonnie stared. "Really?"
Freddy sighed again and after a long silence, opened his mouth to speak, but they'd never know what he meant to say, because at that precise moment, Chica's shin-casing popped open, releasing an avalanche of what appeared at first glance to be pills, all brown and black and white, but which on second sighting were merely thousands upon thousands of maggot husks, presently spilled across Ana's bare legs.
Astonishingly, Ana didn't even appear to notice right away as she was already heaving herself aside, one hand clamped over her mouth and nose, visibly blanching out in that peculiar yellowish-green color that meant the sick was like to follow. She crawled away on all fours, scattering the dead maggots or crunching them under her hands and knees, made it almost to the gangplank, then said, cheerfully, "Nope," and chummed the deck.
She didn't have much in her and Lord knew there'd been worse sprayed over the stage in its time, but while she was thus occupied, Foxy picked up the flashlight and hunkered down in front of Chica to have a look at what the buggies had been living in. And on.
Filling the cavity within Chica's leg were a hopelessly-tangled thicket of pale wormy-looking stems and thick clotted-blood-colored blobs. Some sort of fungus, he guessed. It was everywhere, grown together until Chica's endoskeleton and other parts couldn't even be seen, much less assessed for damage. The buggies had filled what little space was left between the mushrooms, forming a single spongy mass that, now that their confines had opened out, was slowly expanding, bent stems uncurling and compressed wads of maggot bodies breaking apart before dribbling onto the stage.
"Don't touch it!" Ana called, spitting and hiccoughing in a manner that suggested she wasn't quite done yet.
"I ain't-t-t," said Foxy, reaching into the clotted soup of all that lovely gunk. Rule Number Twenty-Two said no animatronic could fix another, but this wasn't fixing. His probing fingers tapped against Chica's endoskeleton, followed it down, and bumped something that should not be there. Something firm, but yielding.
"I said, don't…don't…Oh Jesus Christ, what is on me?"
As the less than musical sounds of Ana slapping at herself and choking on curses filled his ears, Foxy found a careful gripping place and pulled. The thing came up and out with a thick sucking sound. A shoe, the sort called 'sneakers', high-topped, once white and trimmed out in neon colors, with a fat tongue sticking up between the sparkly laces and the sock holding what was left of the foot. Bits of mushroom and dead maggots filled the sock, but there was no way to shake them out without tumbling the bones out with them, so Foxy simply folded the sock around the lot of it and tucked it down snugly into the shoe.
Freddy put his hand out.
Foxy gave the shoe up and stood, turning to keep an eye on Ana as he listened to Freddy open his abdomen and put the shoe inside. Ana, recovering, gained her feet also and wiped her mouth, motioning at Chica with the same broad gesture she used to knock the last maggots from her knees and thighs.
"Well, I think I found the problem," she said, returning. She crouched, not too close this time, and peered into Chica's leg. "God almighty, what a mess."
"GOSH, I'M SORRY," said Chica, head down.
Freddy put his arm around her, but kept his other hand over his stomach.
"You've got nothing to be sorry about. You're fine." Ana prodded at the very edges of the mushroom forest, wiped her finger on her shirt, and shook her head. "The thing is…that stuff is almost certainly eating holes into your works. And by the same token, it's plugging those holes. Now, from what I've seen, you move mainly by way of pneumatic pumps. If I clear that shit out, I'm going to open those holes, and if those pumps lose pressure, they stop working. I mean stop," she stressed, not that any of them needed further explanation. "I saw a pneumatic lift blow a tube once. It collapsed before the fucking tube hit the floor, I shit you not." She paused, looking away indistinctly at the wall. "There was a guy under it at the time." After a while, she looked back at Chica. "I'm not done. Okay? I'm not. But I can't help you with what I've got here now. So, here's what we're going to do. You listening?"
Chica nodded.
"YES," said Freddy.
"First off, you're going to leave that alone. Okay? You don't open it, you don't clean it out, you don't touch it. Absolutely alone. And try not to move around too much."
Chica looked at her helplessly. Leg or no leg, at six, they would have to be on stage. At eleven, the first set would open the restaurant and at nine, it would close, and in between, Chica would have to climb up or down the stage steps twenty times. In between, she'd also have ten dances, two parades, five trips to the kitchen for her Chica Loves To Cook routine, and five trips to the reading room for storytime.
Ana looked at Freddy. "Can you keep her still?"
"NO."
Ana nodded, shook her head, then closed Chica's shin-casing and straightened up. "Do your best," she said.
"JUST DO YOUR BEST," Chica agreed, nodding. "YOU'LL NEVER KNOW UNLESS YOU TRY!"
"Right. So, I'm going to go now, like, three minutes after that great speech and all," she added in a mutter and shook her head some more as she closed up her toolbox and took her flashlight back from Foxy. "But I'll be back tonight and maybe I'll think of something."
"BYE BYE! COME BACK SOON."
"Yeah." Ana headed out, but stopped at the curtain and looked back. Her eyes went to each of them in turn and by the time she got all the way around to Chica again, there was no more hope in them. She turned away, opened the curtain, stood some more. Then she let the curtain drop, put the toolbox down and came back, walking fast and sure and straight to Bonnie.
He opened his arms and she got right up in them with Foxy and Freddy and Chica all looking on. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulled his head down and put her mouth close to the base of his ear. She whispered, breathed, whispered again.
Bonnie's eyes turned briefly pained, then closed. "Okay," he whispered back.
She kissed him, once on the smooth side of his cheek and once, fiercely, on the mouth, then walked out again and this time, did not look back.
It was still raining and between the water hitting the roof and hitting the floor, nothing of her truck's engine could be heard, but Foxy knew when she was gone all the same. The life just went out of the building.
Freddy, never one for sentiment, went over to Chica and knelt with considerable effort in front of her. "FOXY. HELP. ME. OPEN. THIS."
On edge and for no good reason, Foxy went and used his hook to scrape out the gummed-up seam of Chica's leg casings, then pried her shin carefully open so Freddy could feel around inside.
Chica shut her eyes and kept them shut while Freddy found the other sneaker, then went on to methodically examine the rest of her. Not even he could access an animatronic's console, but he checked it as best he could through her neck and abdominal cavities. All in all, he found and removed several tatters of fabric, a half-dozen suspect chunks of material which could as easily be time-hardened machine grease as bits of flesh, a rainbow barrette, and a medical alert bracelet with a broken clasp.
Freddy read the name on this last, then tucked it into his abdomen without speaking and moved on to the next section of Chica's casing. When he satisfied himself she was clean, he got to his feet and just looked at her for a while.
"YOU. NEVER. TOLD. ME. HE. MADE. YOU. HOLD. ONE," he said at last.
"I'M SORRY, FREDDY."
He shook his head, touching her shoulder, then moved all the way in for one of his increasingly rare hugs. "IT'S OKAY," he told her, rubbing her back so that she could hear it even if she couldn't feel it. "I'M SORRY. YOU. HAD. TO. CARRY. HER. ALL. THIS. TIME. THAT'S ALL." Gently, he released her and looked back at the others.
"I had one, too," Bonnie admitted. "I'm p-pretty sure he st-st—STAY AND PLAY—stayed in one piece, though."
"Think again, mate." Foxy nodded toward Chica, who opened her abdomen and found the plug on her stomach. With a little work, she squeezed the toe out and handed it over.
Bonnie looked at his leg in alarm, as if expecting nine more to tumble out, then started opening casings and probing at his joints. Almost immediately, he had pulled a scrap of fabric out from his elbow, something that could not be a towel or cleaning rag or anything but what it was—a piece of someone's bloody shirt.
Freddy took it, then turned Bonnie bodily around and started checking for himself. "FOXY. WHAT. ABOUT. YOU."
"No."
"ARE. YOU. SURE."
"Aye." Foxy's jaw creaked; he was clenching it. "He were using me for other things that-t-t night. Ain't c-c-carried one since Circle Drive. Ye?"
"NO. I. SHOULD. BE. CLEAN." Freddy found and removed another scrap of shirt, shut Bonnie's arm and opened his shoulder. "WHEN. I'M. DONE. HERE. YOU. AND. I. ARE. GOING. THROUGH. EVERY. ROOM. AND. MAKE. SURE. THERE. IS. NOTHING. HERE. FOR. AN-N-A. TO. FIND. WHEN. SHE. COMES. BACK."
"You really meant-t-t it when you said-d-d she could?" Bonnie pressed.
"YES. I. ALSO. MEANT. IT. WHEN. I. SAID. I. WILL. NOT. GIVE. HIM. A. CHANCE. TO. GET. OUT," Freddy continued evenly. "IF. I. HAVE. TO. CHOOSE. WHICH. PROMISE. TO. KEEP. YOU. KNOW. WHICH. ONE. I'LL. CHOOSE. UNTIL. THEN. SHE. CAN. COME. AND. GO."
"Yeah, b-b-but…what if…"
"I'M. HAPPY. FOR. YOU," interrupted Freddy, turning Bonnie to the wall so he could open his back. "I'M. HAPPY. YOU. HAVE. SOMEONE. YOU. CAN. LOVE. MORE. THAN. ANYTHING. SOMEONE. WHO. MAKES. YOU. FEEL. LIKE. NOTHING. ELSE. MATTERS. I. DON'T. I. NEVER. CAN. I. HAVE. TO. CHOOSE. HIM. EVERY. TIME."
"Yeah," said Bonnie, ears low.
"IF. SHE. CAN. FOLLOW. THE RULES. MAYBE. IT. WON'T. COME. TO. THAT."
That was a hell of a big 'if' and they all knew it. Bonnie did not answer.
"UNTIL. THEN. YOU. CAN. HAVE. HER. I. HOPE. THAT'S. GOOD. ENOUGH. FOR. YOU. BECAUSE. IT'S. ALL. I. HAVE. TO. GIVE." Freddy finished picking what appeared to be a shriveled-up mouse out of Bonnie's body and closed him up. "STAY. HERE. WITH. CHICA," he ordered, beckoning to Foxy.
Foxy nodded, but didn't immediately set off. Instead, he looked at Bonnie, who was staring at the stage floor in front of him. "There at the end-d-d, mate…What'd she tell ye?"
None of his business. He knew it and he wouldn't have been surprised to hear it, but Bonnie just said, "She said-d-d she lost everyone she ever loved-d-d when she wasn't looking-ing-ing. She said she wouldn't let it happen to me. She'd be b-b-back for me. Even if she had-d-d to dig me out."
Foxy knew Ana had meant all of them when she'd said, 'I'll be back for you,' but he couldn't feel even a twinge when Bonnie took it all for himself. So he told himself and he truly thought he believed it, and yet something sure put an edge on his tone when he snapped, "And ye said-d-d okay? She p-p-pours her bleeding heart out and ye say okay?"
"What the hel-l-l—HELLO THERE! WELCOME TO—hell am I suppo-o-osed to say to that?"
Foxy had no answer.
Surprisingly, Freddy did.
"YOU. TELL. HER. YOU. LOVE. HER," he grumbled, heading out. "YOU. TELL. HER. LIKE. IT'S. THE. LAST. TIME. YOU. EVER. WILL. SOME. DAY. YOU. WILL. BE. RIGHT." He didn't look to see what effect his words had, just slapped the damp curtains aside and growled, "FOXY. LET'S GO."
