Begin Prompt in 3, 2, 1…

All On Me

Prompt: William Afton did nothing wrong.

"Henry, you need to come down to the restaurant now… We caught him."

That was all Henry needed to hear to send him speeding through town in the middle of the night and in the pouring rain. His heart was pounding in his chest as he raced to the pizzeria. After months, no, years of monitoring and waiting, they had finally done it. They had finally caught the man who had ruined so many lives and stolen so many children.

For years they had been working to trap the monster, but it had seemed like a fruitless endeavor. They could never get him on tape, they never spotted him in the act, and he returned more than once. Sometimes they found the bodies, but they usually didn't. Regardless, they all knew the children who were missing would never be found alive.

They were both on their guard. It had been coming up on the anniversary of the original missing children incident and both had been antsy. Henry had been having trouble sleeping and it was only through sheer luck that he had slept without nightmares that night. Or perhaps bad luck, considering that he had missed the moment they caught him.

Though this too was odd. His partner's tone on the phone sounded somber and distraught. Whatever happened was not something worth celebrating. Henry could only wonder, in growing dread, if there were more bodies that had been found. Perhaps the monster had left a corpse in his wake. Henry shuddered at the thought; no parent deserved to bury their child.

He swallowed down the sour memories that came from that thought as he pulled into the parking lot. It was only once he was climbing out of the car that he spotted the man sitting on the curb outside of the pizzeria. He paused a moment as he realized who it was.

"Will?" Henry called as he hurried over. The man was hunched over with his head in his hands and only looked up once he was called. It was then that Henry noticed the blood on William's jacket and was aghast. "Is that blood?" he asked in alarm. Then his panicked gaze rose from the blood to his partner's own. "Is it yours? Were you hurt?" William stiffly shook his head. Henry had a bad feeling and licked his lips. "Alright…Where is he?"

"Saferoom," William choked out. He looked extremely shaken. His wide eyes and heavy breathing were a giveaway that he had seen something terrible. If it was something serious enough to shake William Afton, then it was something truly nightmarish.

Without another word, Henry passed by and hurried into the pizzeria. It was there that he found a disturbing scene. In the hall outside of the saferoom animatronic parts littered the floor; the broken bodies of the bots they had built their business around. All their work was gone, and they would have to put it back together.

It was a disturbing sight, but not as much as the axe left laying outside the ajar saferoom door. Henry stared into the dim, flickering light and felt his pulse raise again. Slowly he stepped in closer before pushing it open the rest of the way. His breath hitched, a chill ran up his spine, and adrenaline began to pump through his body, even though he could see the threat was long gone.

Blood. The redness and horror of blood spilling out of the cracks and through the fabric of their Spring Bonnie suit. It had been a springlock failure, obviously. The killer had put on that suit many times, had killed comfortably in that suit, and yet had somehow activated a failure and bled out on the floor. From the lack of movement, it was obvious that he was dead.

The owner slowly approached the body, forcing himself to breathe even though his body was still tense. He tried to avoid the blood as he leaned over and raised the head of the suit. He had to check and make sure the man wasn't still alive. Even if he was a monster, Henry wasn't one, and he forcibly wedged the tightened teeth apart.

As the mouth barely spread, he was able to see the man inside of the suit and recognized him instantly. Henry immediately released the mouth and let it shut again, and then covered his mouth with one hand. Now he definitely couldn't breathe. He could barely think or put together a rational thought beyond the instant panic.

Of course he recognized the man, because it was Michael Afton, William's son.

Henry nearly sprinted back out the front door and found William in the same state. "Will," he choked out, standing behind his partner. "Will, what happened here?! That's Michael! What is Michael doing in that suit?!" He was answered by a shuddery noise. It was only then that he realized William was suffocating a sob. "…No… No, Will, Michael wouldn't-."

"He did," William coldly answered. Though regardless of the obvious anger, Henry could also hear the overwhelming hurt with it. "It was him. He was the one. The children-… That's how he kept getting in. He was using my keys, he was using my suit… Damn it!" He slammed his fist down on his own leg so hard that it would no doubt leave a bruise. "How could he do this?! Why would he do this to us, to them, to his brother- What the hell is wrong with him?!"

Then he was just panting as he gripped at his own knees and stared at the concrete stretched before him. Suddenly he was remembering every time that Michael stayed out late, or every time that he acted strange, or aggressive to his siblings. Suddenly it all lined up in the worst way imaginable. His son was a serial killer, and now he was dead, and he couldn't tell which hurt worse.

A tentative hand brushed on his back before Henry sat down alongside him. William couldn't bear to look at him, because all at once the guilt was on him. It was his son that had killed those children- including Henry's own- and he had done nothing to stop him.

"What happened in there?" Henry quietly asked. William exhaled roughly before straightening and staring ahead with a dead gaze.

"He came by to destroy the bots. Must've either been planning something else or got spooked, because he got into my suit… He knew how to get in safely, knew how to take apart every one of them, and knew how to do it all without anyone catching him…" William finally looked to Henry. His gaze was cold. "…But he didn't know that I rigged the suit."

"What?" Henry asked in quiet horror.

"I had a feeling something was going to happen tonight… So, I rigged the suit to fail if anyone got inside," William confessed. "Fritz called me about an hour ago and said he saw a car in the parking lot, so I told him to go home and came in, and there he was. Mi- Him." He didn't want to say his name. As though saying it would make it real.

"An hour ago?" Henry asked in confusion.

"I… I didn't want to go back in to get the phone." He was sure that sounded pathetic, as the hand on his back quickly shifted to an arm around his shoulders. Henry tried to shield him from the rain with his coat, exposing the nightclothes he was wearing underneath. He had literally leapt out of bed to come down here and now was trying to comfort his partner. He always had been too compassionate for his own good.

Because in the end, it was William's fault. In his mind he imagined something he did being the reason that his son had become a monster. Maybe it was the neglect from him always being at work or the lack of a motherly figure since he was widowed. Something he did made his son into a monster.

"This is all on me, Henry. I let him become this and then I killed him. I killed my own son. I murdered Mikey."

With one last voice crack, William bowed over and broke into pathetic sobs. He didn't care how degrading it was; he didn't care about anything at all anymore. All he could see was the image of prying open Spring Bonnie's mouth and seeing his son's dead eyes staring back. He knew immediately that there was no mistake, and the truth was devastating.

But it wasn't just him who felt it. Henry was just as upset. He had nearly raised Michael alongside William, so to find out that he had been the man who murdered his daughter- he barely staved off his own emotions by focusing on the man falling apart beside him. William, who had watched multiple family members die, had just lost the last one. Now he was all alone on top of everything else.

"It's going to be okay, Will. We'll figure this out. You did the right thing," Henry tried to encourage. He had a feeling that he was just buying time instead of making it better. It should've been a victory, a celebration for catching the monster who had been destroying lives, but it wasn't. It was just another terrible loss on top of the multiple other deaths.

They would get through this together. Henry wasn't sure how and William wasn't sure if he wanted to, but they would. They always did.