A/N: Content Warning: Implication of alcoholism


Pain stirred William out of sleep. He felt the dull ache of the corners of heavy objects on his back that had been sitting there for hours. He felt the sharp bite of a rat trap clamped on his fingers and the back of his hand. No, he thought, not a rat trap…something stronger and more familiar…

Springlocks.

William's eyes shot open to see a dusty, scratched-up wall in front of his nose. He wasn't where he expected to be; he wasn't at home in his own bed, or under his desk in the office. Instead, he was wedged behind one of the tall, metal shelves in the safe room, crammed through the bottom shelf with boxes of wires and animatronic pieces. He was half-buried under heavy broken suits, equipment, and boxes that had tumbled onto him from the higher shelves and he could barely move.

His left hand was throbbing. When he looked down, he saw that, somehow, he had shoved it between the grates of the shelf where one of the old springsuit gloves had gotten kicked and rolled underneath. His hand was half inside it and the sensitive, faulty locks had triggered and pierced it in several places. There was a little pool of dried blood where it lay palm up with fingers curled like a dead spider.

Whimpering quietly, William tried to pull it loose but all he got was new, sharp pain when the blood rushed to his fingers again.

He shivered in the chilly morning air and felt goosebumps rise from his shoulders to his bare feet. It was then he realized he was naked: fully nude with nothing covering him but dirt, blood and scratches. No clothing in sight except for a pile of what looked like curtains in the middle of the floor, far out of his reach.

"H-Henry…?" he called. No one answered but his own confused moan reverberating off the empty walls.

The safe room was trashed; shelves had been pushed over and their contents scattered and broken. There were scratches all over the walls and piles of sheet rock dust on the baseboards. Deep gouges had been cut into the linoleum floor, and more than a little blood was swept haphazardly across the floor, walls, and ceiling like a half-hearted art project. William felt panic bubbling up and he began to shake. He yanked on his injured hand and shoved at the debris that pinned him.

"Henry!" he pleaded. His throat was dry and felt like it was full of rocks, making his voice crack like Michael's when he got angry. As he yelled, he felt his neck burn, as though he had opened up a cut. He worked his right hand free and pressed it to the front of his throat where it stung; his fingers came away with half-dried blood on their tips.

"Henry! Hello? Somebody!" William squirmed and pulled like a trapped animal waiting for the hunter to return. He didn't know why he was here or why he was naked. While he was terrified and confused, part of him suspected Henry had played a cruel prank on him that had gone too far: maybe one involving drugs, maybe to get back at him for all the jokes he had played on Henry throughout the years.

He thought of this and his anger rose. "Son of a bitch!" he cried, yanking at his injured hand, his fingers stinging in protest. "Bastard! It's not fucking funny anymore!"

The door to the safe room unlocked and creaked open. William was still heaving, panicked and furious, but he stopped yelling. The door opened wider and, finally, Henry walked carefully inside, looking as worn as Will felt. Henry looked slowly around the room, at the blood and destruction, but he also peered around as though he was searching for something that might be hiding.

William wanted to thank Henry for saving him, but what he ended up saying was: "What's the big idea, huh?" The words shook out like sugar through a sieve; they were supposed to bite, but they wobbled instead.

"Will?" Henry said, looking at him as if for the first time. "I…I thought…"

"I'm fine," said William, clearing his throat and pulling again on the hand under the shelf. "Just…springlocks got my hand and I don't know, I think I bumped the shelf and all this shit fell on me and…stop staring!" Henry slowly knelt in front of the curtain and lifted one side up as though he expected something might be underneath. He pulled his belt out of the pile, unwound it and looked at it in wonder. He looked up at Will, gears grinding behind his eyes. "Would you just…just help me, please?" Will asked.

Henry stood still and silent in the room, the belt held out in his hand like an offering, as he stared at Will. In the soft light filtering down through the high narrow window up by the ceiling—Henry had promised William that it was high and small enough for the safe room to still be safe—William saw that Henry's shirt was torn, rumpled, and untucked. The knees of his jeans were covered in dust that he either hadn't noticed was there or hadn't thought to brush off. His short beard was mashed and wild-looking, stubble showing up on the parts of his cheeks and neck that he usually kept clean-shaven. Under his eyes were heavy bags that looked like bruises.

"Will…" Henry said again and hesitated. "Did you see the…"

William's shoulders were beginning to cramp up and he was getting frustrated that Henry wasn't moving faster to help him. "The what?" he snapped.

"The rabbit." Henry paused. William felt adrenaline shoot through him. "The giant, man-eating rabbit," Henry continued. He motioned awkwardly with his hands. "It attacked me. Last night, it… I locked it in here. And now it's gone."

For the first time in his life, William wasn't in the mood for jokes. He smiled sarcastically. "Ha ha. And I suppose it ate your homework, too."

"I thought it ate you," said Henry suddenly, then clammed up as if he hadn't meant to say it. "I saw your clothes, all torn up and bloody, and I thought…" He didn't finish, but he didn't need to. He scuffed his shoe on the floor.

Fractures of a nightmare teased the corners of William's mind. A giant rabbit sounded ridiculous, yet something about it stuck in his mind, poisoning him like metal leaking from a rusty nail. He hadn't seen a giant rabbit, but something about the idea made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He felt like Henry was accusing him of something, but that was ridiculous as well. This whole crazy situation was ridiculous. At least it didn't seem like Henry was behind it.

"My hand," William said softly. "Could you please."

Henry obliged and approached the shelf. He began lifting the heavy equipment off of William's back and William, embarrassed, told him not to look. Henry reminded William of the times he wandered through the house in the middle of the night in his underwear, sometimes without, searching for a 4 AM snack. William didn't appreciate Henry bringing it up and reminded him that it had only happened once; Henry corrected him and said "twice."

When Henry removed the last box, he dragged over the curtain and tucked it carefully around William. It was such a small, kind thing to do, and it was so Henry. He was always doing small, thoughtful things to make life better and easier, whereas William had trouble remembering even to do the bare minimum. For example, when it came time to buy back-to-school clothes for the kids, Henry always made sure to take them to stores that carried the styles they liked, even though a one-stop discount store could technically check all the boxes. Even when he was tired, Henry planned meals around what sounded good to eat and made sure not to have too many items in it that the kids didn't like. And when William quit drinking after too many drunken rages and hungover mornings at Freddy's, Henry made sure to keep the fridge stocked with cherry Coke to give him something cold to drink in the evening besides beer.

William felt like crying, thinking of all this. Whatever was happening, he was in deep shit, and he was so, so grateful that if anyone had to see him like this, it was Henry. "It doesn't look too bad," said Henry as he examined William's hand in the spring suit glove. They decided to pry up the broken plastic slats in the shelf until they could pull William's spring trapped hand free.

Henry helped him to the office and they sat across from each other at Henry's desk: William wrapped in the curtain with his hand under the beam of the desk lamp as Henry used the miniature hand crank to unscrew the springlocks. They sat in silence for a long time in the peaceful office, their full concentration on the springlocks; once in a while, William winced and Henry apologized, but other than that, they didn't speak. Finally, Henry was able to slip the glove off and he went to grab the first aid kit from the kitchen.

When Henry left the room, William squeezed the curtain around his shoulders and walked slowly to the bathroom where Henry had said the bloody clothes were. He peered in as though he expected something, maybe the giant rabbit, to jump out at him. The bathroom was destroyed. Stall doors had been ripped off of their hinges, the tile floor had been scratched and broken, and there, spread across the floor were the bloody, tattered remains of the clothes William had been wearing the day before. He didn't remember what happened to them and he didn't remember being attacked, but if he had found clothes that looked like that, he would have thought the owner of them had been eaten, as well. Just like the safe room, blood was all over the bathroom in haphazard swipes, but as William looked closer, he saw that there were footprints and handprints and paw prints all mixed together in a frenzied dance.

Will hiked the curtain higher on his shoulders, crouched, and curiously measured his uninjured hand against one of the paw prints. He quickly pulled it away and scolded himself for even letting his mind go down that road. He was a roboticist, a mechanic, not some looney who believed in magic and monsters. He picked his shorts up off the floor but they were unsalvageable. His shirt, too.

"This is where I saw it," Henry said from behind him. "The rabbit. It was crouched over there in the corner."

William stood up and looked where Henry was pointing; the wall had deep scratches in it. The rabbit had probably smelled something there, maybe a rat, and was trying to dig it out. At least, that's what a man-eating rabbit might do. William didn't know and he didn't like how quickly the theory had come to him.

"I wonder where it went," he said, looking at his sad image in the crooked mirror over the sink. With their stubble and eye bags, he and Henry were a matching set.

"That's what worries me," said Henry turning to leave the horror show of a bathroom. William followed him out. "I should have called animal control, but I couldn't bring myself to and now it's gone." He guided William back to the chair and William rested his injured hand gently on Henry's desk. It had been pierced in many places, bled a lot, and would probably scar, but it didn't look like any bones had been broken. Hopefully, he wouldn't lose any dexterity. "I called the kids, though. Put Mikey in charge."

"He probably loved that," said William, wincing at the disinfectant. Henry looked up from his work briefly to say something but frowned instead. "What?" asked William. Henry stared at him, at his neck, for a long moment before twisting the head of the lamp around so it shone directly into William's face. Will shielded his eyes from the glare, but Henry didn't let up. He leaned in closer and pressed his fingers to William's throat.

"Cut it out!" William swatted his hand away.

"You've got a bruise on your neck," Henry said in wonder.

"So? I must have cut myself on the shelf."

"You have a cut, yes, but you also have a big bruise right under your jaw. All the way across, like a line."

"I'm covered in bruises," William said, annoyed. "What's your point?"

"Do you know how I got the rabbit into the safe room?" asked Henry. William didn't reply, wasn't following the logic. "I choked it," Henry continued. "With a curtain rod."

William's hand floated up to his throat and felt for the bruise. His fingers brushed up over the scabbed cut and to the smooth, tender skin above that he knew was discolored. He kept waiting for Henry to break character, to say "Gotcha!" and "I can't believe you fell for that!" but he didn't; he stared at Will with a frown, deadly serious. Henry wasn't one for those kinds of pranks anyway.

"No," said William. "You can't be thinking..."

"You were gone, Will," Henry said. "I searched the whole place for you last night, but you were just gone. And suddenly, when the sun comes up, you show up in the safe room where I locked the rabbit in, and now the rabbit's gone."

"No."

"I'm just following the evidence," Henry reasoned.

"No," William said again, more forcefully. "You're better than this, Henry."

"It adds up—"

"I don't want to hear it!" said William. He stood up and cradled his bandaged hand in the folds of the curtain. His heart was beating a mile a minute. "I don't want to hear it. I want to get dressed and go home and have a shower and forget this whole thing ever happened." He yanked the hem of the curtain out of the way of his feet and he strode out of the office toward the costume room. Henry ran after him and put a hand on his shoulder to slow him down but William shook it off.

"We have to talk about this, Will," Henry said.

"I'm getting dressed and going home," said William. "You can come with me or not."

He didn't want to hear Henry's theories about where the rabbit had gone, especially not when his main theory involved William turning into it and wreaking havoc like some mass-market "It came from the swamp" Halloween crap. Whatever had happened—whatever had really happened—was terrifying enough. The giant rabbit could go wherever it wanted. As long as it left his family and his restaurant alone, William didn't give two Fazbear tokens where it went or what it did, and he wished Henry would stop talking about it.

It was possible that William had put on his rabbit costume in some kind of fugue state and chased Henry, and for some reason, Henry mistook him for a monster and proceeded to choke him. It was dark down the office hallway and Henry had been tired and overworked. That's what must have happened.

William's theory was dashed, however, when he opened up the costume closet and found his other rabbit suit hanging up, untouched. That plus Springbonnie in the office meant both rabbit suits were accounted for. He didn't let Henry see his shock, though. He turned away, took the bottoms of the suit off of the hanger and went to the small bathroom by the kitchen to change.

When he was alone in the tiny, fluorescent-lit room and let the curtain fall to the floor, he realized just how cut up and bruised he was. He stepped quickly into the pants and pulled the suspenders over his shoulders. Catching sight of his bloody face in the mirror, he ran a wad of paper towels under the faucet and wiped off what he could. When he came back out, Henry was standing in his undershirt and holding his dress shirt out to William. Without a word, William accepted it and sheepishly put it on, even though it was so much bigger on him that he looked like he was swimming in it.

"We can go home," said Henry, "But we need to rabbit-proof the second basement."

"My lab, you mean," William said, irked.

"Mine is too close to ground level," Henry reasoned.

When Henry and Charlie came to live in William's house, Henry and William ended up with two labs-worth of equipment and it no longer fit in just one basement. There were no more spare rooms, so they decided to dig a second basement under the first, a smaller one set into the foundation where they could store their most sensitive projects such as temperamental AI or caustic chemicals, everything that was better locked far away from the kids. Because most of those kinds of projects were William's, the second basement had more or less become his workshop. It was quiet and secure. Plus, that deep under the ground, the small desk-top television couldn't pick up any channels and the radio couldn't pick up any stations, so it helped William stay focused.

"Fine." William rolled up the sleeves so they didn't fall over his hands. "If it'll make you feel better."

"And we should pick up some sleeping pills or tranquilizers or something," added Henry.

"Henry, really," William groaned. "Even if you're right and I was the rabbit, it's out of my system already. Chalk it up to a weird chemical reaction and leave it at that."

"I hope you're right," said Henry. "But…" He hesitated.

"But?" William prodded.

"The kids," finished Henry.

He didn't have to say any more. There was no way William believed the rabbit episode was going to happen again, but if it did and they didn't take the proper precautions, it would be their children who paid the price. William thought of Lizzie or little Nick running down to his workshop to say goodnight and finding a feral, unrestrained beast waiting. He didn't want to play along with Henry's paranoia, but if there was even one billionth of a chance that Henry was right and Will would change again, they had to be prepared.

William sighed, averting his eyes. He absently felt along the bruise on his throat. "Maybe we should…get some rope, too, then. You know, just in case." His heart beat hard in his ears even just saying that out loud. He didn't want to believe Henry's story, but something deep down, like a programmed response in his DNA, was terrified. Even though he didn't remember last night, his body did, and he felt like he would rather die than go through it again.

After scrubbing the bathroom and safe room with bleach and piling all the damaged items from the stage room and bathroom into the back to deal with later, Henry quickly made a "Closed for Maintenance" sign, stuck it to the front door and they locked up and left.

It was a sunny morning, the beginning of a perfect day to relax in a lawn chair with a book and a coke. Out the window of the station wagon, William watched people jogging or walking their dogs, enjoying the cool summer morning before it got too hot. He felt tragically removed from it all, a black stain on an otherwise colorful world, and all he could do to engage was watch them go by and pretend he wasn't screaming inside.

Henry asked if he was all right and William didn't answer, just continued watching the colorful people walking down the colorful street. They stopped at a farm store on the way home and William stayed in the car feeling sorry for himself. A little dog barked at him from the window of a truck parked next to him and William flipped it off before sinking into the seat and trying to sleep. Fifteen minutes later, Henry rapped his knuckles on the window and William unlocked the door. He set a plastic bag on William's lap and Will started digging in it while Henry put the car into gear.

Inside the bag was exactly what they had discussed—ropes and a large bottle of pills labeled "EquineChill"—but there was something else, too: a large, metal dog muzzle. Henry was taking this were-rabbit situation too seriously. William took the muzzle out of the box and held it up, letting it dangle in the car like a dirty secret. Henry glanced at it, then his eyes went back to the road.

"You almost took my arm off last night, Will," he said.

"If it bites so much, how do you expect to get the muzzle on?"

"You'll just have to put it on before you change."

William gave him a long stare. "I'm not going to walk around wearing a muzzle in my own home, Henry," he said.

Henry shrugged and didn't speak for a full minute. He stopped at a crosswalk and motioned for a woman and her dog to cross. "Hopefully," he said finally, "you'll only have to do it once."

When they pulled into the driveway, Michael was already on the front porch, closing the door behind him. William sank a little lower into his seat and tried to scrub the last bits of blood from his hands with a napkin from the glove box, fully aware how unhinged he looked. He wrapped the shopping bag up tight to make sure that the contents weren't visible through the plastic and put on a wide smile before getting out.

"Morning, Mikey!" William greeted tucking the bag under his arm. He ruffled his son's hair and Mike sunk away out of his reach.

"The hell are you wearing, Dad?" asked Mike as he ran his fingers back through his hair, fixing it.

William realized that Henry's button-up shirt had some blood smeared across the front, too, and so did the yellow rabbit suit pants, but it was the best he had at the moment. "Language, Michael," he said, his smile calcifying. He was not in the mood to be sassed by Michael; he just wanted to go inside and be left alone for a while, maybe forever. Why were the kids home, anyway?

Henry rushed around the side of the car and joined them on the steps. "Thanks for holding down the fort, Mike," he said. "Everyone all right?"

Michael glanced at William, then looked back to Henry. "They're playing in the sprinkler out back," he said.

"And you're not in school because…?" William prodded.

"Teachers in-service day, Dad," said Mike. "I told you."

"Of course you did," said Henry with a warm smile as he grabbed William's shoulders and started pushing him toward the house. "Well, thanks again, Mike, for taking care of everyone." Henry guided William inside and upstairs. Mike followed.

"So what happened?" he asked. When Henry didn't answer, Mike followed them onto the second-floor landing. "At Freddy's." Henry stopped pushing Will and they both looked at Mike. He was crossing his arms uncomfortably, his intuition radar going off the scales. He had always been good at reading people. "You don't have to hide stuff from me," he continued sullenly, "I'm almost sixteen."

Henry looked at William, beaming his thoughts, asking "Should we tell him?" telepathically. William shook his head emphatically. The last thing he needed was his children to find out what had happened last night or what—God forbid—might happen tonight.

"We should tell him," Henry whispered out loud, which meant that he intended to tell.

"I'll deny everything," William hissed through his teeth. Mike looked between them as they argued. William was glad the younger kids were outside.

"Dad," said Mike quietly, touching his own neck and then motioning to his hand. "You hurt yourself?"

William hesitated, his fingers working nervously at the plastic grocery bag. Finally, he shoved it into Henry's hands and he grumbled, "Knock yourself out." There was no hiding it from Mike now but he didn't want to get into it; he didn't know if he could even articulate it. Henry would be able to explain it better and if William was going to suffer the embarrassment of having his children learn what he had been up to last night and the state he had been in this morning, he didn't really want to be there to hear it repeated back. He could smell the blood and sweat on himself.

"I'm taking a shower," he said. Will walked between them and into the bathroom without another word.

As he turned the shower on, he heard Henry's soft, caring tone filling Mike in on the details. He couldn't hear what Henry was saying, but he could imagine it well enough. At least Henry's version would probably be kinder than what had really happened; he'd probably leave out the blood and strangulation and nakedness. But regardless of how Henry touched it up, Mike would still leave the conversation thinking his father was crazier than he already did.

When the water was hot, William shut himself in the shower and sat on the floor. He sat facing the stream, letting the hot water beat his forehead and dribble into his eyes, nose, and mouth, stinging the holes in his hand. The hissing of the rusty shower head sounded like an animal and William closed his eyes, trying to lose himself in it. He sat there until the water turned cold.


A/N: "You're so freaking embarrassing, Dad, but I'm still worried about you, because I love you or whatever," Mike mumbles grumpily to himself as he makes potato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, his dad's comfort food. He's a good older brother and a good son, but I dare you to say that to his face.