A/N: Content Warning: Child death/child near-death. William takes an unpleasant walk down memory lane. There's also a bit of suit gore and creepy images.
Thank you so much everyone for the kind reviews! Dinosaur, I'm glad you like Jack. I like Jack, too. And the two guests, I'm glad you guys are enjoying reading about the misadventures of these chuckleheads.
William's violent fantasies didn't last the whole movie, but once the urge to destroy the child passed, its after images rippled through his mind. The urge had been so strong that it had rocketed him back to the time before his death, the time of the murders, when he, with Henry's blessing, didn't fight it. He had been both happy and miserable at the same time, as though he had found the perfect medication cocktail for his pain that allowed him to feel both numb and alive.
"Evil's gotta go somewhere," he remembered hearing in some B-horror movie when he was alive. He liked it and had made it his mantra, repeating it to himself whenever he started to feel bad. If he didn't choose a direction for his destructive energy and let it build until he couldn't control it, he might end up taking it out on his children or Henry, and that was out of the question. He and Henry had needed children anyway for their experiments, so it seemed like the best option at the time. Through their experiments, William could release the building pressure inside him and then return home a calm, collected, and good father. He thought doing it that way protected his children from the harmful parts of himself, but he was wrong. He could no longer release pressure the way he used to: he physically couldn't, even if he wanted to, which he didn't.
He was done with violence, but violence wasn't done with him. William pondered this as he sat alone on the couch while Charlie helped Mike up the stairs and Elizabeth went into her room to dress for bed. Since the Raggedy Ann doll's dress was removable, Beth had given Elizabeth a set of pajamas to wear at night. Elizabeth was delighted and as soon as the movie ended, she rushed to her room to put them on. The routine was good for her.
Charlie left a table lamp on for William, but the living room still felt dark and lonely with just him. Afraid to move, William squeezed his knees and breathed deeply as he listened to the faucet running upstairs. He knew he should tell Mike about the effect the child in the movie had had on him but he was afraid that, if he did, Mike might decide he was too dangerous and wouldn't let him visit his grandchildren anymore. William decided to wait out the night, see if he could calm himself down, and if his brain was still burning in the morning, he'd tell Mike.
He pulled his legs up onto the sofa and listened to the house go quiet around him. He thought about going in to see Elizabeth again that night to read some more comic books together, but since she hadn't invited him, he thought that maybe she wanted a little time to herself. He didn't want to make her feel like she was obligated to spend time with him every night just because they were both awake. William stared up at the ceiling and tried to find shapes in the popcorn spackling. The shadows pooled unevenly across the surface, distorted by the moonlight leaking in from outside and catching on the light fixtures. He found himself searching the walls and ceiling for any sign of pinkish light, like searching for sun behind the clouds, but everything was blue-gray. William wondered what Henry would have thought about his reaction to the cornfield child, but deep down he already knew the answer; he would have shamed him for it.
As he stared into the darkness beyond the light from the table lamp, William thought he saw movement: nothing large or solid like a body, just snippets of something small ducking behind the couch, diving behind the bookshelf, darting into the kitchen. The child's laugh breathed in his ears, broken and flickering. Grabbing handfuls of his hair for something to hold onto, William folded his head low between his knees and tried to block it out. His mind was drawn back to Fazbear's Fright, when he wandered down the halls, his rotting body fused with the suit, chasing the spinning echoes of children's laughter that drove him closer to insanity every night. Back then, he hadn't known if he was searching for the child to kill them or whether he just wanted company; he figured he would decide when he found them, which he never did because they didn't exist. It was just a recording played over a loudspeaker, a precaution taken by a night guard to keep a robotic beast away from the office. And William always fell for it. Even when he realized the laugh was just a recording, the burning in his head and chest wouldn't let him ignore it, and whether it was because some leftover programming from Springbonnie had leeched into him like a mind-altering chemical or he was just so bored that he'd accept any source of distraction, he followed the voice every time.
William felt the urge growing in him like a seed that had finally been watered after a long, dry summer. He felt it spreading slowly through him like ivy and, even though he was no longer in the suit or Fazbear's Fright, he found himself thinking of unhinging his metal jaw and taking a bite out of the laughing child when he caught them.
I'm losing it, he worried. I'm finally, completely losing my grip.
Beth and Sammy's voices hadn't triggered this reaction in him, so why now? He felt cables in his head buzzing and sprockets in his chest clicking with his movements. He felt the weight of his head hanging on his crusty bone-and-springlock neck and long heavy ears drooping to the floor. I'm Grandpa Will, he told himself, not Springtrap. Springtrap's in a box in the garage. He repeated it with each manufactured breath. Inhale Grandpa Will, exhale Springtrap. Again and again until the burning cooled and the vines stopped growing, until the clicking and electrical sparks stopped, until his moldy animatronic ears receded back into hair, until the laughter faded to nothing. He slowly loosened his grip, making sure he was truly all right, he looked at his hands to make sure they were still human, and unfolded himself. He felt like the episode had finished for now, whatever it had been. Maybe he'd go spend time with Elizabeth after all to make the night pass more quickly and then tomorrow evening he would talk to Jack about what had happened.
"Hello?"
William jumped to his feet. Over by the foot of the stairs stood the cornfield child. He was staring straight through William, grinning like a scarecrow. His cheeks were rosy from the cold, his curly blonde hair swayed in an unseen breeze, and the cuffs of his trousers were dark with mud. The fire burst to life again. He tried to speak but he found his throat had rotted out. Whether it was literal or not, William didn't have time to deal with it.
Laughing, the child dashed up the stairs and William knew in the pit of his stomach that he was headed for one of the kids' rooms and that he intended to hurt them. William sprinted after the child and made it upstairs just in time to see him disappear through Beth's bedroom door. William followed him without a second thought and readied himself for a fight.
Beth's room had a small purple nightlight glowing in the corner by the window. The floor was strewn with clothes and half-finished projects; kneeling over Beth on the bed like a sleep-paralysis demon, was the child. William gestured sternly for him to get off and leave immediately but he ignored him. Only when William stomped toward the bed did the child hop off with a shiver-inducing laugh and disappear through the wall. William paused to make sure Beth hadn't been harmed before following the child into Sammy's room. William entered through Sammy's closet, causing a loud pop as the wood door bowed against the pressure and snapped back into shape.
Sammy, who had been sleeping snuggly hugging a stuffed rabbit, jolted awake and looked up at the closet. His big blue eyes locked onto William and he screamed. The scream drowned out the laughter and the cornfield child disappeared. It froze the flames behind William's eyes and blasted the fantasies apart. William backed quickly into the corner of Sammy's room, shocked at himself, and Sammy's eyes followed him; he could see him! William looked down at himself, at his wounds and bloody clothes, and realized he must look terrifying.
"No, Sammy, please don't be scared," William said. "I-It's just Grandpa."
Sammy was still whimpering, but he wasn't screaming anymore. He shook and sniffled and William stopped approaching him because he didn't want to make him more frightened than he already was. There was thumping from outside and the door burst open to Charlie.
"What's wrong?" she asked, rushing over to Sammy.
Sammy looked over at William, confused.
"Your mom can't see or hear me," William explained, wringing his hands. "Please don't tell on me. I don't want her to get mad."
"What happened?" asked Charlie.
Sammy considered carefully what to say. "I thought I saw a monster in my closet," he said.
Charlie stroked his back comfortingly. "Do you want me to spray your closet again?" she asked.
"No, that's okay," replied Sammy. "It was just a bad dream."
Charlie looked over her shoulder like she suspected something, but she didn't bring it up. "All right," she said, "if you're sure. Good night, kiddo." She kissed him on the head and went to make sure the scream hadn't woken Beth or scared Elizabeth.
When she left, Sammy went back to silently staring at William, clearly wondering why he looked the way he did.
"This is what I look like without my suit," William explained. "I-I'm sorry it's a little scary."
They stayed like that for a while, Sammy sitting up in bed, hugging the rabbit protectively to his chest, and William standing anxiously in the center of the room. Multicolor stars swirled on the ceiling, projected from a night light lamp sitting on the desk, chasing shadows away. Sammy's tiny glasses sat next to it on top of an unfinished crayon drawing. William leaned over and saw that it was of a large yellow rabbit in a vest, holding hands with a boy and two girls.
"I-Is that us?" he asked carefully. Sammy nodded. "You're a very talented artist," he said. "I like the fur tufts on the ears. Very realistic. Your dad liked to draw too when he was little, did you know that?"
Sammy nodded and pointed to the small blue dresser across from the bed. William followed his finger and saw that, sitting on top beside a pile of folded socks was a birthday card that had been propped open. Inside was a simple drawing of a brontosaurus eating the leaves off a palm tree. It warmed William's heart to see that Michael drew pictures for his children. William wondered why he hadn't bothered to draw pictures for Michael and his siblings when they were younger. It would be weird to start now, he thought, even if he could hold a pencil.
"Why aren't you wearing your bunny suit?" Sammy asked. "You said you couldn't breathe without it. And why are you all blurry?"
William didn't know what to say. He and Mike had already woven a child-friendly reason for the existence of Springtrap. They had created a version that allowed Beth and Sammy to still believe that their family was more or less normal. However, Sammy had now seen both Elizabeth and the new state of their father. William wished he knew how Mike and Charlie had explained all of that so he could know how honest he could be. Sammy was staring at him, squeezing his stuffed animal, waiting for an answer. Maybe it was time for the truth.
"Can I tell you a story?" asked William, sitting crosslegged on the floor. "It might be a little scary, but I promise it has a happy ending, okay?" William hoped it did, at least.
"Okay," agreed Sammy uncertainly.
William left a lot out of his version; he didn't tell Sammy about the children or his hand in the murders, the painful way in which he had died, or how Elizabeth had torn him apart. But he did confide in him that he was a ghost and that he had been a ghost even in the rabbit suit and that's why he hadn't been able to eat the pancakes. He told Sammy that his suit had been broken and so now he couldn't wear it and only a couple people in the house could see him without it. When he finished the story, he let his hands fall to his lap and he waited for Sammy to respond.
Sammy scrunched his nose up as he processed the information he had just been given, thinking back to the beans on toast breakfast, the movie they had watched together, and the first time they had met and he had scared him and his sister.
"You're a ghost for real?" asked Sammy finally. "Like on Scooby Doo?"
William smiled to show him everything was okay. "Yes, but I'm a friendly ghost, like Caspar. I never wanted to scare you or Beth. All I've ever wanted is to spend more time with you both."
Sammy went quiet again, processing further. In the way his eyebrows scrunched together, William saw a hint of Michael.
"You look scary like that," said Sammy.
"Because of the…because I look hurt?"
Sammy nodded. "And your eyes look like a skeleton."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said William, lowering his eyes and crossing his arms tight across his chest to try and hide some of the wounds. "I wish I could look differently."
Sammy hugged the rabbit tighter. "Why are you in my room?" he mumbled into the fur as though he was afraid the question might make William angry. Sammy was still frightened of William, and why wouldn't he be? They had barely spent any time together when he was dressed as Springbonnie and now, he was a gruesome ghost. They didn't have the kind of relationship yet that could withstand that kind of shock. As far as William knew, this scare might be the last straw; Sammy might never trust or like William again.
"I-I'm sorry," William said quietly. He got slowly to his feet so Sammy wouldn't think he was coming after him. "I can go if you want. I-I just wanted to make sure you were okay." He waited for agreement from Sammy that, yes, he should leave, but Sammy didn't give it. He just continued hugging his stuffed animal and staring at his nightlight.
"You can stay," Sammy said, almost inaudibly quiet. "But I have to go to bed. I have school tomorrow."
William approached the bed, excited. "Oh thank you, Sammy. That's just fine. I don't mind. I'll, um," He planted himself in front of the closet. "I'll sit right here and guard your closet all night. You'll be safe as long as I'm here. I promise."
Sammy's eyebrows were still knit hard; he still looked worried. Even so, he said, "Okay, Grandpa Will," and snuggled back down under the covers. He lay on his side and stared at William for a long time but finally, his eyelids sank closed and he fell asleep.
William stayed seated in front of Sammy's closet all night like he had promised. As the stars continued to spin lazily against the ceiling and the dark of midnight turned to the blue of early morning, William listened hard for the laughing and kept his eyes peeled for the cornfield child in case it came back. He knew it was probably a hallucination triggered by the movie they had watched, but he couldn't stop himself from worrying if it wasn't. The afterlife was a complicated and vicious place. Spirits could possess animatronics and kill living people. They could get trapped between this world and the next, or sag out of closets to scare little boys. Sammy had been scared before by something in his closet. Whether the monster in Sammy's closet was just a nightmare or a real threat, William didn't know; however, if he had learned anything during his life, it was to not take foolish chances, especially not while using your family as collateral.
When the cornfield child didn't return to Sammy's room and nothing came creeping out of the closet, William pushed up to his feet and returned to Beth's room to make sure he hadn't been hiding out in there. Beth was still sound asleep, the small nightlight obscured in the growing morning light. William checked all the corners, in her closet and under her bed to make sure the child wasn't hiding, but he didn't see any sign of those curly locks and muddy trousers; the specter seemed to be leaving her alone. When Beth was awake and asking questions, she looked a lot like Charlie, but when she was asleep on her stomach, face buried in her pillow with her blanket tangled and sliding off the bed, she looked like William. Annie had told him he slept like that, tangled and chaotic, and then took a picture when he didn't believe her. He always used to go to bed with socks on and woke up to find them gone, but other than that, he'd thought he slept pretty normally.
William pinched the corner of the comforter and pulled at it, hoping he could coax it to cover Beth. The fabric stuck in his grip and, with a bit of concentration, he was able to pull it back onto the bed. Beth stirred and William immediately let go and stepped back into the shadows. If she woke up and saw him pulling on her blanket, she might get the wrong idea. He wondered if she would be able to see him but he thought it was best not to surprise her like he had surprised Sammy, so he left.
William went downstairs to check on Elizabeth and found her sitting on her windowsill, staring out at the sinking moon. The blue light fell gently across her flannel pajamas, making her look like something from a Christmas card. She looked like she belonged in the space, in contrast to William, whose body disappeared wherever the light hit him.
"Hi Lizzy," he greeted quietly.
"Hi Daddy," she greeted in return.
William cautiously sat across from her on the sill. "Did you have a good night?"
"Yes," she said and her glowing eyes turned to him. "We read three books and colored a whole coloring book."
"That's quite a lot," said William.
"We read a Nancy Drew one, which is a big book with chapters," she said sitting a little taller. "It was about a clock."
"Very impressive!" William wondered what he had done to deserve to get to talk like this again with his daughter. Nothing, he decided. He had done nothing to deserve this. A spoke had broken out of the wheel of justice that allowed him to slip through in this regard, secretly spending time with his loved ones when he should be burning in hell instead. "It was very nice of Beth to give you those pajamas," he continued.
"We like Beth a lot," said Elizabeth, happily smoothing out the wrinkles in her cozy, long-sleeve shirt. "We asked if she wanted to be best friends and she said yes."
"Well, naturally!" William exclaimed. He cupped her face. "Who wouldn't want to be best friends with the most wonderful girl in the world?"
"Beth said we were fun," said Elizabeth, thrilled with the attention. "She sounds like she really likes us, even though we are an animatronic."
"You're perfect in every way, Lizzie," William insisted. He thought of their ice cream outings, how she always wanted the "pink" ice cream, regardless of the flavor. He thought of the ballet recital he had missed half of because he had gotten caught up in the lab. He remembered scrubbing his hands and arms and shirt furiously to get the grease off because he didn't want to show up "looking like a slob" in front of the other parents, and Henry told him to calm down and that it was "just a recital" and that there was "one every year" and that "Elizabeth would forgive him."
"You're perfect," William said again, "and being mechanical doesn't change that. I'm-I'm sorry you had to go through the things you did because of me."
"Please, Daddy," Elizabeth guided his hands away from her face. "Don't apologize anymore."
"Sorry," said William. "I mean, I'll try not to. Can I sit with you until the rest of the family gets up?"
"Yes," Elizabeth replied.
They sat together and talked. Elizabeth told her father what it was like first meeting Beth and Sammy, how she was so nervous but Mike and Charlie were able to introduce her so well that they quickly calmed down and became fast friends. William talked about Jack and the coffee shop, and how after their conversation, William thought they were probably friends as well.
All the while, William kept a sharp eye out for the cornfield child. He didn't see him or hear him laughing, but he could feel him in the far back of his mind, as though if he looked over his shoulder at the right time, he'd catch him staring at him. He didn't tell Elizabeth about it because he was enjoying talking to her and he didn't want to ruin the mood. He'd tell Jack the next day, though he really didn't want to do that, either. William felt like the child was more than a hallucination; not a ghost, but some sort of omen, and William worried that if he confessed that he was seeing it, his family and Jack might view him as a lost cause. After all, how much progress could he have made if he was still fantasizing about killing children?
As if on cue, Elizabeth asked him what he had thought of the movie. William thought at first that she knew what he was thinking, that she knew about the urges and hallucinations and that she was baiting him, but as she watched him, innocently waiting for his opinion, he realized how ridiculous that was.
"It was good," he managed to squeak out as he stared at his hands. "I liked it."
"We didn't understand it," Elizabeth said. "But we liked the farmer's little kid. He was funny, don't you think?"
Heat crawled up William's spine, and riding it like a wave, came that hellishly cherubic giggling. It flowed from everywhere at once and suddenly everywhere he looked, he saw that smiling, frost-kissed face: peering out of the closet and sitting on the bed and hovering up by the ceiling and tucked behind the trees in the backyard. They were everywhere, squeezing William from all sides with their gazes like airbags and William couldn't move, couldn't breathe, for fear that he might kill something before he could stop himself. He had to get out of there and fast.
William cut Elizabeth off mid-sentence when he grabbed her hands and smiled his big, customer-service smile.
"Just a moment, Lizzy," he said cheerfully. "Daddy's got to go do something, okay? I'll just be a minute."
Elizabeth wasn't fooled any more than Michael had been. "You're shaking, Daddy," she said calmly. "Why are you shaking?"
William squeezed his hands together, willing himself to sit still. "I'm fine, I just, I need to get some fresh air." He dropped to his feet, stalked toward the door, and heard the thump of Elizabeth dropping to her feet as well. "No, sweetie, please don't follow me." When he phased through the door, Elizabeth opened it and followed him out. He laughed loudly. "Christ, Lizzie, I'll be back in a bit, I promise!"
Elizabeth shut the door behind her. "You are acting weird," she said, "and we don't feel good about leaving you alone right now."
William couldn't help the sarcastic chuckle that rumbled through him. "Oh, so now it's a problem for me to be alone. Where was that sentiment thirty years ago?"
Elizabeth frowned and William realized he had hurt her. Shame ate through the control panel in his chest. "Sorry, Lizzie" he said. "I didn't mean that."
"We were alone, too," she replied in a small voice. "for a very long time."
"I know. I'm sorry. I got scared a-and I lashed out."
"What are you scared of?" She took his hand to comfort him.
The cornfield children watched William from all corners of the house. The laughter started turning into words that William could just barely hear, but he understood: words like "Fazbear" and "remnant" and "murderer" and "hell." The children were smiling because they got to see William incapacitated, weak and foolish. They were laughing at him, enjoying their revenge.
"M-myself, I think."
William pulled out of her grip and walked through the rows of children to the garage. Henry's aura still hung there like death and the boxes of Springbonnie's scraps sat in the center like an open casket. There were children in here with William as well, standing on the bed, peeking out from around the chair and under the desk, and crouched along the walls. The children began to change from clones of the cornfield child to faces and voices he recognized, even though he had only known them for a short time.
He learned the names of the children after he had killed them, when mothers and fathers came in with arms full of missing posters with their kids' faces on them and asked him, as the owner of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, if he would please post one in the window in case anyone had seen them. William agreed and remembered viscerally the experience of taping the posters in the window right next to the glass front doors. He arranged the posters in a grid so they wouldn't cover up too much of the window and he used just a bit of scotch tape in the corners so that the posters wouldn't leave sticky marks when everyone forgot about the missing children and he took them down.
William peered into the boxes and even though most of the scraps were metal, all he could see were the bones and leathery flesh mixed in. He caught sight of teeth and then, suddenly, his own dead face was staring up at him like an old mask. He didn't want to look at it, but he couldn't look away. The mouth on the mangled face turned downward, and its sunken eyes stared up at the ceiling, up at William. It looked disappointed, perhaps with its predicament or because of what William had become. With a shaking hand, William reached into the box to reassure himself that what he was experiencing was real, maybe even to comfort his old, worried head. When his fingers made contact with the flesh, William was pulled forward as if by gravity. He lost his balance and came crashing down onto his face, not onto the box, but onto dirty, peeling linoleum.
His heavy body clicked and whirred as he pushed up to his knees and then his feet. The hallway was dark but he knew immediately where he was. Laughter echoed over the loudspeaker and it grabbed onto the cables in his brain like two fists. His electronic eyes flickered and he caught sight of himself in the window that looked into the office. He was in the Springtrap suit again, missing pieces of himself, covered in blood and dirt. There was no sign that his experience with Mike, Charlie, Elizabeth, and the grandkids had ever happened. What if it had all been an elaborate hallucination? What if he had never escaped Fazbear's Fright at all? His bones and springlocks shook and he tried to breathe, tried not to panic.
The child's voice track played again and William looked up at the window. Inside the office sat a security guard, the same security guard that he thought he had killed, and they locked eyes for a long uncomfortable moment. The guard was hunched protectively over the control panel and William could almost see the sweat beading on his brow. The guard believed William was going to kill him, and maybe William would have a few years ago, but right now, that was the last thing he wanted to do. Hallucination of family or not, this was all a big misunderstanding, and he needed the guard to know that.
With difficulty, William ignored the voice prompts and limped into the office. The guard plastered himself against the wall and held his heavy flashlight out at Springtrap like a weapon. William slowed his pace and kept his distance. He needed to make the guard understand that he wasn't in danger and he wasn't going to do that by scaring him further.
"I-I-I'm not g-g-g-oing to hhhhurt yyyou." His voice box was rusty and difficult to manipulate. The guard didn't lower his flashlight. William's heart broke, thinking of his grandchildren and how they probably didn't even exist. They had always seemed too good to be true. William pulled his mask upward. "Mmm-mm n-n-not S-S-S-Springtrappp a-a-a-a-annnnymorrree. I-I-I'm just a p-p-persson." The springlocks got caught and the mask wouldn't come off fully but William continued to yank on it and, finally, the rusted springlocks snapped and the mask lifted free from his rotting skull. He held the mask out to the security guard as a peace offering.
The guard stared between the mask and William's face for a long time; slowly, he lowered his flashlight, but he didn't make any movement to take the mask from him. With achy movements, William set the mask gently onto the floor and without another word, walked back out into the hall.
Suddenly, the ground shifted and William slammed into the wall. When he picked himself up again, he was no longer in the Springtrap suit or at Fazbear's Fright. He was human again, solid and alive, in a grease-and-blood-stained plastic apron, latex gloves, and a surgical mask, standing somewhere cold underground, dark except for the sporadic industrial lighting he and Henry had installed.
"Hey Willy, are you going to stand over there all night or are you going to give me a hand?"
William turned and saw Henry in his own apron, gloves and mask, hunched over a metal table with a scalpel. There was a mass lying on the table covered in a dark plastic sheet and William's stomach dropped. There were medical trays sitting around with plastic containers, ready to be filled with samples, and the floor and the unfinished animatronics sitting on desks were covered with plastic sheeting to keep the makeshift operating room sterile. On a table nearby lay Chica, her chest plate opened up and a large hole melted through the machinery inside where they had extracted the molten metal that would eventually become a key part of remnant.
The child on the table was their first, William realized. This was the first time they had moved from cats and dogs to human trials. William knew this because the child was unconscious, pumped full of anesthesia, whereas they discovered later that the remnant was much more potent if the child was awake when they extracted it; something about pain and trauma made it more likely to yield a lifelike response from the animatronic it was injected into.
William carefully approached the table, dress shoes clacking across the concrete and swishing in the plastic. The child was lying on his stomach, completely covered except for a large square exposing his back. Henry handed William the scalpel and clapped him on the shoulder.
"You earned the first cut for sneaking this one away so skillfully," he said happily. "This is the first moment of the rest of our lives. Can you feel it?"
William gripped the scalpel hard and stared down at the child, watching his back move with slumbering breaths, the pen markings of where to cut rising and falling. If he had known what these experiments would lead to, he never would have agreed to engage in them. Then again, even though he hadn't known, he still should have been strong enough to say "No." His conscious had been screaming at him the whole time, but he had ignored it because he wanted to destroy something innocent and Henry had convinced him it was for the greater good. He stepped back from the table, stepped out from under Henry's hand, clutching the scalpel to his chest.
"N-no," he stuttered. "We can't do this again. This is very, very wrong."
Henry looked confused. "What are you talking about? You were all for it fifteen minutes ago." He waited for William to respond, but William didn't know what to say. He felt like Henry would be able to talk him out of whatever convictions he had, so instead of reasoning with him, William threw the scalpel deep into the darkness of the lab.
"What the hell, Will?" Henry demanded. "The anesthesia isn't going to last forever. Go pick that up, disinfect it, and stop screwing around."
"I can't be a part of this," William said. He took off his safety gear and dropped it onto the floor.
"William, we talked about this."
"I'm leaving and I'm taking the child with me." William stepped toward the table but Henry blocked him and grabbed his arm hard.
"If you do, we're finished," Henry threatened. William struggled and Henry grabbed his other arm to keep him away from the operating table.
William yanked free and pushed Henry stumbling away. Before Henry could come at him again, William wrapped the limp child in the plastic and carried him toward the entrance to the tunnel. Henry yelled threats after him, but he didn't follow and William did his best to ignore them. Shifting the child's weight to one arm, William typed in the code for the tunnel door and walked through.
What he entered wasn't the tunnel; instead, he found himself standing in the back room at Freddy's, wearing Springbonnie as a costume. The room was quiet and dusty, but he could hear muffled music coming from the party room at the front of the restaurant. The unconscious child was gone, replaced by a little girl standing in front of him in the dark.
It was his first victim and the only one he couldn't blame on Henry at all. He and Henry were studying artificial life, but they hadn't even begun to conceive of remnant. No, this little girl was just a broken plate to him. A springlock failure, a bashed-in windshield. He was angry, he felt cornered by life's misfortunes, and he just needed someone to take it out on. And then this girl came to a friend's birthday party and couldn't stop crying over the dog she had lost.
William had learned all the details as he served them cake, told jokes, and danced in his Springbonnie suit. She never stopped talking about her dog and how she hadn't put the leash on before she opened the door and how fast it had darted out. William's infected soul festered more with each passing minute. "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about," his father used to say. William hated him for it, but it was true. There were much worse things in the world than losing a damn dog, and the part of him that wanted to prove it to her kept growing.
When she went over to play in the arcade alone, it was too easy. All William had to do was say that he had found a dog and he wanted her to come see if it might be hers, and she followed him quietly to the back room.
Now, alone with her, his gloved hands brushing against the pair of scissors lying on the desk behind him, alarmingly he found that some part of him still wanted to go through with it. The rush of power he had felt was intoxicating, better than anything he had ever felt and would ever feel again. Better, that is, until the feeling he had when he met his grandchildren.
The girl was wiping tears away from her red face and there were sauce stains on the front of her Freddy Fazbear t-shirt. She only came up to William's waist…Christ, why had he ever felt triumph killing someone so helpless?
"Did you find my dog, Mr. Bonnie?" she whimpered. William stared hard at her, hands clenching the back of the desk to keep himself grounded as he considered what to do.
"No," he said finally. He removed the Springbonnie head. "I-I was mistaken, I'm sorry." He removed the rest of the costume, revealing the purple shirt and dress pants underneath, and laid it carefully on the desk. "And please call me Mr. Afton. Or William. What's your name?"
"Susie," she said. She began to cry, lamenting that her dog was still lost. William dug through the desk drawer, pulled out a lollipop from his secret stash, and handed it to her. He crouched to her height as she tearfully unwrapped it.
"I'm sorry about your dog," said William. "He's probably just off on an adventure and I'm sure he'll come back once he starts missing you."
"Really?" she hiccuped.
"Yeah," said William, standing. "Come on, let's get you back to your friends."
William opened the door to the bright hallway and they both stepped through, but once William's eyes adjusted, he saw that Susie was gone and he was back in the garage, kneeling in front of the boxes. Standing around him were all the children he had killed. They glowed so brightly that he had to shield his eyes, and their wrath was so hot he felt like he was being burned alive.
"I'm sorry…" He curled protectively as they crowded closer. He was afraid they were going to tear apart his spirit the way Elizabeth had torn apart his body, but if that's what it took for the children to find closure, he couldn't deny them. "You're completely justified in trapping me here forever. I know you have every right not to, but please, please forgive me."
He tucked his head under his arms and closed his eyes, waiting. Tiny hands began to rest all over him, from his head to his shoulders to his back, and everywhere they touched burned. The hands burned like fire in a smelting furnace, pressing into him, melting him down and forcing to the surface all the impurities he had so carefully buried. They burned like a chemical bath, eating away the remaining flesh from his bones and vaporizing the last bubonic particles of him. Pain radiated through him and pulsed like a heartbeat and he knew they were getting their final revenge.
"I'm so sorry," he said again because he couldn't think of what else to say. He thought of his family and how he would never see them again. He wondered if they would ever find out what happened to him or if he would just be gone. "Do what you need to do but please don't hurt my family afterwards." He felt his bones superheating and breaking apart. "They're nothing like me and they've done nothing wrong." Cold tears cut through his cheeks and he scrunched his eyes closed tighter, angry that he was feeling sorry for himself, because he did still feel sorry for himself, even though he knew he had no right to. He had set these events into motion and it wasn't appropriate for him to feel like a victim in any regard.
"We don't want you to hate yourself forever, we just want you to understand."
The voices of the children echoed in his skull and vibrated the length of his body like a bell but the burning hands didn't let up; in fact, they reached deeper and burned hotter. William shivered in spite of it.
"Murderers don't change," said the voices in unison, "and they need to die."
The hands wound through his brain like police officers sneaking through a back door to rescue hostages. William's entire focus was on the pain and he could only glimpse the quiet hands out of the corner of his mind's eye. His brain clenched around them, worried that they might break something in his already fragile mind, that they might grab the wrong thing, or that they might decide all of him was unsalvageable and throw everything out. But he didn't have power over them anymore so he tried to relax and trust that whatever they did would be justice.
The hands found something like ethereal cables: long, cold, and caked with battery acid where they had corroded. There were so many that William worried that maybe his brain was nothing but cables now and there was no hope for him, but the children were not daunted. They reached in and grabbed the cables firmly, ignoring the spits and sparks of protest. They pulled slowly and deliberately, working the barbed tips free when they caught on the inside of his skull or each other, and pulled them carefully out through the back of his head as though it had been opened up like a maintenance hatch. William's head began to feel lighter and he thought it was over until the main cable pulled taut, as though it was still plugged into his cerebellum.
"Do you want it gone?" asked the voices.
"Yes," William sobbed into his knees. "Please, please remove it."
"We can't. You need to detach it yourself."
William didn't have to ask them how, because he already knew. He wiped his tears and the burning hands pulled back a bit to give him room for what he needed to do. William bowed his head and, with great concentration, he slipped his incorporeal hands up through his jaw and into his brain. He felt around gently for the cable that was still plugged in and when he found it, he began to pull. Sudden fear flushed through him, feelings of incompetence and failure and mediocrity. He felt like, even though the cables were bad, they were the most interesting thing about him and if he removed them, he would be reduced to nothing.
But even if he was nothing, he still had his family and he just needed to decide if that was enough for him.
It was.
William gave a final tug, dislodged the prongs, and the cable slid out. The garage went quiet.
"Your murderer," the children introduced as they set the glowing mass of cables into his cupped hands. William was surprised how small it looked outside of him, how ridiculous. It was pulsing like a heart, but it was moving less with each pump and the glow was fading as well. William looked up at the children crowded around him.
"What should I do with it?" he asked.
"Bury it with the rabbit," the children answered. "Immediately."
William jumped shakily to his feet and ran into the house, cradling the fading knot of cables in his hands like he was afraid they might spill. He ran into Mike and Charlie's room and bounced nervously next to Mike's snoring face.
"Mike, wake up please," he jittered. He looked back at the door, hoping the children would wait for him, and then down at the cables in his hands. He nudged Mike in the face hard with his elbow and Mike jolted awake.
"Dad!" he said, then coughed suddenly in pain. "What are you doing?"
"I need you to help me bury Springtrap," William said. "The children said I need to bury these with the suit right now." He presented the cables to Mike but Mike didn't act like he saw them. Charlie stirred next to Mike and rubbed her eyes.
"What's going on?" she yawned, sitting up. Her eyes locked with William's and she jumped so hard she almost fell out of bed. "Fuck!" she said. "William, is that you?"
William nodded, too distracted to truly appreciate that almost all of his family could see him now. "It's me."
"He needs help burying the suit or something," Michael replied, wearily dragging his feet into his slippers.
"Bury the suit?" asked Charlie. "Why?" She didn't sound sold on the idea, but she was up and slipping on her robe anyway. If Michael was going, she was, too.
"To get rid of this," William said, showing the cables to Charlie. She glanced down and looked confused, so William pulled them protectively back to his chest. "I-I'd do it myself if I could, but the suit is too heavy. Please hurry."
"Okay, Dad," Michael smiled and gave him a quick side-hug as he passed him. "We'll take care of it, won't we Charlie?"
"Yes, we'll take care of it," agreed Charlie.
William followed them through the quiet house and back into the garage. The children were gone and the garage was dark again. William looked down at the cables in his hands and saw that they were going dark as well. They jerked once in a while, still trying to stay alive, but without William to feed on, they were fading fast. Elizabeth met them there, having been looking for William, and together, they dragged the boxes of dismembered Springtrap down the deck steps and into the backyard.
William helped them sort out the pieces as best he could without dropping the cables. He was afraid that, if he dropped them, they'd take root in the ground and he'd never be able to be rid of them. They separated William's body from the animatronic, piece by piece, until they had made two piles that were smaller than William would have expected. Next to Springbonnie, William's dead, broken body looked tiny and sad in comparison. It was hard to believe something so frail had caused so much harm.
Michael caught William staring and he put his arm around him comfortingly. "What do you say we bury the biodegradable stuff and recycle the metal?" he asked.
"The children said I needed to bury the rabbit," William said, still staring, unblinking, at his body.
"The metal pieces aren't going to decompose, William," said Charlie, leaning on the shovel.
"They said I need to bury the rabbit and the cables together," William insisted.
"Okay, Dad," said Mike. He looked at Charlie. "I think the earth can forgive us this once, don't you?"
Charlie sighed but smiled. "I think so," she said and she and Elizabeth began to dig.
In the end, they dug one wide grave and lay the suit and William's body side by side. William lay the now cold, lifeless cables on top of the suit and when he did, the cables relaxed as if giving a final sigh of surrender. The knot loosened and the tight cables unwound smaller and smaller like cornsilk, until they were so thin that William couldn't see them among the rubble. William pushed the first handful of dirt back into the grave and then, Charlie and Elizabeth, after taking the shovel from Michael and telling him that he shouldn't be doing physical labor, finished filling it in.
The sun peeked over the edge of the backyard fence as Charlie and Elizabeth patted down the last of the black soil; Michael stood close by his father, a comforting hand around his shoulder.
Sammy's face appeared in the upstairs window and then moments later the door to the deck cracked open.
"Don't be scared," Sammy said quietly. "That's just Grandpa Will."
William turned and saw his grandchildren standing on the deck, Beth staring at him in disbelief. Sammy smiled and waved and William waved back. Taking that as a cue that everything was all right, Sammy and Beth came down the stairs and walked across the grass to join the rest of the family.
"Whatcha doing?" Sammy asked.
Michael and Charlie hesitated, so William spoke up. "A little funeral of sorts," he said, pointing at the upturned earth. "That's my grave."
Mike and Charlie looked at each other uncertainly, worrying that the explanation was too gruesome, but Sammy squeezed through them and crouched at the edge of the soil. "You're in there?" he asked.
"Yeah," said William, sitting next to him on the ground. "It makes me a little sad to think about."
"My goldfish is buried over there by the birdbath," said Beth as she sat carefully next to Sammy. "I was sad when we buried her, but Mom said we always have to bury things when they die so they can rest." William glanced back at Charlie; Mike had his arm around her, whether to give her support or because he was having trouble standing, William couldn't tell.
"I think that's a wise way to look at it," said William. "Maybe it will help me rest, too."
"You're not leaving, are you?" demanded Sammy.
William looked around for any sign that his time had come, but as usual, there wasn't one. "No," he said, "as far as I know, I'm here to stay."
Sammy climbed into William's lap and they sat that way for a long moment together, staring at the grave.
"Hey, Beth," Elizabeth spoke up after a while. "We colored a whole coloring book with glitter crayons. Do you want to see?"
"Cool!" Beth jumped to her feet and together they went inside to look at Elizabeth's masterpiece.
"I think I'm going to get started on breakfast," Charlie said quietly.
"Okay," said Mike, giving her a kiss. "I'll come in, too. Hey," he addressed Sammy and William. "Do you guys want to help make some breakfast?"
"Can we have pancakes again?" asked Sammy.
"I don't see why not," said Michael. "What do you say, Dad? Up for helping make pancakes?"
William smiled and got to his feet, taking Sammy's hand. "I'd like nothing better."
A/N: Michael did a lot of hugging in this chapter, but then again, there was a lot of hugging that needed doing. Good job being supportive, Michael.
Only one chapter left! It's so hard to believe the end is here already. Thank you to everyone who has been reading and enjoying this Afton Family Circus. The last chapter will be up soon. Thank you again!