You drove home. From the second you started up your car, you blasted music to avoid the thoughts fluttering around your mind. Questions.

As you pulled into your designated parking spot, you stopped the car, and sat. It was about 7pm by now.

The sudden silence from your music being extinguished filled your ears with ringing.

You pulled out your phone, navigating to your gallery, and scrolling through the nine pictures you took with Sun.

You heart jumped a bit. He was so enthusiastic, so happy in that moment. Bunny ears created with his long index and middle finger above your head, thumb tucked just out of view.

His smile was contagious, and you couldn't help but share his beaming grin while flashing a peace sign.

You were smiling in that moment as well, in the dark car, face illuminated only by your phone light. Just observing every little detail. The blur of his rays, implying they were spinning rapidly, intensifying lesser and more here and there with each individual picture. You imagined them changing directions back and forth, as well as recalling his warmth behind you as you pressed your back into him. His soft whirring. How he enveloped you. Bending down just to fit in frame. but also just to be a bit closer ot you.

Fuck.

You turned off your phone, and let your hands fall with it into your lap. Leaning back into the seat, darkness filling the car once again, you closed your eyes and went over your day.

Fuck.

Grabbing your phone and throwing it into the FazBag next to you, you opened up the door to your left and slung the bag over your shoulder, making your way to the front door of your apartment.

Opening the door and heading in, your leg was immediately assaulted by Mimi's nuzzling, voicing her concerns that she missed you. The occasional "Ow" in the back of the living room welcoming you home all the same.

Oh shit.

How were you going to get your roomba from the first floor to the second. You didn't have this problem in your previous house.

Ugh.

You were an engineer, you'd probably make a little automatic stair lift for it or something. Programming in it's new pathfinding. You hope your landlord doesn't have a problem with it. Maybe you could make it somewhat removable? Whatever, you'd figure it out.

For now, all you wanted was a shower and your teeth brushed before grabbing some water and passing out into bed.

So that you did, getting Mimi her food and making sure she had fresh water beforehand. You didn't forget to stuff the orange FizzyFaz you stole at Sun's playful disapproval on into the fridge for later.

The band-aids that littered the dull, red friction burns were in the trash, and your wrists were still that intense blue-ish yellow tint. Didn't really have a way to cover that up besides a long sleeved shirt. You'll figure that out tomorrow morning. For now you basked in the warmth of the shower, comparing it with the other kinda warmth you felt a good bit of today.

Comfy.

Your bed was warm. Mimi was laid next to you. blahaj in your arms as you snugged into it on your side. At any other point you'd have passed out by now.

But you have a crush on a robot.

You toss in bed at the thought that swiftly passed your mind before throwing it across your headspace into a little bin you haven't opened in forever.

A fucking robot. Are you serious.

It's been a day.

What was wrong with you?

And now you've done startled Mimi.

You absolute idiot.

You pulled your phone off the charger and checked the time.

8:30pm.

Eh, you were fine.. You had to be at work by eight in the morning anyways, and you planned to get up by six, so going to bed at ten would grant you a healthy eight hours of sleep!

Not that you usually got eight.

Hopping up, throwing your legs over the side of the bed, you made your way over to your cozy little computer desk.

Sitting down in the office chair, you woke the computer from it's slumber and minimized all the documents you had opened last time labeling the hardware and specifics of Sun.

There was no copy of the code, or at least none they'd send over the internet to you. You could theoretically open up their head and check it yourself, but.. First issue is, you don't think they trust you that much yet.. if barely at all. Moon would probably rip you apart. And you certainly wouldn't do that to Sun so soon. You couldn't really perform open brain surgery on someone you just met.

Secondly, the only program they allowed you to view and edit their code with, you'd have to request access to anytime you used it. The amount of forms, legal agreements, and NDAs you signed when applying for this job regarding their code was suspicious as fuck. Yet again you sigh at how quickly you jumped into it.

You spent the next few hours browsing through random ad-ridden articles talking about human sentience and consciousness, occasionally scoffing at a picture of the terminator they added here and there. You felt silly typing these words into the Google search bar.

Falling down the rabbit hole of philosophy regarding sentience, free will, self-awareness, and all other types of "I think therefore I am" bullshit, your mind was numb not even about twenty minutes of reading in.

You called it there. The googling that is.

You still had a ton of documents and files you have yet to go through which they sent to you via secure email the week or so before you started. So, hopping on the curiosity train and pondering the morality of developing a crush on a robot, you dove in head first.

Sorting through the gigabytes of blueprints detailing specific parts of the robots, which you'd certainly come back to later, you reached some very.. interesting text documents.

Shit was like SCP articles. Some of the text was blacked out entirely, there was highlighting everywhere, insane organization that would require a key you didn't have to understand all of it. It looked photocopied, like there was a physical version of these documents somewhere out there collecting dust in a filing cabinet.

There had to be hundreds of thousands of words in this folder. This was only one text document out of a couple hundred. You.. didn't really wanna read this all in one sitting over a.. you're not even gonna say it.

Opening document after document, you hit CTRL + F and searched for specific keywords here and there.

"Conscious"

"Sentient"

"Sentience"

"Aware"

Only a few irrelevant words within a sentence that had nothing to do with what you were looking for popped up in each document you opened and proceeded to close a few seconds after.

Until something that wasn't labeled with 'Daycare Attendant' at the very top showed up a hundred and eighty-two results.

CLASSIFIED: Viewing of this document without proper clearance could lead to termination and/or severe legal repercussions. If you are not a part of Clearance Level AB1 or AB2 personnel, or Employee ██ through ██ of the Programming and Artificial Intelligence division, close and/or dispose of this document immediately and report it to ██████████████

Oh.

Shit.

Your heart began to pound a little in your ears. Thoughts racing, pouring in like the flood gates had been opened.

Why was this sent to you? Was it a mistake..? ..You.. don't think you're supposed to have this. Shit. Shit. Shit.

Okay, okay. Breathe.

You calm yourself down, slowly. Very slowly.

..And you can't help but read a bit further, just a couple more lines down the page.

[Summary] As of 01-14-20███, the employee numbers ██ through ██ of the Programming and Artificial Intelligence division collectively discovered via a breakthrough during their self-learning AI testing, that through a simulated environment with the 40.4 ████byte ArtifVita extension introduced and injected into said program, any pre-constructed AI with completed basic personality and operations code will be given the ability to learn at a human-like level to achieve any given tasks with room for learning and instruction just as a human would - without further software updates and extra programming. In short: measurable, conscious, sentience.

The.. document was a couple dozen pages long after that, detailing the exact specifics of how this operation was achieved. In the most basic of explanations, sentience was a side-effect of basic self-learning AI being thrown into a vaguely explained kind of simulation and being run for, aritificially, a couple thousand years. Processing speed being determined by hardware - usually only taking a couple of real world days. It was artificial evolution, and once they got the "click", at which point there was a gigantic bump in file size and recordable sentience being achieved, that's where the base of all robotics software started off of from that point on. Sentience being built upon. Not something being built up to sentience.

The file got cut off suddenly after starting to go into further detail on how exactly this was fucking possible, of course.

Whatever company made the Fazbear Animatronics, and whatever fucking else, they achieved the creation of living things via artifical means.

You got what you were looking for.

Now was time for you to frantically dig out an old USB drive from one of the boxes on the side of your desk, still full of electronic junk you've yet to unpack.

You dragged the file onto the USB, ripped it out of your computer, and completely deleted the document entirely, before restarting your computer.

You were still a bit shaken up. Where the fuck were you going to put this USB. You didn't need to hide it, right? You didn't need to grab some tape and put it in a hidden little crawlspace under your floorboards.. You didn't need to encrypt it manually with government-fucking-standard AES. Right..?

You opened the drawer connected to your desk on your left and threw it in. Your mind was racing and absolutely could not handle anything other than the realization that every bot inside that Plex's fucking walls is likely completely and utterly fucking sentient.

This had to be a joke.

You made your way to your bed. Weak. Your legs felt like jelly. Your arms felt like jelly. You passed out as soon as you climbed into bed and wrapped around your blahaj, Mimi climbing in with you and laying down in the top corner of your bed closest to you.

At least you could justify your crush interest in Sun now.

The bear slowly ducks under the bridge connecting the two play structures. Daycare Theme still playing on repeat while Sun makes his way cautiously out of his comfy little safe haven.

"Sundrop, I just want to talk. Nothing more." Freddy assures the empty Daycare, looking around, still not completely sure if Sun is actually up in his room.

"Sundrop." He repeats himself.

"...A-about what. T-there's nothing to talk about!" Sun protests, echoing from above Freddy, out the closed curtains.

"You know what I want to talk about, Sun. The new mechanic."

Silence.

"Would you happen to know why their wrists are bruised up and covered with band-aids?" He says in a slightly solemn, but friendly and concerned tone.

"...I tried.. I tried to stop him! I really really really really did! Oh-oh gosh, I'm sososososo sorry.. I patched them up best I could, I did! I asked them to leave before naptime, I-I told them! I.. all I could do was watch.."

Sun is huddled before the curtains at the top of his balcony. Hands sheltering his face, slightly muffling his ramblings and warbles.

"Please come down here, Sundrop. If that's okay with you" The bear asks politely.

Sun slowly inches up, and walks forwards off the balcony, wire already attached and him floating down a couple of meters in front of Freddy. He crouches down right outside the ballpit before huddling once more, sheltering his face in his hands and behind his knees.

"..I'm sososososo sorry, I'm so sorry. I-I don't want them to leave, I don't! They're so nice and kind and sososo sweet.. T-they made me a little Sun! A.. a cute l-little arts and crafts project. It's the prettiest sun I've ever ever seen! They signed it with their name on the back too, and-and under it, t-they doodled a itsie bitsie little sun, and then a star, ..and then a moon.. e-even after what.. w-what Moon did to them.."

Sun was shaking. Static in his voice fighting against the words he was trying to spit out, almost breaking down at the idea of how horribly Moon hurt them, but how sweet you were regardless.

Freddy has made his way up to Sun, crouching down before him, resting his paw gently and cautiously on Sun's spasming knee, stopping it.

"You're okay, Superstar. They didn't seem like they were leaving on the way out."

Sun stops wobbling frantically just a tiny bit.

"Did the new mechanic do anything before Moon.. hurt them. Anything to instigate it?" Freddy asks politely.

Sun shakes his head. Rays only further retracting into his faceplate.

Freddy sighs, "I.. know how horribly Moon has treated the previous technicians.. but also how horribly they've treated you two as well. However.. It's becoming an issue, I cannot lie about that."

Sun stops shaking, only with the occasional twitch here and there. His head is still buried behind the two layers of both his hands and knees.

"If Moon keeps hurting the mechanics, they will stop sending them."

Freddy pushes against Sun's knee slightly. "Sun, is Moon listening?" He questions.

Sun nods.

Freddy hesitates before deciding to speak the harsh truth. "You know what happens when they stop sending mechanics, and when you eventually cannot be fixed."

Silence.

"Moon." Freddy voices out, hesitantly.

"I know you're afraid, just as Sun is." He continues in his caring, fatherly voice.

"You're both handling it very differently."

"But it's very clear that what you're doing is wrong. I'm sure you know that."

"The new mechanic they sent, they seem very nice. Genuine. I know that's a very foreign concept to you, and I know how scared both of you are of them abandoning you."

"I don't think they're going to hurt you." He assures.

"Sun, Moon. Have they made you do anything that you don't want to do?"

Sun shakes his head, answering for both of them.

Freddy hums. "Moon. I know you're afraid of them getting close. I know you're afraid of them leaving you. I'm sure you're scared too, Sun."

He tightens his tone, a bit more stern, but still soft and friendly, concerned more than anything. "They have done nothing to warrant you hurting them, Moon."

Silence. All but the Daycare Theme fills the air.

"I know you don't really want to push them away. You're just afraid."

Silence for another couple of seconds. A twitch or two following.

"Moon. I know you miss Sarah."

Sun's shaking begins once more.

"I know it hurts, but not everyone is the same."

Sun flinches at Moon's tantrum inside of his head.

Freddy stops for a bit before continuing.

"Even Monty at least tolerates some of the mechanics. It took some time, but he got through it. ..Sorta." He states hopefully.

"If they are hurting either of you.. Please, come to me. I will take care of it. I promise."

Neither of them believe him. Let alone trust him.

He hasn't done anything to lose their trust, but he also hasn't done anything to gain it.

Sun won't stand up for himself.

Moon won't stand down.

Freddy's occasional therapy sessions haven't done much in the ways of progress, but he still tries. He does care about the Daycare Attendants. But he can't help if they won't let him.

"I'm here if you need anything, Superstars. You know where to find me."

Freddy stands up from his kneeling position, observing Sun for a second. He still hasn't moved from his huddled up position.

Sighing, he turns away with a frown, leaving the Daycare.

Moon had put up his walls yet again. Sun stayed in the same position the entire time, staticky warbling from the back of his bubbly throat. Sun knows Moon can't hear him, he'd be pleading otherwise. All he does is cry in the only way they created him to. No tears. Just heartache. Throat bubbles. Tensing. Burning. Everything but the tears really.

It's almost 10pm now.

And right on the dot, away rotates the Sun into the space behind the balcony above and behind them, and out comes the Moon, accompanied by stars.

Moon is still blocking out Sun, it won't be for the entire night, just until he can get to where he's going.

With some clanging of the vents, he reaches his destination. A security booth. Luckily for the guard, they're not at it.

Sun and Moon have access to a lot of the Plex's systems, but not all of them.

Moon wanted to know more. He needed something. Anything.

He's done this before, and he'll keep doing it.

Plunging his finger into the USB drive, the screen in front of him flickers a bit, before the necessary information is shared with him.

He parts the clouds to let Sun watch now, for whatever he may find.

He's in your file. Employee information. Name. Address. Social Security. Everything.

Sun is used to the process. Seeing everything that Moon is seeing, just as curious as well. They're both a bit disappointed before uncovering the NDAs and contracts you signed so carefreely.

"Employee is required to stay at the Megaplex as an engineer for the Daycare Attendants for a full season [1 year] per contract form FZE-0014:716. Termination or quitting during this timeframe will result in employee being sued for 0.75% of employees current salary at time of disaffiliation."

Your pay was also significantly higher than previous employees. The usual being $29.87, while yours was $48.77

It was also revealed to them that your traveling expenses and moving was completely paid for. All your benefits, all your reasons to stay. None of which included them.

You were only here because you had to be.

Both their hearts dropped then and there.

Moon made his way back to the Daycare. Crawling through the vents a bit slower than usual.

Up to the balcony he flew, making his way through the tube, into the now dark room. The only dim light source being the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.

He stared at your gift. The gift you made.

Sun was yelling.

He made his way over to it, grabbing it.

Sun was pleading.

He turned it over, and stared at the crescent moon.

Sun was begging.

Moon let it go.

"..They'd be gone by now if they didn't have to be here."

Sun is recovering, it felt likes his world would've ended then and there if Moon did what he thought he was going to do.

".. Y-you could've at least.. Oh gosh, Moon, you could've at least let me know you weren't going to destroy it."

Moon smirks a bit. "Mmmm. Sorry, force of habit."

Silence for a bit as Sun is bitter at the dread Moon just allowed him to experience. Moon sits in the middle of the floor on top of the blankets. Staring at the gift, criss-cross applesauce. His hands cupping the cheeks of his faceplate.

"I.." Sun finally speaks up, Moon still staring at the gift you made for them Sun.

"If they wanted to leave, they wouldn't have stayed when I asked them to.. right? A-and the pictures they took of us! H-how they cleaned us up! They.. they'd stay for.. for us.. right?" Sun attempts at the excuses. Hoping Moon would see the weak bit of reason he has to offer.

Moon snaps bitterly, both of their hearts aching despite Moon still blocking Sun out from feeling what he's feeling too.

"No.. They have to stay here. In the Daycare.. here with us.." He hums.

"They're all the same."

Their hearts both drop at the words Moon forces out, Sun unaware of Moon's empathy still.

"They're only here because they have to be".

Silence for the rest of the night. Their dreams as unpleasant as usual when they must eventually, inevitably charge in their pod until morning.

You still haven't changed your alarm.

Groggily waking up, you grab your phone before adjusting your eyes, robotically swiping the dismiss button.

You sit up for a bit to collect yourself, a stretch and a yawn here and there, Mimi making her way to your lap for her morning pats. You stay like that for a bit.

It's a bit after six before you finally get up, Mimi protesting at her having to leave your warmth.

Time for the usual routine, of course. Teeth, hair, clothes, makeup, breakfast. All that good stuff.

You pick back up on your idea from last night to wear a longer sleeve shirt to hide your bruises which were more visible than ever now. You never healed prettily.

Skirt and long socks just like yesterday, they were comfy, okay?

You still wore the Sun earring. You didn't bother fishing out anything for the vacant ear.

Oh. My. God.

You had a wonderful idea. You made your way to your computer after eating breakfast. Just some cereal as usual. Back upstairs, digging through your electronic junk box. You really hoped it still worked.

A small stupid photo printer. It was fucked up and you have no idea if it worked, but you connected it to your PC and everything seemed fine.

You uploaded the selfies of Sun and you taken yesterday to your computer via USB, and started the process of printing out just three of them that you thought were the cutest.

Holy shit it worked. Tiny little photos, a bit bigger than your hand.

You can't wait to give these to Sun, he's gonna freak out. You giggle audibly at the thought.

You got your bag packed up, photos carefully tucked in it's tiny inside pocket, FazWatch over your wrist, and you were ready to go a little after seven. You clocked in at eight, but you didn't mind one bit if you got there a bit early.

Hopping into your car, you played music although not as loud this time.

You were smiling a lot of the way, just thinking of getting Sun yet another gift. Besides the whole being forced to stay there (and not really caring regardless just for Sun), you really do like this job. You really do. Your chest and tummy were doing funny things all the way there.

Them doing even funnier things when an SUV ran the red light and you crashed into it at 27MPH.