New Faces, Old Bones

by RLeeSmith

It's true: Freddy Lives. And Ana Stark soon realizes that she can live with knowing that. The pizzeria has become her home, and Freddy and the other animatronics have become her family. But there are still plenty of other secrets left for Ana to discover, some of them buried below the pizzeria itself…and the worst of them wants to be found.

13. Chapter 13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Bonnie did not consciously check the time anymore. His programming had always taken care of that, so he'd never formed the habit, and now that he no longer had a show to put on, he lost what little concern he'd ever had for keeping track of hours. But he still checked the days, and as every day slipped away without a visit from Ana, he told himself he was not really disappointed because he knew she wasn't going to come on a work-day. He did not let himself go on to think she was coming on the weekend, because that was disappointment just waiting to happen, but it was there anyway, never acknowledged but always with him, like a shadow.

All Friday morning, he struggled with it, the non-expectation, made infinitely worse by the fact—not a feeling or a paranoid delusion but the unquestionable fact—that the fucking security cameras were following him around. There were places he could go where the camera couldn't follow, but that would be giving him the satisfaction of knowing he could get on Bonnie's nerves anytime he wanted just by staring at him, so he didn't try to hide. Let the Purple Man look all he wanted. There was nothing to see except a big dumb bunny waiting for a girl who was never going to show up.

Except she might. It was the weekend, after all. As soon as she got off work, she might visit. She wouldn't sleep over, but she'd come see them. She'd come to see him. She might.

As the afternoon tipped over into evening, Bonnie gave up pretending he wasn't waiting. He sat down on the stage directly across from the camera, turned one ear toward the kitchen so he could hear the loading dock door if it opened and the other toward the lobby, and picked up what was left of his guitar. He began to 'play,' hardly aware of what his fingers did even when he was looking at them.

He waited for Ana to get off work and come see him.

And at nine, when the restaurant officially 'closed' and Swampy at last shut up and powered down, he made himself stop.

"You still don't get to be disappointed," he told himself.

"What?" Chica called from the kitchen where she'd been happily clattering around, passing the time in her own way. Playing at cooking with a broken kitchen, which was silly, but no worse than Bonnie playing with the neck of his broken guitar.

Maybe they were all waiting. Foxy hadn't left the Cove since Wednesday, and come to think of it, Freddy had gone into the gym a couple hours ago and hadn't come out yet. Not that there was much point in patrolling when the doors were as good as they were, but it hadn't stopped Freddy before. No, he was waiting for Ana, too.

"Ain't autonomy great?" Bonnie said aloud and tossed the neck of his guitar into the back corner of the stage.

The camera, unblinking all this time, swiveled to track it, then came back to Bonnie.

"Did you say something?" Chica called.

"No." Bonnie pushed his ears up against the overwhelming gravity of his mood. "I mean, yeah, I did, but it's nothing. I don't think she's coming, that's all."

"Oh." The happy noise in the kitchen lulled. "Oh gosh, what am I going to do with all this?"

"All what?"

"Um…"

Funny, how Bonnie could listen to Chica putter around in there for a good three hours without the slightest curiosity as to what she was doing, but one 'Um' and a lot of quiet could bring it on to an irresistible degree. He got up, slapping his bad leg into working order when it balked on him, and limped over to the kitchen, where his sagging ears snapped upright without any effort at all. "Jumping jackrabbits, Chica!" he blurted, the normally-hated good-ol-bunny expletive popping out of him unnoticed. "What in the living fuck?!"

Cakes. Cakes everywhere. Cakes and cookies and tiny pies and iced scones and muffins, but mostly cakes. The pizza oven occupying the middle of the kitchen floor had become a staging area, loaded with trays covered in frosting roses and cups of sprinkles or colored sugar and other edible decorations; the conveyor belt at either end, a cooling rack for confectionaries still awaiting filling and frosting; while every inch of available space on the prep station was taken up by brightly-colored cakes awaiting the chef's finishing touch.

"She said I could play with it," Chica said weakly, closing the open door on Ana's toy oven.

"Did you use all her little food mixes up?" Bonnie demanded, limping toward the cupboard where Ana kept her food.

Chica quickly closed that too and positioned herself in front of it. "No no no," she said in her most convincing I-am-not-lying voice. "It looks like more than it is."

"Well, that's great, because it looks like all of them!"

Chica squirmed a little, avoiding his eyes and tapping her fingers. "It was getting late. I thought she'd be hungry."

"So you make her one cake, you don't make all of them! When have you ever heard Ana say, 'Gosh, I'm so hungry, I could eat all the food!'"

Chica put her hands over her eyes. "I know, I know. I didn't mean to. It was an accident."

"How do you accidentally make one cake, let alone thirty of them? I have tripped and fallen a thousand times and made exactly zero cakes as a result." Bonnie picked up a cupcake with white frosting and confetti sprinkles surrounding the words Let's Eat written in yellow icing, one of Chica's birthday classics on a miniature scale. "What were you thinking?"

"I don't know. I made one and it felt so good to just be doing it again and…I don't know!" Chica watched helplessly as he put that cake down and picked up another. "I thought maybe she didn't like vanilla, so I made her a chocolate one."

"She bought it, didn't she? Why would she buy something she didn't like?"

"And then I thought maybe she didn't like cake, so I made some cookies and…you know, other stuff…so she could have a choice."

"Well, you sure gave her that."

"I really thought she'd be here before I finished, but she wasn't, so I thought I'd keep going and…I don't know." Chica took the cake out of his hands and put it on the counter, fussing with its precise placement. "As long as I was busy, it didn't feel like it was taking that long." Chica backed up, her eyes shifting from one cake to another, and sighed. "It's really late, isn't it?"

"She probably had a long day," said Bonnie and wished it felt even a little like a lie. At least then he'd know he was starting to get over her. But he didn't. He still thought she was coming back. He may never be her man again, but she'd always be his girl and she was coming back. "I'm sure she'll be here tomorrow," he said. Big dumb bunny.

"We should probably put these in the fridge, then."

"Yeah."

They each picked up a cake and turned to look at the cooler. Behind the scales of black mold on its inner glass face, the irregular shapes of the food that had stocked it more than a decade ago could still be seen.

"We should probably clean the fridge first," said Chica.

"Yeah."

Fortunately, Freddy chose that moment to interrupt them with a well-timed, "What's all the shouting about?" from the dining room.

"I wasn't shouting," Bonnie protested.

"You were a little," Chica murmured and turned around to greet Freddy just as he came through the other door. "Want a cake?"

"What in the—? Oh for heaven's sake, Chica." Freddy shook his head, looking the selection over without stopping as he continued through the kitchen to the store room.

"We're cleaning it up," she assured him.

Bonnie looked at her. "We?"

"Yes, you are," Freddy said firmly, "but you might as well let her pick one first. Knowing her, it'll be the first meal she's had all day."

What good humor Bonnie had managed to find dropped away at once. He smiled anyway, pushing his ears up and faking a careless tone as he said, "She's not coming tonight."

"No, she's not 'coming,'" Freddy said, now in the store room where the camera's light was just switching on. "She's here."

Bonnie's ears swept forward. He listened, turning his mics in every direction, but—

"I can't hear anything," Chica said.

"I saw her from the gym. Give it a moment. She should be turning in now." The loading dock door rattled and rose, noisy on its track, but not so much that Bonnie couldn't just catch the sound of the truck's engine approaching from across the lot. The store room lit up with headlights, throwing Freddy's waving shadow huge over the opposite wall. "And here she is."

"You'd better hope so," said Chica disapprovingly. "Otherwise, that's someone else's spotlight you're standing in."

"It's Ana," Bonnie said. He hurried to empty his hands of cake as the truck rumbled closer. That familiar engine shut off and ticked, cooling. A door opened.

"Oh awesome, you're here. Go get everybody, I've got presents."

And that was Ana's voice, Ana's own, light and easy, the way it used to be.

"What have you got in there?" Freddy was asking.

"What'd I just say, bear? I got presents. Oh, not in there. That's a bunch of cabinets and shit for the house. The presents are in the truck. Hey, back off! No peeking!"

"I'll get Foxy," said Chica, already waddling toward the door.

"Sure, leave me to explain all the cake," Bonnie said, but he was already at the store room door, peeking around the shelves for a glimpse of Ana as she stood on the truck's runners, one leg kicked out for balance as she bent around the driver's seat for whatever she wanted in the back. Behind the truck was a trailer, like the one she'd been towing the very first night she'd come here. A moving truck.

Bonnie's imaginary heart lurched. His cooling fan revved. His big bunny foot caught on the base of the scoop at his first step, which he couldn't feel, and with his balance regulators out of commission ever since that night he'd fallen into the quarry, he didn't even know he was falling until he hit the floor and wiped out his vision with error messages.

Freddy looked around as Ana wiggled backwards out of the truck, his eyes like searchlights moving over the shelves, the scoop, and then down.

"Are you okay?" Ana asked.

"Yeah." Bonnie tried to get up, unaware that his foot was still caught until he looked back to see why his stupid leg wasn't moving. With the shelves on one side and all the leftover roofing stuff in shambles on the other, he couldn't even reach his foot to disentangle it and was afraid to kick himself loose and maybe break Ana's new scoop. "Yeah, don't worry. I got it. I just need to…I can't quite…Damn it."

Freddy heaved a sigh and headed for the stairs. Ana left her stuff in the truck and climbed directly onto the dock.

"I got it," Bonnie assured them both, but he didn't.

"Sorry." Ana picked her way easily through the junk and knelt next to the scoop. "I should have cleaned all this out before I left. I'll clear a wider path tonight, I promise."

"That's fine," Bonnie said glumly, staring at his hands in fists on the floor in front of him until she got him loose and made enough room for him to at least try to stand. "It wouldn't even be a problem if my stupid R-L-sequence accelerometers weren't broken."

"We all have broken accelerometers," Freddy said, ordering Ana back with a curt wave so he had enough room to get at Bonnie. "What you need to do is slow down and watch where you're going and stay out of rooms where you can't see your feet."

"Yeah, yeah." Bonnie shot Ana a hot, embarrassed glance that she thankfully didn't see as she was headed back out to her truck. He lowered his voice to a flustered hiss. "I get it, okay? Are you going to pick me up or lecture me all night?"

"I can do both. Hold still." Once his foot was finally unhooked, Freddy worked his hands under Bonnie's arms and lifted. Freddy set him on his feet, but did not release him. If anything, his grip tightened, enough that one of Bonnie's gummed-up sensor plates faintly registered it. "Look at yourself."

"I don't need to—"

"I said look down!"

The camera, aimed outside where Ana was digging around in the truck, panned around and pointed itself at Bonnie's chest, lighting him up like he was on stage, and Bonnie's sullen downward glance became a stare.

There was a hole. Not a chip or a gouge, but an actual hole, going all the way through his chest casing, and it sat not quite in the center of a vaguely circular cluster of cracks, like he'd fallen on a black spiderweb.

It didn't hurt. Like having a face, skin was one of those things that was more about looking good than necessity. After Circle Drive had shut down, he and the others had waited out the years without wearing any skins at all, just four endoskeletons locked in the vault, almost identical except for details like ears and eyes and Foxy's hook. Having holes in skin didn't matter as long as there was enough of it to protect his more vulnerable mechanisms…such as the glass case of his battery…which he could see glinting in the light of Freddy's eyes through the hole in his chest.

Bonnie was not aware of speaking—he was scarcely aware of thinking—but when he heard, "That looks serious," it was so hilariously understated he thought for sure he'd said it. But the camera swiveled around again and when Bonnie dazedly followed it, there was Ana on the loading dock, looking him over with distracted concern as she adjusted the stuff she was carrying—shopping bags, some plastic and one fancy paper one, and a closed cardboard box big enough to hold Bonnie's head without taking the ears off.

"Yeah," Bonnie said numbly. "Yeah, it's pretty serious."

"I'll patch it up for you tonight and see what I can do to reinforce your frame. You should show me where you keep your accel-o-whatevers. You never know. Maybe all they need is a good cleaning."

"Yeah. Maybe." Bonnie raised a hand, but Freddy stopped him before he could touch the damage. Probably a good thing. The pressure sensors in his hands weren't very reliable. He might push, meaning just to touch, and end up with one big hole instead of a lot of little cracks around a small one.

'At least then I could see where Ana wrote her name,' he thought and felt a little sick to the stomach he didn't have. Forcing his ears up (one of them was twitching for the first time since he'd gone Auto), Bonnie turned a broad smile on Ana and held out one hand toward her overburdened arms. "Did I hear someone say presents? Which one of those is mine?"

"None. Yours is still in the truck. It's fragile."

Freddy grunted, intercepting the box as Ana attempted to pass it over and taking it for himself. "So are you," he told Bonnie darkly. "Go on. Carefully."

"Babysitter Bear has spoken," Ana intoned.

"Mind your manners," Freddy grumbled, pointing Bonnie at the kitchen. "I hope you're hungry, by the way."

"I'm starving, now that you mention it. I haven't eaten since lunch. Well, technically it was breakfast, but I didn't have it until—sweet mother of pie!" she concluded and Bonnie knew even without looking up from his feet that Ana had reached the doorway. A short, stunned silence ended in a peal of laughter, so he guessed that was all right. "Chica, was this you?"

"I cannot tell a lie," Chica called from the hall. "Bonnie did it."

"Did you hear that, my man?" Ana asked, moving into the kitchen. "She threw you right in the line of fire without a moment's hesitation."

"What's that thing you like to say? Pardon your gender bias?" said Bonnie as he followed her, watching the camera shut off in the store room and come on in the dining room, anticipating their arrival. "Maybe I did do it. Boys can bake."

"You're right, you're right. Sorry. They look nice. Did you really do this?"

"Hell, no. The only time this bunny sets foot in a kitchen is to get another beer."

"You're not mad, are you?" Chica asked, appearing in the doorway. Her eyes darted toward Bonnie, perhaps to ask him to plead her case, then dipped to his chest and widened in alarm.

He shook his head at her before she could say anything. Ana looked happy, kind of nervous, but really happy. He didn't want anything to distract her from whatever great thing she had planned for tonight. Later was soon enough to find out how badly he was hurt.

"No, I'm not mad," Ana was saying, rising up on her tiptoes to see the trays of frosting roses and ribbons on top of the oven. "I'm actually really relieved."

"You are?" Chica inched through the doorway, tapping her fingers. "Why?"

"Well, it didn't occur to me until tonight as I was driving here that cooking might be one of those things you only said you liked as part of your show."

"Oh no, I love to cook! That's one of the things that was written into the show because I already liked it so much. I mean," Chica amended, catching a warning flash from Freddy's eyes, "we all had a lot of interests when we were new, but that was the one of mine that really stuck. I never really cared much for the keyboard, although I still like to sing when it's not Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for the umpteenth time. We used to have a radio and I would sing along sometimes after everyone went home, sometimes even with the commercials, because they can be quite catchy, some of them, even if they aren't really songs. Gosh, I'm babbling. What were we talking about?"

"Cooking," said Ana.

"I love to cook. I just don't get many opportunities, apart from pizza and cupcakes, although I try to be as creative as I can. It's funny, isn't it? I know I don't have a sense of taste, but I like to pretend I do and I guess I pretend pretty well because all the special orders are my own inventions, except the Hawaiian. But all the others. I'm still babbling," Chica concluded in dismay.

"God, I can breathe in the diabetes from here." Ana moved over, walking through the kitchen on the prep-side of the central oven to get a better look at the cakes. "I don't want you to take this the wrong way, because these look really good, especially for Easy Bake food, but you do realize this is, like, a metric fuckton of food, right?"

"I didn't mean to make so many. I just got carried away."

"It's all good. I'll take 'em into work on Monday. The guys'll appreciate a break from doughnuts," Ana said, then glanced at the cooler and sighed. "Add 'clean fridge' to the list of tonight's chores."

"I'll help," Chica offered, moving out of the doorway to let Ana through. "Can I carry some of that?"

"No, I got it. Hey, Foxy."

"Ahoy, lass," Foxy replied, looking Bonnie up and down while the camera zoomed in on Ana. "What the hell happened to ye?"

"Oh, I miscalculated the length of the bungee cord when I was base diving off the Eiffel Tower and hit a baguette truck," Bonnie replied breezily. "I fell down, what the hell do you think happened?"

"Bonnie," Freddy said warningly.

"I thought maybe ye might have been smiting yer lovesick heart a bit too hard, which dumb as it is, ain't half as bad as watching ye mope around the stage all day muttering sappy poetry to yerself."

Freddy sighed. "Foxy."

"I'm not muttering poetry, I'm composing lyrics. And I'm fine. Thanks for your concern, now please shut up about it."

"Aye, all right. Because ye said please." Foxy found a leaning spot onstage under the camera where it couldn't easily see him and settled in. "I'd about decided we'd seen the rudder-end o' ye, lass. Not that there's any-aught wrong with yer rudder."

Bonnie looked at him.

Foxy dropped his eyepatch in a wink.

"I'll have to take your word for it," Ana said, directing Freddy to put the box on the stage and dropping her bags beside it. Plastic crinkled, but beyond that and the fact that nothing sounded hard or heavy—not even what was in the box—there was no telling what she'd brought. "Because at the moment, what I can feel of my rudder feels flat as a dime. I just drove two hours, not including the hour I spent sitting around at the U-Haul place, because when I went out to get the trailer I had just rented, I discovered they'd left the door open and there was an honest to God armadillo having babies in the back. And the guy renting them just handed me a broom when I told him. Like what the hell, guy? I'm not going to sweep a bunch of newborn armadillos into the goddamn desert and drive away like it's not my problem! Fortunately, the rental guy's wife was also there and she let him have it with both barrels, but I still needed a trailer, so there was this whole ordeal with boxing up Mamadillo and the babies and then really scrubbing the trailer out because natural birth is beautiful but gross, and let me tell you, this was after the whole rest of the day I had."

"Are you all right?" Bonnie asked.

She looked around, convincingly surprised. "Yeah. Why?"

"You're…" How to put this nicely?

"Babbling," Chica said.

Ana laughed again. "Yeah, no doubt. I'm a little nervous."

"About what?" Bonnie asked.

"I'll get there, my man, I just got to work my way up to it."

"Wow, you are not putting my mind at ease," said Bonnie. "Is everything okay? Did something happen?"

"No, no. I mean, yeah, but no."

Foxy snorted. "Well, that's cleared that up."

"Nothing bad happened," Ana amplified. "It was just a strange day."

"Strange how?" Bonnie pressed.

"Strange like…" An odd sort of smile played around Ana's lips while she thought. "Like fun," she decided. "Unexpectedly fun. Like it starts out sort of low and then for no reason, it hooks a hard right and suddenly everything's possible again. You know?"

"Yeah," said Bonnie and had to smile. "Yeah, I do."

Foxy shook his head, his gaze wandering over to the 'presents' on the stage.

"It was one of those days," Ana said, moving the bags out of hooking range. "Just another normal, life-changing day. And I think…I think maybe the best way to work myself up to the part at the end is to start at the beginning. It's kind of a long story and you're probably going to think it's pretty boring…"

"As long as it's not Goldilocks and the Three Bears," Freddy grunted.

"Or the Sea Witch o' bloody Sirenia," Foxy added.

"Or Henny Penny," said Chica. "Not that Stranger Danger isn't an important lesson and a repetitive rhyming scheme is a very effective way to teach children, but after the first few thousand times, all those Henny Pennys and Foxy Loxys and Goosey Lucys start to get on a person's nervy wervys."

"We're not going to be bored," Bonnie assured her. "You could probably tell us about the time you cleaned out the garage and I'd want to know if you found anything cool."

"Remind me to tell you about the time I cleaned my aunt's basement. But, okay. Okay." Ana sat on the stage, making a visible effort to put her thoughts in order. "Okay, so this whole week has been…not a bad week, but…not great. It's got nothing to do with you," she said, looking at Bonnie. She glanced at the rest of them too, but she started and ended with Bonnie. "There's just a lot of stuff I need to be dealing with at the house and I'm not, so it's all been piling up for a while and now that I don't have anywhere else to be, it's getting harder and harder to ignore."

She trailed off, looking restlessly around the room—at the unfinished ceiling, at the cracked tiles, at holes in the padding on the stage beside her. "My life is just a mess," she said finally, without much emotion, as a statement of fact. "That's nothing new. That's part of the problem, I guess. When you've been living in a bad mess your whole life, you kind of stop seeing it. Your idea of cleaning up becomes…I don't know. This."

Mechanisms whined and groaned as the others looked around. Bonnie (and the camera) just watched Ana.

"You sweep and mop and call it good," she said, scuffing at the floor with the toe of her boot. "But it's not good. The more you live in it, the more normal it feels, but it's still not good. Basically, you just get used to feeling bad, like…all the time. To the point where you stop noticing. Unless something happens to make you notice. And that," she said with sudden, forced cheer, "brings us to this morning and the weird day I had. So I'm at work and the mower broke down—"

"Mower like a lawn mower?" Foxy interrupted.

"Yeah," said Ana, and would have jumped right back into the story except that Foxy's barking laughter re-attracted her attention. Her eyes narrowed. "Something strike you funny, Captain?"

"Aye," said Foxy with a last disdainful snort. "Two things, even, and I don't know which be the better joke: The grass in this town growing long enough to need mowing or the fools in this bleeding wasteland planting grass in the first place."

Now Ana laughed. "Okay, that is funny. I said almost exactly the same thing just this morning."

"Great minds, luv." Foxy snapped his eyepatch down in a piratey wink. "What am I thinking now?"

"Anyway," Ana said loudly, rolling her eyes. "The mower breaks down, so my day ends pretty much at whenever that was, nine or ten. And somehow, me and…" She broke off and looked at them, mostly at Freddy, who looked back at her quizzically. "A friend," Ana said, obviously trying the word on for size and maybe a little surprised at how well it fit. "Me and a friend end up spending the day together, mostly just driving around and talking."

And damn Bonnie for a jealous ass at all the wrong times, but there, like a devil whispering in his left ear-mic came, 'A guy-friend or a girl-friend?'

"So he and I—"

Shit.

"—end up going to lunch and we talk some more. He told me to start living in the house I bought or it would always be haunted. Or words to that effect," she added with a smile. "I couldn't begin to tell you the actual words he said. I got him to try a Betty Burger today, but otherwise, the man eats nothing but English muffins and dictionaries. Anyway, I'm thinking about what he said, but I'm not, you know, motivated. I put in the order for a new mower and some other junk for work and then I go home, because I figure I'll get cleaned up and come over early and maybe surprise you. But I get out of the shower and there's a missed call on my phone from the ranch in Warren. The ranch is a place—"

"Where they have cows and horses and stuff," Bonnie interrupted, rolling his eyes. "Come on, Ana. I know we're out of the loop, but we know what a ranch is."

"Did you go horseback riding?" Chica asked. "Or, ooo! Was there a rodeo?"

"No," Ana told her. "This particular ranch doesn't do the cow and horse thing anymore. They do demolition work and sell the upcycled salvage to specialty clients. Like me. I was there a couple months ago to buy some cabinets for the bathroom, which, by the way, I still have yet to install. But I left them my number in case they ever got their hands on some—Not important," she said, shaking her head. "Whatever, they call me because they just finished the demo on some historic buildings and scored a metric fuckload of the most amazing old crap and want to know if I'm interested. I'm not, really. My aunt's house needs a lot of work, but the reality is, I'm probably not going to get the money out of it that I put into it as is, so every penny I put down is pretty much flushed. I mean, I do have to fix it up, but there's no reason I can't just patch it together out of Lowe's, you know?"

"When does this day start getting fun?" Foxy broke in.

"I'm getting there, Captain, keep your pants on." She glanced at him and the jeans he was wearing. "My pants on. Okay, so the point is, I don't have to go and I don't particularly want to go, but I love looking at old building crap and if I've got a choice between rebuilding my aunt's amazing kitchen with cheap-o mass-produced particle-board boxes with machine stamped knobs or two-hundred-year-old hand-tooled oak with cast brass corbin bin pulls…well, I want to at least see the option, you know?" she said in a laughing, come-on-who-wouldn't way, like simply everyone who had that choice would even recognize the difference, let alone care.

But enthusiasm looked good on her. Her eyes were shining and as tired as she obviously was, she had an energy and a vibrancy that was nearly a physical glow. Maybe all humans looked like this when they talked about something they were really, truly passionate about, but Bonnie had only ever seen it on little kids before. But those nervous little gestures she made as she spoke—waving a hand, pushing back her hair, rolling her eyes at her own exuberance—were the signs of an adult who knew what she looked like, but was just too excited to hold it all in, and that too struck Bonnie as familiar, painfully so. Adults didn't get worked up like that, not in public places when surrounded by other people who expected them to behave like adults, but there had been a time in the basement of the Glass House, when they had been newborn and unable to fully appreciate how rare and wonderful it was to see a grown man overcome by excitement as he told them about the place he was building for them, that magical word, pizzeria, and everything they would be able to do.

Bonnie could tell by the looks Foxy and Chica exchanged that he was not alone in drawing his parallel. When he looked over at Freddy, even he had a wistful tilt to his small ears and a faraway look in his normally stern eyes. And when he looked at the camera, it was also watching her.

Nothing odd about that. Ana was young, pretty, female and trespassing. She was in every possible way of interest to him. But even though a camera was just a camera and there was no real way of discerning emotion or intensity from the way it worked, Bonnie couldn't shake the feeling that it was watching her with more than casual curiosity.

Bonnie looked away before Ana noticed him staring at the camera, but it bothered him. He wished she would just take the goddamn things down already. She smoked the marijuana all the damn time; why wasn't she more paranoid?

"I give Rider a call to extend my credit and I drive out there to look around and that was a huge mistake, let me tell you," Ana said with a laugh. "We're talking all the salvage from a nineteenth century uptown area, including the bank, a hotel, some luxury apartments and a theater. You can imagine the swag. And I want it all. One thing you should know about me is I have the absolute worst taste in architecture. Pure trash. Everyone in the world right now is gushing over neo-minimalism. Not me. I don't give a shit for tailored lines and negative-neutral palettes, but show me some over-carved Victorian knotwork on a lintel and my panties hit the floor. Sorry," she said, blushing as Freddy loudly and unnecessarily cleared his speaker. "But for real, that place was heaven today. I have never in my life seen so much needful stuff in one place and everything I saw just made me want everything else I saw even more, to the point that it was just ridiculous. Like, there was this taxidermied ostrich…but at the same time, I'm thinking, what's the point?"

That was a rhetorical question if Bonnie ever heard one, but Chica piped right up. "The point is to live in a house, not a magazine. Chasing trends is just silly. What matters is that you do what makes you happy. It's okay to like lintels."

"Most folks stop shy o' the knicker-dropping though," Foxy remarked, once more eyeing the shopping bags.

"Okay, I'll ask," said Bonnie. "What's a lintel?"

Ana and Chica both started to speak but both stopped to politely let the other answer, and in this awkward pause, Foxy said, "It be the wooden beam ye finds sometimes set over a door, decorative-like."

"How the hell do you know that?" Bonnie asked.

Foxy glanced at him, head tipped to simulate a smile. "Got one over me cabin door, don't I?" His eye roved toward Ana. He winked. "Carved all up with crossbones and knots."

"I've noticed," she said.

Foxy's ears pricked. "Have ye now?" he drawled.

Ana gave him a Look (still smiling), then turned her attention to Chica. "I think all those years of reading kids' books have rubbed off on you…or all those years of flipping houses have rubbed off on me. Sure, everyone wants to be happy, but the reality is that a house is a home second and an investment first. I didn't come back to live in Aunt Easter's house…" Her smile slipped. "I came to deal with it. To fix it up and…and sell it. So I could finally leave this town and never come back."

Chica's eyebrows softly scraped across her forehead as she frowned. "Is that what you want to do?"

"Oh, what I want doesn't matter," Ana said with a short, dismissive wave. "It is what it is and what it is, is a money pit. I've sunk sixty grand into that place so far and finishing the job would take another thirty, and that's a barebones job that would look like cheap shit on a tin shingle. If I wanted to actually restore it to the way I remember, I'd need a quarter mil at the very fucking least. And if that house was anywhere else, I'd do it in a heartbeat, because anywhere else, that house could flip for well over two million. Hell, in California, ten to fifty mil, easy. But it's not. It's here, where the local economy is in the toilet and the toilet is backed up by the bloated corpse of a rotten blobfish. From a cold, financial standpoint, it's obviously not worth it. As for sentimental value…"

Chica waddled closer and took Ana's hand. "It's home."

But Ana shook her head, pulling her hand out of Chica's loose grip. "No, it's not. It never was. It was part of a past I can barely remember, and what I remember, I'm not sure I can trust."

Bonnie's ears tipped forward, concerned and a little confused. Freddy's ears did the same, to the best of their limited ability. Foxy laid his flat and looked away.

"I loved that house once," Ana said. "It was beautiful. I could make it beautiful again, but it wouldn't be the same, because it was her house. She's the one who made it what I think I remember. Without her, it's just…me. And I'm—it, I mean. It's not worth it."

"Oh, Ana." Chica reached for her again.

"No, you haven't seen it," Ana said, backing away. "It doesn't need fixing up, it needs burning down. It's got good bones, it really does. It could be a good home for someone else, but not me. When I look at it, I don't even see a house anymore. It's…It's just a mess."

"Worse than this place?" Bonnie asked and Ana turned to him at once with an intensity that made her almost unfairly beautiful. He knew she couldn't help it and he knew this was serious stuff she was saying and he needed to pay attention, but God, those eyes…

"So much worse," she told him. "Because it's not just work. I can do work. It's her. And him. And me. I bought it all, didn't I? The house and the junk and the monsters in the basement and the ghosts in the attic. It's all my mess now and the worst part is—" She let out a high, unhappy laugh. "—I don't even know how bad it is! There's no one I can talk to, no one who knew her or cared about her! It all caught up to me, right there on the lot in front of the flooring, and it suddenly felt like I lost her. I don't mean just that she was gone, I mean like she'd never been. I lost her, I lost David, I lost everything! So what was the point of fixing up the house? I'll never be able to bring back the past, it hasn't got a future, so what was I even doing there?"

Without taking his eyes off the bit of wall he was inspecting, Foxy said, "This is all part o' yer 'fun' day?"

"I told you it started out low. But here's where it hooks to the right," Ana assured him. "Because as I'm standing there, I suddenly have this whole epiphany moment. I mean, here I am literally surrounded by all this stuff, all these pieces of broken buildings. I've got some of the floor, some of the trim, a window, some cabinets, a chandelier…but even with hundreds, thousands of pieces in front of me, I couldn't build it back the way it was. I'll never even know what they used to look like. All I have left is what there is now and all I can do is use it the best I can. And it can still be good. It'll never be a bank or a hotel or a theater again…but that's okay." She paused, then smiled. "That sounds dumb when I say it out loud, huh?"

"No," said Chica and Bonnie almost in unison.

"Little bit," said Foxy.

Freddy sent him a dark stare, then looked at Ana. "Go on."

"There's nothing more to say, really. Just that it finally got all the way through to me that whether I fix it up exactly like it was or whether I walk out and let it come down on its own, it's…it's never going to be my aunt's house again. Never. But, like my friend said, it's not going to be mine either, not unless I make it mine. And I should. It's…It's okay to move on. Aunt Easter…the Aunt Easter I knew…she'd want me to. And you know what I did then?"

"I hope it started with a sensible budget," said Chica.

Ana and Freddy both laughed at the exact same time.

"You bought the ostrich," Bonnie said when they stopped.

"I bought that fucking ostrich," she said, pointing at him. "I'm going to put it in the foyer, right next to the door. It can be a hat-rack, just as soon as I buy a hat. I also bought a shit-ton of marble flooring, a bunch of light fixtures, more cabinets, like a thousand feet of molding, and just so much ornamental hardware. And no, I'll never get the money I put down back out, but so fucking what? I've never made a dime of equity before and it's never bothered me. Maybe it would be an issue if I had a mortgage, but I don't. I own that thing free and clear. And me? I've lived in a bunch of apartments and trailers and tents and out of my car and under overpasses, and it's about goddamn time I had a place of my own. A home. So…" Ana trailed off, losing some of her fire, then looked at the stuff beside her and almost visibly dragged the mood back and wrapped it around herself like a blanket. "So I decided to have a little housewarming party tonight with all my friends."

"And hey, I already baked a cake!" Chica chirped.

"Yeah, and it was actually all your cooking skits I was thinking of when I was shopping for you, so like I say, I'm glad—I'm super-glad that's a thing you actually like to do and not just part of your performance." Ana went back to the stage and picked up the paper shopping bag. "I got you—"

"I want to guess, I want to guess!" Chica clapped her hands, staring hard at the side of the bag, where the words Hearth & Home were printed. "Is it an appliance? Like a mixer or something like that? Oo! Did you get an ice cream maker? I love ice cream!"

Ana blinked at her, crookedly smiling. "You do?"

"Well…I like the idea of it."

"In any case, no, it's not an ice cream maker or any other kind of appliance. Want to try again?"

"Shake the bag."

Ana obediently hefted it a few times. It didn't make much sound at all, beyond a general sense of mass and weight, and not much of either, although the bag moved like it was full of something.

"Is it a tablecloth?" asked Chica at once.

"Why would I get you a tablecloth? What kind of present is that?"

"I don't know." Chica's fingers tapped. "Some of them are pretty. You might have gotten a whole fancy dining set or something. I don't know. Give me a hint."

"Okay," said Ana, looking thoughtful. "It's…not something you need in order to cook, but it's something probably everyone thinks of when they think of cooking. Like, if they were told to draw someone cooking, they'd draw this. Most regular people have probably never used one, but most people in the food industry do, from fast food right up to five-star restaurants."

That was simultaneously one of the most specific and least helpful hints Bonnie had ever heard, and he could tell by the tilt of Freddy's head that he didn't get it either.

"Is it…a cookbook?" Chica asked uncertainly.

"Nope. Give up?"

"I guess so," said Chica, looking mystified.

"As I was saying, I was picking out stuff for my future kitchen, and I got to thinking of you. Not just how you love to cook—that was probably misleading—but also how I knew you when I was a kid and that you're older than I am. So I was thinking…" Ana pulled a rolled cloth bundle from the bag and handed it over, grinning. "Maybe it's time to lose the bib."

Chica unfolded it—it had an odd shape, with a lot of folds—and when she finally found one end and shook it, it opened up all the way and suddenly, Ana's hint made a lot more sense.

It was an apron, one a lot fancier than the ones the staff used to wear in the pizzeria's kitchen. Living at Freddy's for fifty years had given Bonnie a reluctantly expert eye for cute shit; this apron was cute, mostly white with lots of rainbow-colored ruffles around the top and bottom, and strings that flared out at the ends into a satiny ribbon so it would make a proper bow when tied. At the same time, it wasn't a costume. The material looked sturdy and it had lots of deep practical pockets, not to mention a V-shaped neckline for maximum cleavage.

"Oh!" said Chica, holding it up. Then she said it again, softer. "Oh."

"Do you like it?" Ana asked, her smile fading. "Everyone's got their own style and my idea of yours is admittedly influenced by the fact that I've pretty much only ever seen you in the bib. And I'm not trying to judge. If you like the bib—"

Bonnie, who knew better, uttered a short laugh.

Chica smiled at him distractedly, then at Ana. "No," she said gently. "I don't hate it, I try not to hate anything, but I'm certainly not overly attached to this bib. I'm not a baby."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Something about the way you were talking about your original design wearing a diaper made me think you were ready for a change. And we can always look at some other stuff, pants or dresses or whatever you're into." Ana reached into the bag again and brought out another apron, this one pale yellow with pink trim, and the words, The Secret Ingredient is over a sparkly heart. "I just thought these were cool."

"Oh, I love that!" Chica said, only a little louder than a whisper, and immediately reached behind her head to fumble at her bib. The fastening clip had fallen off years ago. She kept it tied on now, but knots were easier to make with dead fingers than to untie.

"Ye don't like the bib?" Foxy inquired. "Since when?"

"Since always, idiot," said Bonnie, taking the rainbow apron so Chica had the use of both hands.

"So why are ye still wearing it?"

"Oh sure," said Chica, still blindly pinching and prodding at the knot. "Like I'm really going to go topless anywhere around you."

Foxy feigned injury even as his ears registered only amusement. "I'll have ye know, I've always imagined ye topless, irregardless of what ye wore. Ye ain't keeping yer nuggets private just for keeping 'em covered."

"Irregardless is not a real word," Chica replied. "And my nuggets are none of your business. Behave."

"Hold still." Freddy stepped behind her and gently chased her hands away from the problematic knot. Bonnie was intrigued to see that before Chica dropped her arms to her sides, she raised them even higher, hands cupped, as if to lift a heavy fall of hair out of Freddy's way. She used to have a lot more of those gestures—flipping invisible hair back over her shoulder or brushing invisible bangs away from her eyes—but not since High Street. It was sweet to see it again.

Foxy whistled through his speaker when Freddy took the bib away and laughed when Ana smacked him.

"Mind your fucking manners," Ana said.

"Watch yer fucking mouth," Foxy replied with a wink, catching up the apron with his hook and tossing it at Chica. "And cover yerself, for the love o' yer honor, lass. Running naked in the dining room. For shame."

"There's more in here." Ana gave the paper bag a shake so they could hear the sound of cloth shifting. "Have a look at them. Anything you don't like, I can always take back."

"I love them all," Chica declared, putting the Secret Ingredient one on and turning around to let Freddy tie the strings. "I don't even need to look. I can honestly say this is the nicest present anyone ever gave me."

"It helps that it's the only one," added Bonnie. "What'd you get me?"

"You…" Ana looked at him, biting briefly at her lip before shaking her head. "Nope. Foxy first."

"Aw, come on."

"Aye, wait yer turn, big-ears."

"Foxy," said Freddy warningly.

"I didn't hear any glass clinking when ye set those down," said Foxy, nodding at the bags as Ana picked one up and reached inside. "Which means it ain't rum, so I'm hard-pressed to guess what else yer thinking I'd want."

"Joke's on you, Captain. You didn't hear them because I wrapped the bottles." Ana pulled out a pale bundle and unrolled a bottle of rum into her waiting hand, then shook the cloth all the way open to show him a blousy sort of shirt that Foxy inexplicably appeared impressed by.

"Where did ye come by that?" he wanted to know, reaching for the shirt and not the rum.

"It wasn't too hard. I looked online for the nearest theatre group, gave them a call and asked for their costumer. I promised you a proper pirate's outfit and Ana Stark always keeps her promises."

As she spoke, Ana dug back into the bags and retrieved a pair of obviously fake but convincingly worn-looking leather boots with a bottle in each one, a long black-and-red coat with gold trim wrapping two more bottles, some black pants tucked around yet another bottle and, finally opening the cardboard box, a pirate hat with a full scarlet plume.

"I made them change out the feather," she said, passing it over. "It used to be white."

"I wouldn't have complained."

"Oh, but you pulled that feather from the tail of the firebird of Firenze!"

"Could've pulled it from the tail o' the white phoenix o' Icetop Crag just as easily, luv." Foxy put the hat on only to take it off again, looking at it wistfully. "Yer heart's in the right place, but me ears ain't."

"Don't worry. A couple snips, a little Velcro, it'll fit just fine. What do you think of the grog? I went to three different liquor stores. I mostly got them for the bottles," she admitted. "So it's not all rum. Hope that's okay."

"They do be pretty bottles," Foxy agreed, scarcely glancing at them. "Reckon what's in 'em don't matter to any save the lass who'll be tipping 'em with me. Ah! I will take this'n." Foxy bent and picked up a bottle of that cinnamon whiskey that even Bonnie knew was Ana's favorite.

"Oh, that one's mine."

"Ye want it?" Foxy popped his abdominal case open and slid the bottle inside. "Come and get it."

"My turn," said Bonnie, somewhat more aggressively than he should. "Just please don't tell me you got me a bunch of bowties, because of all the stuff I've had to do since all this—" He waved at the stage, using the gesture to take a few circling steps and stop standing between Ana and Foxy (who laughed). "—started, wearing bowties is the thing I miss the least. They never looked good on me anyway."

"It's called 'class,' Bonnie," Freddy remarked, lifting his chin slightly as if to show off his well-worn, yet perfectly tied bowtie to better effect. "You either have it or you don't."

"No, it's not a bowtie." Ana looked toward the kitchen, biting at her lip again, then back at Bonnie. "I have to go get it. I hope you like it, but if you don't like it, promise me you'll tell me so I can get you one you like."

"Sure," said Bonnie, and he was curious, he really was, but he had to admit he was far more interested in the worrying of her lower lip, the blush in her cheek, the light glowing out from her amazing eyes…and sure, okay, the way her butt looked in those jeans as she walked away from him.

The camera kept her in its spotlight until she stopped at the doorway and looked back. "Promise me," she said again.

Bonnie sketched an X over the hole in his chest, which seemed to satisfy her. She disappeared around the wall and all the energy in the room went with her.

Bonnie waited—they were all waiting, even the camera—until he heard the distant rattle of the loading dock door opening.

"Ye think she means it?" Foxy asked, closely inspecting the stitching on his new hat. "She's finally committing to moving in? She's staying on in this town?"

"My sense of what's best for her would demand I consider that a bad idea." Freddy went over to the stage and looked in the cardboard box—empty—then picked up each of the shopping bags—also empty—and put them away—small bag into larger bag into paper bag into the box. "But for purely selfish reasons, I hope it's true."

"She bought an ostrich. I'd call that a fairly concrete commitment." Chica picked up one of her new aprons (black, white and red, with a big shiny lip-print on the chest and the words I Kiss Better Than I Cook and I'm A GREAT Cook) and held it up against her body. "And I'm glad. She looks so happy. Nervous, but happy. Oh for heaven's sake, look at this one!" Chica held another apron up with an expression that was trying to be exasperated disapproval and not quite making it. Pale yellow with blue ribbons and ruffles, it was nice enough on its own, but on the chest, it had a picture of a rather sexy hen with her tailfeathers turned toward the viewer, winking over her shoulder while she rather suggestively held up a dripping baster. This Chick Makes Her Own Gravy it said.

Bonnie burst out laughing and Foxy joined in. Even Freddy smiled through his scowl.

The camera did not budge, but continued monitoring the kitchen doorway, awaiting Ana's return.

"She just had to get a dirty one," said Chica mournfully.

"Ain't dirty if'n it be true," Foxy retorted, reaching for her. "Give us a taste, luv."

Chica squeaked indignantly and smacked his hand.

"Mind your manners," said Freddy, his ears revolving as the loading dock door banged down in the back.

"To each, his nature," Foxy replied piously, returning his attention to his hat. "I ain't but how I were made, mate."

"You were made to obey me. Now apologize to Chica and behave."

Foxy rolled his eyes, but snapped his eyepatch down and swept his new hat grandly around as he bowed, taking an unimpressed Chica's hand and pressing it with a plastic tap to his snout. "Me most sincere apologies, lass."

"Someone's in a good mood," Ana remarked, back in the doorway. Almost. She was hiding something behind the wall. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Dunno." Foxy grinned at Chica. "Is she?"

"You are such a child," she said flatly.

Foxy waggled his eyebrows. "Oh no I ain't, a fact I would be happy to prove to yer everlasting satisfaction anytime ye please."

Chica huffed and yanked her hand from his. "Come on, Ana," she said, waddling closer to Freddy. "Show us what you got Bonnie. I'm dying to know!"

Ana smiled, but hesitated, looking at Bonnie. "If you don't like it, you'll tell me," she said again and stepped all the way out from the kitchen.

With a guitar.

With a B.C. Rich Mockingbird in satin black finish with purple flames licking up the sides and mother of pearl inlay. Beautiful lines, beautiful curves, as beautiful in its own way as the woman who held it.

"Watch your feet," Freddy murmured as Bonnie lurched forward, but then just got out of his way.

Ana met him halfway across the floor, still smiling but also wincing. "I know it needs an amp, but I didn't know which kind and the guy who sold it to me was so stoned, I had to tell him how to work the register when I bought it, but if you can figure out what kind it needs, I can—"

Bonnie flipped open his left wrist, whipped out his amp jack and plugged it in. He felt the hum, that good strong non-sound. He took the guitar, turned it, fit his left fingers to the fretboard and his right hand over the pickups. He did not strum. He was not going to start off by breaking all the strings, but oh, God, it felt good. Of the six guitars he'd been able to call 'his' over the course of his lifetime, this was likely to be the last, and greater than all of them, maybe even the first, because as much as the first one meant to him, the man who had placed it in Bonnie's hands hadn't known it would mean anything…and Ana did.

He didn't mean to. He didn't think. He just looked up and there she was, smiling at him, and before he knew it, he'd reached out and pulled her to him with the guitar between them, humming in his bones, and kissed her. With everyone watching, with the damned camera aimed at him, he kissed her. And at first, he didn't even realize it was wrong now because at first, she kissed him back.

"I think he likes it," said Chica.

"Hard to tell, lass. He's always so reserved."

Ana pulled away and Bonnie had to let her go. "Sorry," he said.

She nodded, looking away, her smile strained and cheeks bright with color.

"Where did you get it?" he asked and instantly regretted it. After so many years, so many thousands of birthday parties, Bonnie knew damn well that questioning where a gift came from was the second-worst possible thing anyone could do when receiving one.

"At a music store."

Well, duh.

"It must have cost a fortune," Bonnie said, stupidly plunging ahead with the absolute-worst possible thing to say when receiving a gift.

Ana shrugged, her wan smile going crooked. "Not as much as it would have if the guy hadn't been so stoned when I was telling him how to work the register."

Freddy's grunt of disapproval was somewhat undermined by Foxy's appreciative chuckle.

"Are you…Are you going to play it?" she asked.

Bonnie looked down at it—beautiful, needful thing—and shook his head. "Maybe later," he said, unplugging it. The cable zipped back up into its spring-coiled spool, the hum went out of his heart, but the guitar stayed, solid and clean and gleaming with possibility. "It's got to be tuned and all that. I don't want to play it until, you know, I can do it right."

"Oh. Right. Of course."

"But Ana, I…This…Thanks."

"As usual, yer conversational skills be on point, mate."

"Shut up, Foxy." Bonnie glanced at 'his' corner of the stage, but couldn't bring himself to put the guitar up just yet. He held it, bringing it into playing position almost unnoticed. It was already a part of him, as much as his arm or his ears. "Okay, so I don't know how you think you're going to beat this, but let's see what you got Freddy."

"I admit I'm curious," said Freddy, smiling with easy expectation.

Ana smiled back, but for a while, that was all she did. When she did speak, it was in the same halting, determinedly cheerful way she'd used when she'd talked about her house. "You were actually the easiest one to shop for, mostly because I already had what I want to give you."

Freddy's ears tipped forward. "Oh?"

"It's old and…not always well-used. But I loved it once. I think you could do good things with it." She faltered and looked back at Bonnie, taking a deep breath as though drawing courage. After a few false starts, she looked back at Freddy and said, "I want to give you a home. A real one."

Freddy was already shaking his head. "You've done enough here. It isn't necessary—"

"I don't mean here," Ana said.

Foxy glanced up from his inspection of the hat. Chica stopped tangling her fingers in apron strings. And Bonnie…Bonnie wasn't sure what he was feeling, only that it was heavy and fragile in a way that only hope had ever been before.

"I've got a big house," said Ana. "Way up on the mountain where no one else lives and no one ever goes. Lots of rooms." Her smile faded. She forced it back gamefully. "Lots of…broken…empty rooms. I can build them back, but I can't fill them. And I shouldn't be trying. I…I'll never have the family I lost. I'll never have a…a place in this town. And you…"

Freddy tipped his head back, frowning.

"Neither will you," said Ana.

Freddy did not drop his eyes, but their lights flickered just a little.

"We can both have a home," Ana said and held out her hand. There was a key in it. "We can figure out what that means together."

With four animatronics in an empty room, it could not be silent, but it was quiet and the quiet made its own statement. No one's gears ground because no one fidgeted. No one's orbital pistons whined because no one exchanged glances. No one's fans revved. Not even the camera moved. No one was really waiting to hear Freddy make a choice, only waiting for him to say what was never in doubt.

Ana's hand lowered, then fell. She tucked the key into her fist, hiding it.

"I," said Freddy and that was all for another long, long quiet.

Ana stared at the floor between them like a child being chastened, waiting with the rest of them.

"I am home," Freddy said at last. No, not 'at last'. Finally. As final as the fall of a knife. "This is my home. I won't…I can never leave it. Much as I might wish to." His hand twitched, as though he intended to clasp her shoulder, but he never did. After another quiet, heavy time, he said four words, "I appreciate the offer," like four nails driven into a coffin.

Shaking his head, Foxy went back to looking at his new hat. Chica folded her new aprons. Bonnie touched a tuning peg. He still didn't know what he was feeling.

"Okay," said Ana. "Okay, but I'm still giving you a home. I'll just do it here. Me and you, bear. Tomorrow, we are going to go room to room with my tablet and thrash out a plan, so you start thinking now about what you want." She looked around, including the rest of them in that broad smile that no longer quite touched her eyes. "What you all want. No limits. I like a challenge. And now I—" She picked up the now empty box and bags, dropped them, picked them up again. "—have a lot to do tonight, so I'm going to get started."

"Ana," said Freddy.

"Relax, we're good. I'm not going anywhere. I'm just cleaning up." She headed for the kitchen, walking fast.

The camera pivoted to follow her.

Freddy rubbed his muzzle, fan revving. "Ana, let me explain."

"I'll be right back!"

And then she was gone. The camera continued to 'watch' the doorway for a few seconds, but when the loading dock door rattled up and then banged shut, it panned back around to Freddy.

Freddy ignored it, but his hands drew into fists.

The camera adjusted its focus.

Chica finished folding the apron in her hands and set it down. She climbed the stairs to the stage and stepped deliberately in front of the camera. "Boost me up, please," she said calmly.

Bonnie took a step forward, but Foxy was already right there, so it was Foxy who complied, hunkering down to scoop her onto one shoulder before straightening up so that Chica's face had to be filling whatever monitor he was watching all this on.

"Ahem," she said, then smiled, opening her eyes wide and tilting her head to that cheerful Chica-angle. Her speaker clicked over to performance volume. "LET'S TALK ABOUT SUMMER SAFETY!"

It was so unexpected and came at such a bad time that it was actually, genuinely funny. Bonnie snorted and chimed right in with his line: "I LOVE TO PLAY OUTSIDE WHEN THE WEATHER IS WARM!"

"ME, TOO, BUT WE SHOULD ALWAYS REMEMBER TO STAY SAFE AND STAY COOL SO WE CAN HAVE MORE FUN ALL SUMMER LONG!"

The camera tried to pan left and right, but there was no way to get around her big, round head when she was that close. She could not have simply put up her hand and covered the lens, no more than she could have broken it or pulled it down, but getting up in the camera's 'face' was considered terrorizing the guard and not disabling a camera. It was all about loopholes.

"WHETHER YOU'RE PLAYING WITH YOUR FRIENDS OR RIDING YOUR BIKE OR JUST HANGING OUT, IT'S IMPORTANT NEVER TO LEAVE HOME WITHOUT TELLING AN ADULT WHERE YOU'RE GOING, WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING AND WHEN YOU'LL BE HOME. IT'S SAFER TO GO WITH FRIENDS, AND MORE FUN TOO! WHEN WALKING OR RIDING YOUR BIKE, PICK OUT SAFE SPOTS ALONG THE WAY WHERE YOU CAN GO IF YOU NEED HELP, LIKE A FRIEND'S HOUSE OR A POLICE STATION."

The camera reset to its default position and switched off.

"You shouldn't antagonize him," Freddy said, still facing away.

"No, in point of fact, he shouldn't antagonize me," Chica replied, turning toward the East Hall, where a light had come on to show the camera had only moved over and was still close enough to listen in even if it couldn't see them. She raised her voice. "Because I have over two hundred hours of assorted safety tips on file and I will happily cycle through the whole thing. It's obvious the security pathing protocols are malfunctioning and we all know the only way to manually reset them is to overload the sensory input, right?"

The camera in the East Hall shut off. No new lights came on.

"Put me down, please," said Chica, patting Foxy's head. "Is she still here?"

"Yeah," said Bonnie when Freddy only stood and stared at the doorway. Even through the noise of their little safety show, he would have heard her truck starting up if she'd left. He'd have heard the loading dock door open if she came back in, too. "Maybe someone should go talk to her."

"Someone, eh?" Foxy said wryly.

"No," said Chica. "She's already upset. Pushing her now is only going to make a bad situation worse."

"What was I supposed to say?" Freddy snapped. The March sputtered to life, punctuating his words with long, distorted notes. "Was I supposed to say yes? Just leave? Was I supposed to walk away from all this, from him, like it's not my problem? This isn't a fairy tale! We don't get a happy ending!"

Bonnie took Chica's arm and tried to coax her into backing up, but she merely patted his hand and stepped away. "You did what you had to do," she said. "Everyone understands that."

Freddy looked at her, his eyes irising open until they were nearly full black. "You understand, do you? Then why didn't you tell her no? Why is it always me?"

"Freddy—"

"I hate it here as much as anyone, but someone has to stay! Every other damn day, some idiot is breaking in and poking around and if they let him out, no one will ever be able to trap him again!" Freddy slammed both hands over his face, cracking his muzzle and breaking those cracks open as he ground his palms into them, rubbing, rubbing. "I don't care how she feels. I don't care how I feel. I don't get to care about anything but him!"

Bonnie backed up, Foxy stood still and Chica, fearless Chica, toddled toward him and reached out her hand.

Freddy slapped it away, roaring, "DON'T T-T-TOUCH ME!"

Then silence, except for the happy calliope-style music of the March and even that eventually stopped.

"Damn it." Freddy turned around, but when he reached the West Hall door, he hit it instead of opening it and swung back. "Stay here, all of you," he growled and stalked after Ana.

They waited, the three of them in awkward quiet, until the loading dock door opened and shut again.

Then Foxy cheerfully said, "Think I'll go for a walk."

"To go spy on them, you mean," Chica said with a scowl.

"That were implied, aye."

Chica threw her helpless arms up and let them slap down. "Would it kill you to just do what he says one time?"

"Probably not, but why take the risk? Ta, luv."

"Foxy, no," said Bonnie, putting his guitar down on the stage. "I'll go."

Chica spun around. "Bonnie! You can't!"

"Aye, mate, listen to the lady. Yer in no kind of condition for sneakery."

"That's why I should go," Bonnie countered. "He'll never expect me. He'll be watching for you."

"Ye has a point, but I still says ye could use an expert in the fine art o' nefariousness." Foxy glanced at Chica with a narrowed, yellow eye. "And a lookout."

"Oh, the two of you are just impossible!" Chica did some token huffing, then sighed. "Fine. Hurry up. And Bonnie…be careful."

He glanced at the hole in his chest (and the deep cracks surrounding it, promising there would be no more protection the next time his foot caught or his knee gave out or any of the hundred thousand possible malfunctions that could send him to the floor), then headed for the South Hall in the back of the dining room.

Bonnie pushed the playground door open, wincing in anticipation of noise, but there wasn't much. The hinges were practically new and there was a little rubber flap on the bottom of this door to push the sand out of the way so it couldn't make the scraping sound he remembered from the door Ana had replaced.

He stepped out cautiously, watching his feet. Sand over asphalt could be bad enough when it was thin and slippery, but here against the wall, it had heaped up in drifts deep enough to offset his balance. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but 'normal' function was years behind him now. With his most of his equilibrium stabilizers on the fritz, he had nothing but visual cues to tell him he was about to fall, and he had nothing but the light of a half-moon to guide himself by.

This was a bad idea.

Bonnie took a few steps, keeping one hand on the wall. He wasn't sure if that was really any help to him—it wasn't like there was anything there to grab—but it made him feel better.

"Maybe Foxy should go," Chica whispered behind him.

Before Bonnie could even answer, Foxy let out a low, laughing groan and said, "Lass, I had half a hope he'd turn around on his own until ye said that."

"I've got this!" Bonnie hissed. "Just keep the door open so I can't get locked out!"

"Aye, luv, hold the door," said Foxy and the next thing Bonnie knew, he was sauntering right past him, bare metal toes on sandy asphalt like it was nothing to him, all the way to the corner of the building next to the torn-open fence, where he took a knee and cocked his ears into the wind, listening.

"Show off," Bonnie muttered.

Without looking around, Foxy flipped him the bird with his hook-hand.

"Bonnie, come back inside," Chica whisper-pleaded. "You're going to fall."

"I am not. Quit talking, you're distracting me." Glaring at his feet, Bonnie took another two steps. His right leg kept wanting to drag, the knee grinding and sputtering but not bending. He was getting sand in there. Like he needed more to go wrong.

Bonnie stopped where he was and just stood for a few seconds, staring furiously at his feet and then at the hole in his cracked chest. He turned his mics toward the sound of voices, but all he got for his efforts was the deafening thunder of wind directly on his mics and Freddy saying, "I need to tell you," or maybe, "Let me help you." Ana's reply, if she even gave him one, was too quiet for him to hear at all and that bothered him. If she was really okay, she'd say so. If she was mad, she'd shout it. But when Ana was hurt, really hurt, she couldn't talk at all.

Keeping one hand on the wall and placing the other protectively over the hole in his chest—like that would help at all in a fall—Bonnie put his head down and limped ahead fast, so he didn't have time to think about what might happen if he put his foot down on a rock or a pothole hidden in all this sand. He'd heard it said the first step was always the hardest, but not this time. The fall—the break—was inevitable. Every step he managed without bringing it on only made the next step that much more likely to be the one that sent him crashing down, smashing open. This was stupid. This was so stupid and he couldn't even say he was doing it for Ana because the only way she'd ever know about it was if he really did fall and fucking killed himself and that was a hell of thing to leave her with. He should just turn around right now and slink back to safety. If there was anything that needed handling, Foxy could handle it.

Foxy could do everything.

Bonnie put his ears flat, picked up his unfeeling feet and walked on.

"Nice of ye to join me," Foxy murmured as Bonnie slumped in relief against the wall beside him.

"Shut up." Cupping his hand around the base of his ears in a semi-successful attempt to keep the wind off his mics, Bonnie listened, but still couldn't hear much. "What'd I miss?"

"Not much. She ain't said aught. Reckon she's crying."

"Where's Freddy?"

"Still leaning up against the truck, I reckon, waiting for her to stop crying. She told him to go back inside, but the door ain't opened yet."

And right on cue, a door did open. Not the loading dock, but Ana's truck. "God, you're annoying," she said. Her voice held no readable emotion, but the slamming of the door that followed was a pretty good indication of her mood. "Go away. Please. This has nothing to do with you."

"Of course it does," said Freddy, just as tonelessly.

"Well yeah, now it does. I don't need a witness every time I have a fucking meltdown. I'll get over myself ten times faster if you'd just leave me alone and let me puke it out in peace."

"Being left alone is not peace."

"Get over yourself. What do you want from me? I told you I'm not upset. I'm not! I let myself get all wound up, that's all. I'd have done the same thing even if you'd said yes."

"Ana, I'm sorry."

"Don't you fucking dare apologize. You don't owe me an apology. You don't owe me an explanation." A short silence, then Ana's boots crunched on the sand as she started walking. "It was a dumb idea anyway."

Freddy's footsteps were much louder…and getting closer. Were they coming here? To the playground?

Foxy sure thought so. His ears snapped up, quivering, then he looked at Bonnie for half a frozen second before he bolted for the pirate ship playtoy and ducked into the shadows of the hollowed out hull, leaving Bonnie spectacularly exposed against the featureless side of the wall with a bad leg and a broken chest-case.

"Ana, wait," Freddy was saying and then he must have caught her, because the next thing Bonnie heard was Ana's angry, "Let go of me!"

Foxy's head poked out of the pirate ship. He beckoned with his hook.

Bonnie stared at him, then flung both arms out in a silent Are-you-fucking-kidding-me?!

Foxy's eyes caught the moonlight as he rolled them. He looked toward the corner of the building ("Why are you the only one who thinks he gets a no-touching rule?" "We need to talk about this." "No, we don't!") and then he came darting back, absurdly light on his feet and almost silent as he ran through the deepest pools of sand back to Bonnie. Once there, Foxy pointed at his shoulder—it was the only warning Bonnie got—and then picked Bonnie up like an eight-foot sack of flour and slung him over that same shoulder.

His internal diagnostics lit up with conflict notifications as the gyroscopes in his ears, neck and one arm reported that he was upside down while his center cavity and other arm reported no goddamn change whatsoever.

"Grab onto me," Foxy ordered.

"Grab what? All I see is your ass!"

"I don't bloody care what ye grab, so long as ye don't rattle around. Hurry up, man!"

"And now we're hugging," Bonnie muttered, wrapping one arm around Foxy's waist as he hung upside down and bracing the other against Foxy's back to keep his damaged chest from colliding with it. "I'm good. Go."

Foxy ran back to the ship, just as light and just as silent, except for the soft tapping where the tips of Bonnie's ears hit his legs. The world spun around—still no change to his equilibrium sensors—and then Foxy was stuffing him into the ship's hull and crawling in beside him.

"Ew," Bonnie remarked, looking around. The moon did not penetrate far into this secret space, but where it did, he could see only sand, crushed beer cans and cigarette butts, a few tattered pages from various porno magazines and dozens of names and initials carved into the rotting boards surrounding them. "I can sense the ghosts of a thousand used condoms haunting this ship."

Foxy snorted, low in his speaker. "No bloody doubt. I think yer kneeling on one."

"Oh gross."

"Hush it. Here they come."

"There is nothing to talk about," Ana said loudly, picking her way over the fallen section of fence and into the playground, where she headed directly for the ship, because of course she did. "I'm not mad and if I get mad, it'll be because you won't let it fucking go, bear."

"You may not have to talk about this, but I do. Ana, get away from that thing," Freddy interrupted himself sharply. "It isn't safe."

"Oh for fuck's sake, Freddy, it's fine…When did the mast fall down?"

"The night you…The night those men broke in."

"Did they pull it off?" Ana asked, backing away.

"No. It fell before they got here. Ana, I said get back and that's an order." Freddy sent an are-you-seeing-this glance heavenward as Ana moved a little closer to the pirate ship, then sighed loudly enough to be heard over the wind. "If you won't listen to me, at least use your own common sense. Look at it, it's rotted through. The whole thing could come down at any time."

How comforting. Bonnie looked up uneasily as the wind gusted and wood creaked.

Ana stood in the moonlight, studying the upper deck, the rope rigging, the splintered rails…everywhere but the hole in the hull where Bonnie knelt and Foxy crouched, trusting the shadows to hide them.

"This entire playground is a safety hazard," said Freddy, walking up behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder and sighed when she shrugged it off. "Ana—"

She walked away from him, stopped, swung around and said, "Okay. I have tried several times to tell you we're good, but you are not going to be happy until I get pissed and you can do your Papa-bear-knows-best routine, so let's do it. Only here's the thing. I knew you weren't going to say yes. I knew it all along. The entire time I was driving here, I was telling myself not to get too excited because I knew goddamn well that you weren't going to go for it, so it's not like I was surprised or let down or anything like that!"

"Will you let me explain?"

"There's nothing to explain! I wasn't crying because I was upset, I was just being stupid! I am over it! I am fine!"

As Freddy started to answer, his eyes cut sharply to one side and lit up. "Chica, close the door," he ordered.

Great.

"Great," said Ana, rubbing at her face. "It's my own fault. I realize that. I should have asked you first, in private. I should have waited. It's not like I didn't think of that, I just thought…if I wait for even one night, I'll never ask. It felt like my one chance…but I knew you'd say no. Somehow, I already knew."

Freddy's ears lowered.

"So if I'm mad at anyone, I'm mad at me for letting myself get all worked up in the first place over something I knew…I knew…" She huffed out an angry laugh, shook her head, and suddenly yelled, "I'm not mad at you, you ass-clown! Just because you don't want to live with me doesn't mean I'm mad about it! Why would I be mad? I don't want to live there either!"

"Ana—"

"It was just a dumb idea! I thought, I don't know, that you might actually like to get away from this place and go somewhere where you never have to worry about people breaking in and trying to carry off your head to hang on their bedroom wall. And I thought you actually meant it when you said we were family…and…I don't know…families should live together. Ha!" she said with sudden, vicious humor. "When has that ever been a thing for me? I knew you'd never go for it."

"I wanted to."

"Oh shut up, you did not. You just don't want to hurt my feelings."

"Ana—"

"And believe it or not, I can just appreciate that and give the rest a pass. I don't need explanations and the more you try to convince me that you have really good reasons, the more they sound like cheap excuses," she said and covered her face again, breathing hard into her hands. "That do it for you, bear?" she asked through her gritted teeth. "Are you happy? Are we done?"

Freddy's ears twitched. Otherwise he remained impassive. "Not yet."

"Oh for Christ's sake, why? Why can't you just let it go when I ask you? Why do I have to fucking humiliate myself first?"

"I'm very sorry you feel that way," said Freddy (watching from the shadows, Bonnie and Foxy exchanged a pained glance).

"You don't have to be sorry for anything. It's my own stupid—"

"I would appreciate it if you stopped using that word," Freddy interrupted calmly. "It was not a stupid idea. It was a very kind thought. I wish…very much that I could agree."

"You don't have to say that. I'm a fucking grown-up. I can handle rejection just fine when you're not rubbing it in my fucking face."

Freddy played a few distorted bars of the Toreador March and finally said, "Ana, we are machines. Try to understand. As closely as we may emulate life, as much as we may feel human or wish to be or pretend to be…we are machines. We have programming that cannot be circumvented."

"So?"

"We are pathed to this place," said Freddy. "Don't you think we would have left long before now if we could? We cannot go further from our homepoint than we are pathed to go, which is no further than the parking lot. I can override my homing protocols for a short time—" Freddy's head turned enough to send a brooding glance back at the quarry. "—when necessary, but even I am not free to simply leave."

"Where is he getting that?" Bonnie asked.

Foxy shook his head with a small, admiring smile. "Straight out'n his arse."

"Mason got you out," said Ana.

"It's not getting us out that's the problem, it's keeping us out. Once our homing protocols engage, we have to come back and every minute we are not homed, we create an exception. The further away we are, the more likely the chances of going black."

"Then why didn't you say that?" she burst out. "Why did you leave me standing there like a—"

Freddy's speaker let out a wordless blat of static as he swung around with the March playing happily in the space he left behind him. He paced, turned, paced, turned and finally came to a halt with his back to Ana (and the ship, thankfully). The music slowed, stuttered, and stopped. Even the wind died down, waiting with the rest of them.

In the silence, Freddy looked down at his hands, flexing his cracked, worn fingers. One note of the March dropped, hanging on forever in the perversely still air. At last, he turned to face Ana, clasping his hands behind him to look down on her, so eerily reminiscent of the way their creator had looked—standing on the other side of the glass right after locking the doors and right before walking away for the last time—that some long-dormant human instinct surfaced as a shiver up Bonnie's spine. His ears rattled; Foxy grabbed them; neither Ana nor Freddy looked around.

"I have never had a home," said Freddy, deceptively expressionless. "Not the way you offered, as…my own place and not a stage where I pretend to be something else. Somewhere safe. Somewhere I can just…be." He was quiet for a moment, before saying in a cold rush, "I have never hoped for more than I have. I don't see the point. This is my home and my reality. I was not prepared to feel…" Another moment's pause. Freddy shook his head and said it again, as a complete sentence this time: "I was not prepared to feel. And although I know my reasons are right and immovable, and I have no choice but to refuse, it was a…a difficult moment for me. I did not handle it well and for that, I apologize. It was not my intention to hurt you."

"I'm fine," Ana said immediately and sighed. "Except for feeling like a huge asshat right now, I'm fine."

Freddy looked at the playground door and flashed his eyes—Chica must have peeked out again—then looked at Ana. "I'm going back inside. I'll tell the others to give you some space, but don't be surprised if Bonnie sneaks past me."

"Oh hell." Ana raked a hand through her hair, shaking her head. "I don't need space. I need to get over myself and get shit done."

"Can I help?"

"If you want. I could use it. If I've got to patch up Bonnie and do the store room both, I'm going to be here until dawn."

Freddy grunted, his ears shifting with the mood he otherwise kept off his face and out of his voice. "Aren't you sleeping here?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Ana shrugged and did not answer.

"I don't understand. I thought you wanted us all to move in together."

"Yeah, and that would be fine if it was my house, but—"

"But not mine."

Ana rolled her eyes, then rubbed them. "It's not about you. It's really not. I have a place to go. I don't have to like it, I just have to live there. I can't just move myself in whenever I want just because I don't want to be there!"

"Yes, you can," Freddy said, quietly but with a hum of strain in his speaker. "Of course you can. That's what a home is, Ana. It's the place where you can always go, where you are always safe and always welcome."

"For real, bear, I cannot deal with the Sunday School lesson right now."

"You said you would build me anything I wanted here." Freddy's ears lowered. "I want your room back. I want you in it."

On the playground, the wind gusted, pushing sand in low clouds to fill the distance between Ana and Freddy. In the pirate playtoy, Bonnie's cooling fan revved in pulses, like a pounding heart.

"Okay, look…" Ana lapsed into a second silence, shaking her head, then offered up her empty hands and said, "I'll stay tonight. Maybe some weekends. But as long as I've got work in the morning, I need to be home where the shower is."

"There are six bathrooms in this building. You can install a shower in any of them you please."

"No offense, because I appreciate what you're saying, but with God as my witness, I am never getting naked in this place again."

"There's a shame," Foxy murmured and shrugged away Bonnie's glare.

"All right," Ana sighed. "I'm done. I'm going back inside. I'm assuming you want to walk around for a while?"

"No, I should go in. In fact, I should go in first. I fully expect to find Bonnie on the store room floor."

Bonnie touched his chest carefully, watching as Ana and Freddy started walking away, side by side, if not quite touching.

"No, I don't mind," said Freddy in answer to something Ana said as they went around the corner of the building. "It shouldn't take me long if all I'm doing is stacking things. I'll have Foxy and Chica clean the kitchen while you work on Bonnie."

"Oh fuck me, I forgot all about that mess." Ana's laughter thinned as the wind picked up. "She really likes that Easy Bake Oven, huh? I can't even imagine what she'll do once I fix up the kitchen."

"Ana, we need to talk about these renovations."

"Don't you worry your fuzzy little head about it, big bear. I know what I'm doing and I'm going to take good care of you."

"That's our cue, mate," said Foxy, crawling out from the playtoy and pulling Bonnie with him. "Seems like they worked it out."

"Seems like," Bonnie said, allowing himself to be tipped over Foxy's shoulder and bracing himself for the sprint to the pizzeria.

"And she's staying the night, eh? Fair break for ye."

Hanging upside-down made flattening his ears a quiet comedy as gyroscopes warred with gravity for the definition of 'up' and 'down'. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means if yer waiting on an opportunity, mate, that's the one yer waiting on. Bound to be a restless night, eh? Girl all tucked up, thinking o' the future when who should come creeping in but the man from her past."

"I told you—"

"Aye, aye, I forget. She broke it off and now yer just friends. You don't want to let that go on too long or it'll stick." Foxy rapped his hook smartly on the playground door and was immediately admitted by a frantically waving Chica. "No, mate, this is yer chance. She's all riled up, emotional, vulnerable. Ye has to take advantage of that."

"Uh, no I don't. Put me down."

"Hush ye." He carried Bonnie through the South Hall and all the way over to the corner of the dining room, peeking through the tray return window before thumping Bonnie on his feet next to Swampy. "Now listen to me, mate. Tonight, when she's patching ye up, ye give her the eye. Doves love a hard stare. Makes 'em nervous."

Chica, just toddling out of the South Hall, let out an indignant, "Oh for goodness sakes! What are you telling him?"

"Try not to say much," Foxy continued. "Ye sound like a right git when ye talk. Just stare her down and let her know yer picturing her naked. Like this." Foxy looked back at Chica, just looked at her.

Chica threw up her arms with a scoffing sound and turned away, but the little red bulbs on the undersides of her head-case where the plastic was thinnest lit up. She was blushing and it took a hell of a lot to make any of them blush these days. She waddled to the kitchen a bit faster than she probably ought to be moving and soon was loudly cleaning out the cooler.

"Ye don't explain it, even if she asks," Foxy said, turning back to Bonnie. "Ye just let the wheels in her wee head turn and tonight, when she goes to bed, ye gives it one hour—"

"Knock it off," said Bonnie and attempted to push Foxy aside.

Foxy was smaller, but he was also sturdier these days and he would not be moved. "Ye gives it one hour," he said again and stopped, ears pricking up. The loading dock door was rattling open in the next room and Freddy's voice was discernable even if his exact words were not. Foxy lowered his voice to a hoarse growl. "And ye go in and get her. Ye don't flirt her up, ye don't say a bloody word, and ye don't take no for an answer! If she fights back, that's good. She needs to fight, but she don't want to win. Ye just pin her down and put the shivers to her and she'll come around. If ye does it right, that is." Foxy glanced meaningfully at Bonnie's groin and sighed. "And yer at a hell of a disadvantage, so listen sharp. First off, how's yer hand?"

"Stop," said Bonnie. He didn't shout it. Ana was on the other side of this window and a room away, talking with Freddy as they shifted things around in the store room. This was nothing he wanted her to hear. "Just stop. That is not…That is so not happening. Jesus Christ. Do you even hear yourself? Do you hear what you're telling me to do?"

"Did ye hear her?" Foxy countered. "How many times did ye hear her tell Fred to push on? Just stop. Leave her alone. She's fine. Eh? And if he'd done it, there she'd be, bottling up all that wasn't said and burying it down deep to sour. Ye love the girl, don't ye?"

"Don't. Just don't."

"Then give her what she needs and stop giving in to what she says she wants when ye and I and all the little fishes knows that what she wants ain't good for her."

"Oh you are not going to stand there and tell me I should…that whatever you have in mind is therapeutic."

Foxy groaned low in his speaker and paced away, rubbing at the hard plastic lines of his forehead and muttering, "Oi, we gots a long night ahead of us if ye can't even say the word."

Bonnie's temper slipped and before he got a grip on it again, he'd somehow crossed the entire dining room, catching Foxy by the back of his neck on the way and throwing him out into the West Hall ahead of him. Once the door was shut behind him, he stepped right up close, nose to cute animal nose, and hissed, "I don't know what word you've got in mind, but I only know one word for pinning someone down and not letting her say no when I 'put the shivers' to her!"

Foxy rolled his eyes forcefully enough to make one of them let out a pop and a puff of black smoke. "Right. Think what ye like of me, but I ain't wrong about this. Some girls take to a gentle hand, aye. Some don't. That's just a fact, be it polite to say or no. Ye want to be the good guy for her, sure, fine, but sometimes, with some women, that means not being afraid to be the bad guy!"

"Hey, there's good guys and bad guys and then there's the Purple Guy," said Bonnie and, like he'd summoned the devil by speaking his name, the camera came on.

They both looked at it, but it was aimed at Tux at the other end of the hall and couldn't swivel all the way around to see them. After a few seconds, it shut off and a light came on in the Reading Room, then in the Party Room, then back in the hall.

Bonnie and Foxy exchanged a glance and a short, silent conversation.

He's looking for us.

Aye, I know it.

You want to move this somewhere else?

What's the ruddy point?

It was a rare moment of perfect understanding and by the end of it, the adversarial filter through which Bonnie too often saw Foxy had slipped entirely away and he found himself looking at someone who was never an enemy but no longer a friend…someone he had known for fifty years and still hardly knew at all.

"Look, I'm going to pretend you've got my best interests in mind, because in a weird way, I think you do. So I'm going to say this one time and you are never going to bring it up again, got that?" Without waiting for an answer, Bonnie said, "I love her, but there are things I won't do to get her back. She always gets to say no. Not sometimes, not just when it's what I want or what I think she needs. Always."

Foxy started to speak, then just walked back to the door, shaking his head. When he got here, he looked back at Bonnie with an expression of frustration so profound it was nearly disgust. "Then yer going to lose her, mate," he said. "Yer going to lose her and I'm starting to think ye deserve to lose her."

"Is this where you threaten to step in and steal her away from me? Because I've got to tell you, that's getting old."

Foxy waited for him to stop talking before he shook his head—left, right, left, with his eyes fixed on Bonnie's all the while. "Ye've had yer last threat from me, mate," he said when the shaking was done. "From here on out, I'll never say another word on it. Come on." He pushed the door open and waved his hook at the room beyond. "Let's go push some dirt around. Oi, Ana-lass! We got three hands and a hook here. Where do ye want 'em?"

Ana appeared in the tray return window, already flushed with exertion and smudged with grime. "Bon, have a seat. I'll be right out. Foxy…" She looked quizzically off to one side. "Can you use Foxy?"

"That I can," Freddy rumbled. "But if you need him to hold a light—"

"No, I'll just wait for the camera to cycle around. That light's plenty bright enough and it doesn't need much to stay focused on me."

Bonnie looked back at the camera.

It snapped off in the hall and came on in the dining room, swiveling around the empty stage.

"There it is," said Ana, ducking out of the window. "Grab its attention, my man. I've got to find my tools. Everything's a mess…Freddy, do you see a roll of metal tape back there? No, that's duct tape. This would be actual metal…Bonnie, keep the camera on!"

"It's on," said Bonnie, limping over to the stage. He picked up his guitar and sat down, looking up into the unblinking, black eye of the camera. "It's not going anywhere, not as long as we put on a good show. And we're sure doing that tonight, aren't we?"

---

The camera didn't answer, but down in the basement, the thing watching grunted static through its old speaker. "Never cared for soap operas, personally, but I'll stick this one out for the aftershow. Hello! Speak of the devil." As Ana walked into view on the flickering screen, the thing tried to open its eyes wider, then clumsily scrubbed its hands across its face in an effort to push its eyelids up, and finally lifted its entire head off and set it aside.

Long, rat-eaten rabbit ears flopped forward over the cracked muzzle of the empty head, discolored by old greenish mold, blackened burns, and other, less identifiable stains, but beneath all that, there was a hint of the bright satiny gold it had once been, just as there was still a hint of the happy rabbit mascot in the design of the suit, somewhere under the decay. The thing's real head wasn't in much better condition. What was left of its skin had darkened to mummy-brown and its hair blanched almost white—where it wasn't stained purple from the various oils and fluids of putrefaction leeching the dye out of the uniform the corpse wore, back before it had all dried up—but at least the cameras wired into the sockets of the gaping skull were no longer obstructed by sagging plastic eyelids.

"That's better," he said. The skull's gaping jaw didn't move; the voice came from a rusty circle of mesh set into the thing's chest. Without looking away from the monitor array, it raised its arm in a beckoning gesture.

Several figures vied to answer, but a thin-limbed figure dropped down from its crouching place in the corner of the ceiling by the air shaft and straightened to its full, inhuman height. It sent the others back with a wave of its clawed hand and moved toward the thing watching the monitors, walking easily on long, long legs that tapered to rounded footless pegs. The thing in the suit put its arm around the Puppet's lean hip and pulled it onto its lap, settling the two of them comfortably in the chair where it sat.

"She grew up nice, didn't she?" the dead man in the rotting rabbit suit remarked, rubbing distractedly at the Puppet's thigh.

The Puppet nodded.

"A little too skinny and it seems like she's always bruised up, but she's got a nice ass and amazing tits. Reminds me of you, way back when. Remember?"

The Puppet looked down, brushing the claws of one hand over its flat chest.

"Man, look at that hair. I wish she'd let it down once in a while. Not that I wouldn't love to wrap that braid around my wrist, but there's nothing like getting a good fistful of loose hair…" The cameras in the dead man's eyes turned toward the high, hairless dome of the Puppet's head, then dropped to look at his own hands—rotten cloth over a metal frame, supporting a mesh glove over a few withered digits. He tried to make a fist, but only two of the fingers moved, and only one of those managed to curl all the way closed. The speaker in his throat sighed static, but just then, Ana opened Bonnie's chest-casing, exposing the delicate inner workings of the animatronic's endoskeleton, and the skull aimed its cameras back on the monitor at once.

Ana opened her toolbox and got to work. The image quality was not the best. The lens of the camera mounted on the stage wall was caked by dust; the lenses of the cameras mounted in the dead man's eye sockets grimed over by even worse. Still, even if the dead man could not see precisely what she did, he could see the confidence with which she did it.

"That's it," the speaker whispered as the dead man in the suit leaned intently forward. "Oh, that's my good girl. Look at her, Mare. She can do this."

The Puppet's grinning mask turned toward the monitors, but only for a moment. It put a hand on the dead man's chest, just below the rusty speaker, and moved it in slow, stroking motions.

The tangle of metal pins and wires climbing from the back of the springlock suit over the dead man's skull to the place the rabbit's ears should be affixed twitched at the sound of the Puppet's claws snagging on threadbare and tattered satin. Without looking away from the monitor, he brushed the Puppet's hand away. "Later. Go check on the baby if you're bored. I want to see this."

The Puppet unfolded its long limbs and leapt to the ceiling, catching handholds it had carved for itself years ago. Like a great spider, it crawled arm over leg over arm to the air shaft—an opening just ten short inches across at its widest—and slipped through. It made no more sound in the ventilation ducts than a rat as it scuttled away.

As soon as the Puppet was gone, one of the others came skulking over and attempted to take its place, but the dead man firmly shoved it away from his lap until it reluctantly settled on the floor. The dead man rewarded it with a few pats on its long, ridged snout, saying, "Go on, get down. You know better," in a stern, yet distracted tone.

"Who is she?" someone asked, almost whispering, as if the speaker was not quite sure she wanted to be heard.

The dead man looked back, still petting the thing crouched at his feet. Disconnected mechanisms jutting where the rabbit's face should be ground and whined; the skull was already grinning. "That's my little girl, is who that is," he said. "All grown up and back home again, where she belongs."

"What is she doing here? Is…Is she looking for you?"

The dead man laughed and returned his attention to the monitors. "Yep. She doesn't know it yet, but that's just what she's doing. And she's a smart girl, my Ana. She'll find me. And when she does, we'll all be one big, happy family again. Come here."

All the figures huddled together at the back of the room moved toward him, all but one.

"Not you. Go sit somewhere. Shoo," the dead man said, still cheerfully but with a note of warning in his voice. He pointed. "You. Come here, Peggy. You're not going to like it if I have to ask again."

Hard plastic tapped on the concrete floor, an oddly delicate sound despite her size. As she neared the monitors, her silhouette became more distinct from the mass of shapes crowded together behind her. A feminine figure, all curves, even to her hair, which hung off her round head in two playful hooks.

"Don't be shy. Right here." The dead man kicked the crouching thing away and patted his knee invitingly. When she sat, stiff and nervous, he slung an arm around her ample hips and pointed at the monitor. "What's she doing?"

"Um…I can't really tell. She's got the rabbit—"

"Don't call him that," the dead man said, mildly enough but with a sharp slap of warning to her thigh. "This is your family and frankly, you are the runt of this litter. Now, it's fine with me if you want to be the baby, but you don't get to be a brat. You hear me?"

Peggy nodded, shoulders hunching.

"Good. So you show them some respect and call them by their proper names. Go on."

"She's got…Bonnie opened up and she's doing something to his chest."

"The endoskeleton or the casing?"

"I can't tell. Looks like…both?"

"Both," the dead man echoed. He looked at his hand again, flexing his metal fingers to the best of their limited ability. One of the mummified fingers trapped within the mesh snapped; the tip fell back through the glove and disappeared into the cuff of the dead man's purple sleeve, leaving a pale nub of bone protruding from the time-browned flesh that had once been a human hand. The dead man acknowledged the loss with a disinterested grunt and put that hand on Peggy's hip, absent-mindedly rubbing. "She's going to fix him, Peggy, just you watch. Even when she was just a kid, she could take anything apart and put it back together again. And yeah, I know, kids…"

The dead man's gaze wandered to the back corner, where one of the many figures sat in a slump on the floor, its stillness and silence somehow amplified by the fidgeting and twitching of the others who milled in front of it.

"They don't always live up to their potential," the dead man said, returning his attention to the monitor. His hand moved, slipping now between Peggy's thighs as she squeezed her eyes shut, shivering as she struggled not to squirm or cry out. The dead man didn't notice her reaction. He didn't really notice what he was himself doing; it was almost as automatic a process as the pump and wheeze of his cooling system. "But Ana will be different," he said in a staticky murmur. "You'll see. She's a little lion."