CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

Now that she was able to sleep again, Ana finally began to feel like she was healing. In a physical sense, at least. Mentally, she must still be pretty deep in the red, which was an extra-hard pill to swallow because she felt so much better, as if her mind had been wearing sunglasses for so long she'd forgotten they were there, and now those glasses were gone and she was thinking with color and light again. But some parts of her brain were clearly dimmer than others, because it was Saturday morning before Ana even realized that having plans that evening might just be a problem for Freddy.

Realized, not remembered. She'd never forgotten those plans existed. It had been blowing around in the back of her mind like a tumbleweed all week. Every time she saw herself in the bathroom mirror, she'd assess the color of the bruises there and think about the cosmetic sorcery that would be necessary to cover them. When she brushed her hair, she'd wonder what she was going to do with it Saturday night, if she was going to try and hide the stiches on the side of her head or just let them hang out bold as balls. As she laced her boots every morning, she'd think glumly about the heels she'd thrown away in Yoshi's workshop, like anyone in Mammon would notice or care about a couple grease-spots.

In fact, it was the shoe situation that finally woke her up, because she'd left it until literally the last minute, and now her options were limited to either wearing her work-boots, digging through her aunt's closet for a pair of heels that were guaranteed to be at least a full size too small, or going to the freaking mall on the first weekend after Thanksgiving, which not only meant dealing with all those Black Friday shoppers coasting on a two-day credit-card high, but also first wheedling permission out of Freddy—

—because she was still grounded.

Shitbiscuits.

If she needed further evidence of her brain's misfiring circuits, she found it in the next instant, as her first impulse on making this much belated realization was a crisp facepalm directly over her healing bite, so that instead of a heartfelt groan and a few muttered swears, she instead yelled, "Ow, motherfucking fuck-toast!" at the top of her lungs.

While she was gingerly feeling around her facial stitches to see if she'd torn any open with her dumbassery, the party room door opened and a distinctive bearish baritone rumbled, "Ana? Are you all right?"

"Yeah," she said through gritted teeth. "I'm an idiot, but I'm fine."

And the next thing she heard, of course, was the door latch clicking as he solicitously closed it and continued on his way. So unless she wanted to go looking for him in the giant funhouse maze that was this building, she'd better run and catch him.

Ana finished tying her laces with a few curt jerks and jumped up from her bed. She was a little too enthusiastic sweeping the curtain aside, accidentally whapping Babycakes with the loose folds. It tumbled off the dresser, giggling and beginning its usual whining to be reunited with Chica. She could have left it to chatter away and run its seemingly immortal batteries down, but her instincts took over and she went back to pick it up, dropping an old tee over it like hooding a parakeet's cage to put it quickly back to sleep. By the time she opened her door, the West Hall was empty.

She flipped a mental coin and ran left, to the dining room, where she got another reminder that 'recovering' was not the same thing as 'recovered,' because although she had all the energy in the world when she started her sprint, a few running strides took it all out of her. A slow jog was all she had left on the other side of the swinging door and it wasn't enough to get her all the way to the kitchen. She gave up halfway there and veered off to the show stage instead, where Bonnie was in his usual place, strumming on his unplugged guitar, and Chica was standing where her old keyboard used to be, reading a book by the light of the helpful camera.

Bonnie put his guitar aside at once as Ana sat down hard in the center of the stage. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said, letting herself collapse fully onto her back in the camera's spotlight until she could catch her breath. "Freddy come through here? I need to talk to him."

"Freddy!" Chica called, probably unnecessarily as Freddy was already leaning back in through the tray return window.

"What's wrong?" he demanded.

She shook her head to mean nothing was wrong, nothing at all, as she lay splayed and panting in the center of the stage, eyes closed and equilibrium slowly spinning. "Tried to get up too fast. All good. I need my keys, that's all. I'm going out."

"Oh, I don't think so," Freddy said seriously. "And if I would have thought so five minutes ago, I certainly don't now."

Ana sighed and propped herself up on her elbows so she could make eye contact for dominance as she said, "I'm not asking for permission, big bear, I'm relaying information."

Freddy raised an unimpressed eyebrow, then opened his wrist compartment and brought out her keys. He held them up, solely to make them vanish with one of his magician's flourishes. "You're asking for permission," he told her as she scowled. "Start over."

"It's been ten days," she reminded him. "You can't stop me from leaving."

Freddy raised the other eyebrow. "I'm fairly sure I can, but you're welcome to attempt to prove me wrong."

"Stop it," Chica said and took a defensive stance between them, hands on hips and crest bristling. "You said ten days, Freddy. Be fair."

"I did," he agreed. "On the afternoon of the 19th. It is the morning of the 28th. Perhaps you'd like to do the math."

Ana scowled. "Yeah, but I did the thing you're grounding me for the night before, so if you start counting from then—"

"I don't," Freddy said flatly. "You're grounded until tomorrow, at 12:37 in the afternoon, to be exact, unless you keep arguing with me, in which case you're grounded until next year."

Chica threw her wings up in the air and walked away to the far side of the stage, muttering about how impossible they both were.

"Where is it you were thinking of going?" Freddy asked, coming around to the kitchen doorway. "If you need something from the house, I could send Foxy…?"

Ana shook her head and got up to meet him halfway across the floor. "I made plans with someone for tonight. We're going out and I need to get cleaned up." She indicated her face with a wave and a rueful smile. "I'm going to need a little extra prep time before I'm fit to be seen."

"Made plans?" Freddy frowned. "With whom?"

"Some guy," Ana said with a dismissive wave. "You don't know him."

"It isn't your former employer, is it?" Freddy asked, his expression growing slowly ominous. "Ana, I forbid you to see that man."

"Who, Shelly? No! Also, you don't forbid me anything, bear, but also, hell, no! I mean, yeah, he'll probably be there," she admitted, shaking her head. "But I'm happy to keep my distance if he will, and if he tries to talk to me, I will shut that shit down any way I can."

"Promise me," Freddy growled.

"Bunny Scout swear," said Ana and hopped two fingers across her chest.

Bonnie snorted.

"Then who is it?" Freddy demanded, undistracted.

"It's just a guy I met," Ana said. "He came around collecting for the local abstinence advocates group. You've heard of them, right? Freedom Under Celibate Kinship?"

Chica shook her head as Bonnie scratched his, saying, "Doesn't ring any bells."

"Well, you probably know them better by their acronym," said Ana and gave them a second to figure that out. While Bonnie laughed and Chica grabbed at her beak with a smothered squeak, she turned back to face the full force of Freddy's withering stare, aware that she had to tell the truth, while somehow not mentioning that her 'friend' was the creator who had abandoned them and left them to rot. "No, but for real, he's my friend who was in the hospital, the one I've been visiting?"

Freddy nodded, his frown lightening ever so slightly only to furrow even darker. "And we left so suddenly…Of course you want to check in with him. But if you'll forgive me, you could barely walk across this room. How far do you plan to be driving?"

"Come on, Doctor Bear, I told you I got up too fast. Besides, he's picking me up at home, so I don't have to drive any further than that."

"And where is he taking you?" Freddy asked. "Assuming I let him take you, which is not a foregone conclusion."

"There's this thing the town does every year around this time, where they kick off the holiday season by lighting the tree in the downtown square—"

"They still do that?" Freddy interrupted and then avoided her eyes with that stone-faced embarrassment which was uniquely his own. "We went to one once, a long time ago."

"Oh yeah," she said, blinking as she recalled Mike Schmidt telling her that the animatronics' first public appearance had been at the Tree Lighting Festival before the first pizzeria had opened. "That time they made you dress up like Santa."

"Made him, right," Bonnie snorted before Freddy could answer. "He loved that bit. He even liked the costume, not that you'll ever get him to admit it."

"What, did they still have him dressing up at the pizzerias?" Ana asked, surprised.

"Yup. And he'd bitch about it every single year, just like he wasn't slipping away into the seasonal storage closet every couple of weeks to brush out the beard and keep the boots oiled."

Ana ran an appraising eye over Freddy's scowling face. "I bet you looked damn good in a beard. Oddly enough, it's the floppy hat I can't quite see you in."

"He didn't wear one," said Bonnie. "Just his regular hat, but with a bright red ribbon—"

"It's called a hat band," Freddy interrupted crossly. "I do not wear ribbons."

"Sorry, I mistook you for a man secure enough in his masculinity to wear a ribbon once a year. But okay, a 'hat band,'" said Bonnie with finger quotes, "with a plant stuck in it."

"Mistletoe?" laughed Ana. "Did they seriously have a Santa Bear kissing booth? Now I'm really sorry I missed that."

"It was holly," growled Freddy, giving her a warning glance. "And no, they did not have a kissing booth for Christmas. It was a photo booth."

"Come sit on Santa Bear's lap and tell him you've been bad?" Ana leaned a little closer to Bonnie across the room and cupped her mouth for a loud whisper: "Did the costume come with pants?"

Bonnie cupped his muzzle to whisper back: "Coat, boots, belt, hat band. No pants."

"No wonder Santa wants to know who the naughty ones are."

"That's enough," said Freddy. "Ana, I understand this tradition is important to you—"

"To me?" She laughed at him. "I don't think I've ever actually been to one before. Christmas has never been my thing and even when I was a kid, we just stayed home and…"

Making sugary messes at the kitchen table when she was just nine years old, dressing gingerbread men in icing clothes while Aunt Easter rolled out more dough. Drinking hot cider from pumpkin-shaped mugs on the back deck when she was seven, the three of them bundled up together under the big blanket to watch the snow fall. Hanging glass icicles and glittery poinsettias on the tree when she was five, and being lifted up, way up, to put the sparkly star at the very top, and then he set her on his own shoulders because he said she was his star, and then she and David watched cartoons while he and Aunt Easter snuggled on the couch, and Ana's black eye and the shoulder that still ached sometimes didn't matter because they were happy and they were family and it was Christmas.

"We mostly stayed home," she said and rubbed her throat. "But he always goes. He doesn't have any other family worth speaking about and I already told him I'd go with him. I can't stand him up. You can add some more days to my sentence. I don't care what you do to me, but I'm not doing that to him."

Freddy started to speak, but cut a sharp glance at Chica and Bonnie (and even the camera, as if it were another witness to this scene), then took Ana by the arm in a firm, yet careful grip. He herded her ahead of him into the kitchen, the store room, and all the way out onto the loading dock. Only when the door was shut behind them and they were absolutely alone did he turn to her with grim resolve and say, "I don't have any business telling you no and I won't, but Ana, I am not comfortable with this."

"Freddy, this is a Christmas thing in a Mormon town, for crying out loud. The highlights of the evening are going to be a craft fair and kids singing hymns. Trust me, they don't even have a bar. And the guy's going to pick me up and drop me off. You can watch the road all night if you want to, but you're not going to see me whizzing by on my way to get crunked."

"That's not remotely what I'm talking about."

"What then?"

He took off his hat, rubbed his head, vented a great cloud of steam and finally said, speaking clearly but avoiding her eyes, "With the situation between you and Bonnie and Foxy—"

"Oh God. Freddy, no."

"—do you really think it's in anyone's best interests for you to be dating someone else?" Freddy finished loudly and thumped his hat back on his head as he faced her. "It's none of my business, but you are involving me when you ask me to ignore their feelings while you go gallivanting around town with another man."

"Okay, first, gallivanting? And second, it's not a date!" she insisted. "Seriously, it's nothing like that! He's…he's my friend in a town where neither of us have many. This is probably his first time actually leaving his house since he got out of the hospital. I wanted to be there for him because no one else is going to be. And yeah, I could call him up right now and cancel and he'd say it was fine and even mean it, because he knows I got hurt—"

"How?" Freddy interrupted sharply.

"Because it's Mammon, Freddy. Everybody knows. And I guarantee there's going to be a whole horde of them who are going to be de-fucking-lighted to see how bad I got messed up, and they will lose no time telling me how 'sorry' they are and how no one will be able to tell in ten or twenty years, and how it's even a blessing in disguise because certainly no one can say I'm just a pretty face anymore."

"You aren't and never were," Freddy said gruffly, "but the fact remains, you possess uncommonly attractive features."

"Thanks, but it's not about what's real with these people, it's about letting me know I'm not welcome, and there's nothing I can do about that except pick the time and the place and what I'm wearing when they do it."

"And it's tonight."

"At the motherfucking Tree-Lighting ceremony, front row, center stage, and I'm going to be rocking that red dress. And if I get the wise idea to hike my skirt and invite the entire town to kiss my ass, I'm reasonably sure my friend will stop me. Or at least bail me out of jail."

"Well, there's that," Freddy grumbled and sighed again.

"I'll be fine," she assured him. "It's not going to be a fun time, but I'll be fine."

Shaking his head, he turned around and pulled the loading dock door up on its track, waving for her to go inside.

She returned to the dining room where everyone was waiting: Bonnie, strumming his unplugged guitar; Chica, tapping her fingers; and the camera, whose idiot eye took it all in and thought nothing.

Freddy had not said 'yes' outside and he didn't say it now, exactly. He announced his decision with, "When is he picking you up?"

"Six," said Ana. "I figured I'd leave a few hours early so I have time to get a shower and plaster on some concealer."

"And when will you be back?"

"It's been so long, I don't really remember when it's over, but I can't see it taking more than a few hours. And he might not even want to stay for the whole thing, so whenever he decides it's time to go, we'll go. I should be back by ten. If I'm not, I'll text and let you know."

Freddy grunted, rubbing at his wrist like the keys inside them hurt. "Then I'll come find you at four."

"Make it three," said Ana. "I'll dump the shit in the truck into the quarry on the way and get that headache behind me."

"All right," he said after a short pause to underline that it was not entirely all right. "I expect you to rest until then. And you're to come straight back here after he drops you off. You're still grounded until tomorrow."

"Fine."

Freddy grunted in authoritarian satisfaction and finally headed off on the next leg of his patrol, shouting, "Eat something!" from the West Hall before the door wheezed shut.

"I bet that was a fun conversation," Bonnie said.

"It wasn't so bad. I get to make a new entry in the Book of Words Freddy Uses Unironically."

"Oh yeah?"

"Gallivanting."

"Galli-what?"

"To flit about in pursuit of pleasure," Chica supplied. "To go from place to place in an ostentatious manner, usually in the company of the opposite sex, with the implication of a hedonistic or promiscuous lifestyle."

They both looked at her as the little bulbs on the inside of her head-casing lit up, causing the pink blush-spots on her cheeks to glow faintly in the darkness.

"Vocabulary power," Chica mumbled, brushing invisible dust from her apron. She switched on her eye-lights to make her embarrassment less apparent and jumped down from the stage, saying, "I'll make you a breakfast cake!" as she fled.

"Thanks," said Ana, since it was useless to argue. "And coffee, if you don't mind." She sat down on the edge of the stage again to wait, allowing herself to be mesmerized by Bonnie's fingers as they danced almost soundlessly over the strings of his guitar. "Can't you plug it in? I want to hear you play."

"One night only means one night only," Bonnie said with feigned regret. "I don't make the rules. Talk to my agent." Now he switched on his eyes, not to see his instrument, but to search her face. "Are you two okay?"

"Who, me and Freddy? Yeah, sure. He didn't take me outside to bitch me out or anything."

"He didn't take you out to admire the view either," he countered. "You're not even wearing a jacket."

"It's not that cold today. Ice is almost all melted. Sun's out." She thought about it and snorted. "Which means it'll probably open up and dump buckets of rain on us right as they push the button or pull the lever or whatever they do at this thing. Who could pass up the opportunity to get the whole town at once?"

"Come on, give. You have no idea what it's like to have ears like this and not be allowed to eavesdrop. What did he want?"

She shrugged, pulling an easy lie out of her pocket and tossing it away. "Wanted to make sure I was really up to it, that's all. Probably thought he had better odds of me admitting I wasn't if there wasn't an audience. You know him pretty well, so let me ask you something. How much longer can I expect him to play the role of hyper-vigilant watch-bear?"

"Been almost fifty years and going strong for me, but I'll let you know if it ever slacks off," Bonnie said, turning his head back toward the strings but watching her from the corner of his eyes. "You were nearly killed while he was in the same building, doing something else instead of watching out for you. It's going to take him a while to get over that."

"Do you have any idea how many times I've been nearly killed in my life?"

"It's that kind of attitude that makes him double down on it like he does," Bonnie remarked. "The less you care, the more he has to."

"I care. I just…can't be upset about it all the time. It's already over. Feeling bad about it isn't going to change anything now. It's been forever."

"It's been ten days."

"Same thing."

"Yeah, maybe," he said mildly. "I've sure found forever in smaller bits of time. And you're right, when something's over, it's over. No one has to feel bad about it forever."

Ana looked at him.

He played his guitar.

The camera watched.

"What are you saying?" she asked, lifting her chin in challenge.

"You know what I'm saying."

"It's not a date," she said.

"I didn't ask."

"He's just a friend."

"I didn't ask that either."

"I don't even want to go to this stupid thing, but I already promised him."

"Wow, you are just determined to answer every other question but the one I actually did ask, aren't you?"

"Bonnie—"

"Hey, do you know what I want?" Bonnie put his hand flat on the strings, silencing their tuneless twangs and humming, and looked at her. "I want you—and your friend—to go out tonight and have a great time. Seriously. You've been stuck in here with us for a while and you were stuck at Yoshi's with us for a while before that, and speaking as someone who's been stuck in places with the Fazbear Band for a long, long time, I can honestly say it sucks."

She was startled into laughter, of the high, almost frightened kind, confused by the ease of this escape from a conversation she didn't want to have, but knew she needed to confront. Not today, apparently, but someday. Just as soon as she knew what to say to him. So…yeah, somewhere around the fifth of Never.

Bonnie glanced at the kitchen as the sounds of rattling pans and happy humming rolled out. "You better go keep an eye on Chica. She gets a little Easy-Bake-crazy when she's unsupervised."

"Yeah." She got up, hesitated, and looked back at him. "You want to watch a movie or something? Kill a little time before I've got to go?"

"You bet," he said, setting his guitar aside. "I'll go whistle up Freddy and Foxy while you talk Chica down into a reasonably sized breakfast. Meet you in the office."

So Ana went her way and Bonnie went his and the camera on the show stage snapped off and did not come on again in any other part of the building. The dead man leaned back in his chair, beckoning distractedly to the Puppet and shooing away the others who attempted to answer his idle summons. Pulling the Puppet onto his lap, he wrapped an arm around its narrow waist and looked up into the cracked mask. The rabbit's satin muzzle was tattered, exposing the blunt and rusted teeth in a skullish grin (and part of the jawbone of the actual skull inside). There was nothing the dead man could do about that smile, but he would have smiled anyway, for this.

"Tree-Lighting tonight, Mare. Want to go?"

The Puppet sat up straighter, voiceless and faceless and still effortlessly projecting its delight and excitement as it petted the dead man's rotting carapace.

"Not us, just you," the dead man admonished and laughed when the Puppet slouched dejectedly. "Mare, look at me. Even if I could just stroll down the street without anyone seeing me, it'd be over by the time I got there."

The Puppet snuggled in, laying its head on the rabbit's chest and pointing sulkily at the ground. If he would stay, it would stay with him.

"But Ana's going," the dead man said. "I don't want to miss that. Find your camera and take some pictures. I want to see my baby girl all lit up in lights."

The Puppet did not appear to be impressed.

"Okay, okay. It's not just her. Freddy will be there, somewhere," the dead man said. The rabbit head's range of emotion was limited; its face grinned the same as it ever did while what remained of its ears moved rustily around and bent low. "He always goes. And I used to go with him, you know that. We never missed it. I'm sure he'll be there tonight, no matter what, and your camera is as close as I can get to going with him…one last time before it all changes. Do this for me, Mare." He paused to assess the Puppet's reluctant nod, then said, "Take the baby, if you want company. Don't you think he'd like that, all the lights and colors?"

The Puppet nodded slowly, torn.

"I miss that kid," the dead man said. "I can't wait to see him again after all these years. He's been alone up in that house for so long and even before we got locked up, it's not like he ever went to the Tree-Lighting. I know, I know," he crooned, caressing the mask. "You were protecting him, same as the other kids. And you were right to do it. There's nothing this town loves as much as a crying child," he added, his ear-pins creaking as they laid flat.

The Puppet's eyes sparked silver.

"But you know this was always our special time. Him and me on the overlook, after the other kids were asleep, looking at the lights. I bet he's missed it. Even if he went, he was still alone, wasn't he?" The dead man gave that a few seconds to germinate in the Puppet's soft heart. "This will be his first time seeing it up close, his first time going with you, not to mention the last time the baby gets you all to himself. Next year, it'll be you, me and Freddy and all the kids—the whole family."

Silver light flickered wistfully far back in the eye sockets of the Puppet's mask.

"Be careful," said the dead man, releasing the Puppet so it could stand. "I know I don't have to tell you that, but you know how I worry about you. Just be careful, take lots of pictures…and hey, have fun. Like Bonnie said, you've been stuck in here a long time and you deserve a reward. Be a good girl—" He gave the flat, featureless, wooden ass of the Puppet a lecherous pat. "—and I'll give you an even better one when you come home."

The Puppet ducked its head, perhaps giggling in its mute way, then leapt up to catch the ceiling and slithered away through the ventilation pipe.

The dead man sagged back in the chair, scratching away more tatters of satin as it rubbed its hand across its outer face. After a moment, the cloudy eyes sunk into the head-casing shifted to find one particular figure among those beings who shared his prison. "Hey Peggy," he said mildly.

The pig huddled atop the Press out of reach of her animatronic family huddled a little smaller, but it wasn't safe not to answer. "Y-Yes…?"

"You've also been a good girl." The dead man stood up.

The pig shrank back.

"You've been so very good," the dead man purred, walking toward her in the lurching, shuffling stagger that was the best this body could move. As he walked, he pried open the rabbit head's muzzle, then reached into the mouth of the desiccated head inside and withdrew a small set of keys attached to a Frankenstein's Monster string doll. "You can come upstairs with me and watch the movie."

One of the other shapes in the room howled jealously. Another laughed.

Peggy didn't move.

"Or I guess we could stay down here," the dead man said, holding out his arm. "And I'll just find some other way to amuse myself."

After a moment, shivering, Peggy took his hand, letting him pull her down from her perch and under his restraining arm.

"That's my good girl. Outside of this room, you stay quiet," said the dead man, leaning on her as she brought him to the door and letting her guide his hand, and the keys she could not directly touch, to the lock. "Not a word, not a sound. Keep your eyes off and don't go near the glass. Those are my orders until I say differently."

"But if I can't talk, how can I tell you what's happening?" Peggy asked, in the last moments she could speak before the elevator doors whispered open.

"Happening?" The dead man's frown of confusion was in the rabbit's ears rather than its grinning face, but only for a moment before he laughed. "What, in the movie? The hell do I care about some stupid kid show? The fun part is being there, just a few feet away, practically in arm's reach, nothing between us but a window and a door they don't know I could easily open."

Peggy shivered, wanting to ask, not quite daring to.

"Why don't I?" the dead man asked for her. "I've got all the pieces for my escape laid out in front of me, right, so what am I waiting for?" He leaned toward her, light from the open elevator car glinting off the mechanisms beneath the rotting fabric of his face. "You'd love it if I just charged out there, wouldn't you? You think you know exactly how that would play out."

Peggy said nothing.

The dead man gave her rosy plastic cheek a pat. "So do I. My baby girl would take me the fuck down, which is why I'm not giving her the chance. And you should be grateful for that, because after she got me, you'd best believe she'd come after you." The dead man paused, laughed. "You seem surprised. Were you hoping she'd save you from me? Why would she do that? You're mine, Peggy. You're my toy, you're the knife in my hand. She's not going to skip off with you, hand in hoof, and be best friends forever. She'll break you and throw you aside without a second thought. She's a little lion," he said proudly. "You won't stand a fucking chance."

Peggy dropped her eyes, staring at the concrete floor beneath her chipped hooves.

"Cheer up. I'll bring her around. I just need to take her friends away first, which I can do if I can just get her out of the building and the four of them to hold still in one place for a few seconds. That may take a while," he grumbled, pulling Peggy onto the elevator with him, "since Freddy's always everywhere and Foxy's never anywhere, but it'll happen sooner or later and I can wait. If being locked in this fucking box for twelve years taught me nothing else, it taught me to wait."