Chapter 2
A/N: hey everyone! Welcome back! So…it appears that I'm still going with this. Don't know where I'm going with this, but it's somewhere…hopefully. So, I'm sure you've noticed that some of the aspects of the FNAF timeline have changed. And yeah, they have. Anyways, I just own the story, none of the characters are mine.
Gotham, July 12, 22:45EDT
Mike lost track of how long he'd been lying there against his uncle's chest.
He must've dozed off because at some point Uncle Henry had pulled the blankets up over his shoulder and leaned against the back of his bed.
"Have a good nap kiddo?"
Stifling a yawn, Mike gave him a nod in reply. He was still tired, but he did feel marginally better than he had earlier.
A hand ran up and down his back as Henry's chest shook with a half-hearted laugh, "That's good, it looked like you needed it. Are you feeling hungry? I can see if one of the nurses can go pick us up some milkshakes. Nothing too big though, Dr. Thompkins said since you haven't eaten much, we're going to have to take it slow so you don't get sick."
That didn't make much sense to the teen. His dad didn't always give him money to buy food. Any food they did have in the house had during those times had gone to the twins and his father before him. Mostly because his father would've blown a fuse if he had to listen to the twins—especially his favorite—complain about being hungry. And their dad worked long hours to keep a roof over their heads. So, Mike had gotten used to long periods without eating. He could always get stuff at school, and he wouldn't have to hear his brother whine about being hungry. During the times there was enough food for him to make extra or have leftovers he'd never gotten sick.
But right now…he wasn't sure he could stomach anything without wanting to throw up. Even the sheer idea of eating made his stomach churn.
"Tell you what? How about we order something and if you don't want it you don't need to have it?" Henry continued, startling him out of his thoughts.
Before he could protest, Henry gently set him back against the mountain of pillows and stepped out of the room.
Leaning back, Mike looked up at the ceiling, tears already pricking the corner of his eyes. He was so stupid. He should've just said no. He'd already cost Henry too much already. He didn't even want to think about how expensive his hospital bill was going to be. The last thing he wanted was to be even more of a burden than before.
"Good news!" Henry smiled stepping back inside holding two child-sized cups. "I got there just as they were about to close. Your favorite was chocolate, right?"
Well, no going back now. He should probably have some to at least make sure Uncle Henry didn't waste any more money on him. Reaching out to take the cup, Michael paused, staring at his arm. He'd been too scared to look at his appearance earlier, but now dread coursed through him at the sight of pale violet skin instead of his normal Caucasian tone.
"Michael?"
Mike didn't respond, sitting back as he stared in shock at his arms. He never considered himself as a vain person—he didn't have time to worry about something so stupid—but he'd always been fit and at least healthy looking. Now, though, his arm looked thin. It wasn't as bad as he'd seen in those pictures in third world countries, but it was thinner than he'd been before. And purple.
His. Skin. Was. Fucking. Purple.
He probably looked like a zombie from one of those comics one of his former friends used to read. Oh God, what about the rest of him? Did…did he start to decay while that thing was wearing his skin?
"Michael? What's wrong?"
He looked at Henry incredulously. Could he not see the problem in front of him? He probably looked like a monster. He was a monster. How could Henry not see it? How could he not see he looked like he was a walking corpse?
Shoving his frustrations aside, Mike, bent over the sides of his bed, ignoring the pain in his gut as he looked for something reflective so he could see how horrible he looked. To see that any hopes he had of possibly achieving a semblance of a normal life were obliterated.
"Michael," Henry spoke softly, grabbing his wrists in a firm but gentle grip, "please, you're going to hurt yourself." Slowly releasing his hands, the man reached into a bag, pulling out something with a deep breath. "Listen, I know this is going to be…a lot to take in. But, please, remember whatever it is, you're alive because of it. You're still here because of whatever this is. I promise, we will figure this out. I am not going to leave you to do this alone, ok?"
Henry didn't wait for his answer as he set the object he now recognized as a handheld mirror on his lap.
Swallowing the lump in his throat, Michael's shaky hand picked up the mirror, keeping the reflective surface tilted down. He could just set it aside, live the lie that he looked normal until he was inevitably forced to face the truth. Not have to face his likely grotesque features.
But still, he'd have to face it eventually. Father would tell him to man up and get it over with. That playing make-believe was a baby's game.
Mike braced himself and flipped the mirror up.
He was shocked to see that he both did and didn't recognize the man in the mirror. It looked like him, same face, same hairstyle albeit a bit grown out, and a few new scars now alongside the old faded one, but the rest…it was like looking at a stranger.
Like he feared, his skin had indeed turned violet. But that wasn't the only change. His once chestnut-colored hair that barely brushed his nape had grown out to almost touch his shoulders, the deep purple, almost black, taking over. And his eyes…they seemed to pierce through him. The bright blues—the only aspect of his appearance he'd gotten from his mother—now had a tinge of violet similar to his father's that glowed brightly against the black of the rest of his eyes save for the flicker of red in the center of his pupil.
All he needed was a pair of horns and a tail to be the demon child everyone always claimed him to be.
"Mike?"
He opened his mouth to respond, but all that came out was a choked sob. His life was over. How could he move on from this?
Warm arms wrapped around him, and Henry pulled him close, running his hand up and down his back. "I know, kiddo. I know. We'll figure this out."
"I'm a monster."
The arms holding him squeezed tighter, "You aren't a monster, Mike. You're still you, just…a bit different now."
Mike disagreed. He killed his brother. He let his sister die. How did that not make him a monster? The only difference was that he now looked the part.
As if he could tell he didn't agree, Mike could feel Henry take in a breath to speak again only to be cut off by a knock on the door. "Mr. Emily? Mr. Afton?" Dr. Thompkins spoke. The knob twisted, and the physician peered in, not making any comment about the breakdown Mike was having at the moment. "I know it's late, but there's someone here to see you."
A dull throb of pain ran through Mike's body as Henry held him closer. Clearing his throat, Henry spoke, his voice colder than anything Mike had ever heard from the man before, "I thought there weren't going to be any reporters?"
If Dr. Thompkins was bothered by the accusation, she didn't show it. "It's one of the lead detectives on the case. I had to contact him to let him know Michael woke up. He wants to ask Michael some questions, alone."
Henry still remained tense, but the teen felt the man silently exhale in relief. "You think you're up to answer some questions, kiddo?"
Not really, but it was better to get it over with rather than prolong the inevitable.
Seeing his nod, his godfather gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze, before standing up, pulling the blanket back over him. Ruffling the teen's hair, Henry walked to the door as Dr. Thompkins stepped aside, allowing the man to pass before someone else entered.
Mike didn't know how to react as he stared at the Dark Knight of Gotham standing in his doorway. The Batman was in his room.
Batman. Was. In. His. Room.
It was basically every Gotham kid's dream to meet the Batman, anyone who'd ever heard him speak used his words as their senior quotes. Meeting the Dark Knight was practically a badge of honor. If his current situation wasn't so crappy, this probably would've been the best day of his life.
Silence stretched on as the door closed behind the vigilante, and Mike picked at his blanket, doing his best to ignore the eyes on him. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end, it felt like he was being sized up the way his father always did when he was looking for even a sign of weakness.
What was he even supposed to do? He knew his father's patterns, he knew—or at least used to know—his uncle's too, and most people were easy to figure out; the Dark Knight, on the other hand, was a complete unknown. Did he try to start a conversation? Just wait for the hero to start his line of questioning?
"Your shake is melting."
His…his shake?
Turning his head, Mike blinked as he stared at the foam cup sitting on the bedside table, watching as a small drop of chocolate ran down the side. "Oh…" Not wanting Uncle Henry's money to go to waste, he reached out, grabbing the cup and fiddling with the straw, trying to find the will to eat.
"How are you feeling?"
Mike shrugged, continuing to play with the straw. His stomach still throbbed from his earlier freak out, but in terms of pain he'd experienced, it wasn't too bad. Granted, he doubted anything could ever compare to...that. "Better than before."
The Dark Knight gave a quiet noise of acknowledgement, "May I come closer?"
Slightly confused by the request, Mike gave him a small nod, watching as the tall shadow approached. Wasn't he here to ask questions about what happened to him? Why wasn't he just getting it over with? Michael didn't want a literal hero to waste their precious time on him when it could be spent saving dozens if not hundreds of people. The sooner he got the answers he wanted, the sooner the superhero could go work on something more important.
"I understand that you're going through a lot right now, but I have a few questions for you."
"No shit, why else would you be here?"
Mike regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. What the hell was he thinking? Who the fuck talked to Batman like that?! His father would probably go through with his drunken threats to kill him if he ever found out about this monumental screw up.
However, instead of getting angry, the teen almost swore he saw the Dark Knight's mouth twitch.
"Can you tell me who attacked you? Do you know them?"
Biting the inside of his cheek, the teen looked back down at his half-melted shake. "Kind of? I guess? It's hard to explain. You probably won't believe me."
Masked eyes narrowed, sending a trill of trepidation up his spine. "I'll be the judge of that. What happened?"
Taking a deep breath, Mike started explaining everything that happened. How he got a letter from his father just after he'd gotten fired from his last job for arguing with a customer. About how it was detailing a technician job at their family's company and some things his father wanted him to check out in his stead. He did his best to skim over how excited he'd been over the sudden interest his father had expressed in his future, it wasn't relevant to the case. It probably had only happened now cause by holding his own for so long he'd proven to the man he could handle himself as a capable adult. And, probably cause his father was just as busy as he'd always been.
It was only when he started explaining his hellish week at Circus Baby's Pizza World his skin began to crawl. He explained the weird design flaws he'd noticed: the yellow police tape and the various system errors. "What kind of place shuts off oxygen?" had been closer to his exact phrasing. About his first encounter with the seemingly hostile children's toys as the little sidekicks of Circus Baby had tried to pry the door to his hiding spot open with staticky laughter.
"The animatronics tried to attack you?" Batman interrupted, a scowl settling on his face.
Mike gulped, nodding hesitantly. "Yeah, I guess their night settings are a bit, uh, buggy. Granted, using a shock to keep them running almost twenty-four seven would probably create problems. It wouldn't allow much time for the systems to reboot and reset themselves for updates and maintenance. And since they're so used to having people around all the time, I think their limited AI programming tells them to seek out people, which is why they get so…playful at night."
It wasn't the best phrasing, but it made the most sense. When Foxy caught him after he worked on Freddy, the animatronic had the opportunity to kill him, instead it shoved him into a springlock suit, almost as a messed-up game of dress-up or hide-and-seek.
Though he was still pissed as Bon Bon for biting his arm. Next time he saw that stupid animatronic hand-puppet he was going punt the little bastard into the bay.
"That still doesn't explain what happened to you."
His mouth suddenly felt bone dry and his eyes stung. Glaring into his lap, Mike tried to control his trembling hands. "At—at the end of my first week, t-they had some problems with Circus Baby. They couldn't reach their normal technicians, so they called me. So, I went in and…I found them—the missing techs. I was going through my normal routine of checking up on all the animatronics when…" he trailed off, thinking about how his heart had almost exploded out of his chest as he saw the men hanging above the stages, the metal coils practically crushing their necks as the bodies dripped blood and entrails onto the stage. He remembered feeling horrified as Hand Unit said everything was functioning as normal, as if he couldn't tell the difference between the presence of animatronics performing on a stage and a pair of dead bodies. "They were dead. I don't know what happened. I went to go call someone, only to realize that the door had locked behind me. The system said I couldn't go home until I got my job done. So," he took a deep, shaky breath, trying to calm his nerves, "I went towards the maintenance room, to work on Circus Baby. Apparently she'd had some malfunction on stage. I figured her repairs would be easy cause out of all the animatronics she was the only one who wasn't…weird at night. She actually warned me about the other ones, and hadn't made any moves to attack me, so I didn't think twice when she mentioned something going on and where to go to find out." Mike's chest tightened as his eyes continued to sting.
In hindsight, it was clear of how much of a dumbass he was. Just because one animatronic wasn't feeling particularly murderous didn't mean it wasn't dangerous in other ways. She literally told him a story about luring in a little girl with ice cream and killing her. How could that not have been a red flag? Sure, he found the story odd, but when he heard of her breakdown the next day he attributed the gruesome tale to that. Even with an error, where would an animatronic with no access to the internet learn a story about that?! Their jobs were to entertain children, not scare the crap out of them! How did he not see something so fucking obvious?!
"Michael," Batman spoke, his hand landing on his shoulder, "what did she do?"
"I—I followed her directions, to the room where she said I could find evidence, but…there wasn't—I didn't know it was the scooping room," Mike cut himself off with a choked sob, curling in on himself. For a moment, he heard the metal door lock behind him, felt the metal coils wrapping around his neck and limbs, holding him still. He remembered looking through the glass to see a figure approaching, thinking he'd been saved before watching the tangle of wires wearing a clown mask claw at the window with a sinister grin.
"The scooper only hurts for a moment."
Without warning, Mike felt his throat tighten, the same way it did when that mess of wires and oil had slithered its way back up the remains of his torn esophagus, ripping at flesh as it forced its way out of his mouth. This time, instead of tasting blood, metal, and oil, he just tasted bile as he emptied the nonexistent contents of his stomach into a bin that had not been there before.
A hand ran up and down his back as the bin was pulled away, set on the ground by the foot of his bed for later disposal. A water bottle soon replaced the shake in the teen's hands, "Drink, you'll get dehydrated."
Mike didn't argue, opening the cap and eagerly taking a swig, sighing in relief as the cool liquid washed away the vile taste in his mouth and replaced the sensation of wires in his throat. "Thanks."
"I have one last question, and then I'll leave you be for tonight," the Dark Knight continued. "What is the scooping room?"
Mike almost felt sick again, but swallowed it down. After a breakdown like that the hero deserved some answers, especially since he was already wasting so much time with him. Leaning back against his pillows, he blinked slowly, suddenly feeling drained, "It's, uh, pretty self-explanatory. They have a room with a giant scoop that rips out the internal wiring of the animatronics, this way actual technicians don't have to do it."
The Dark Knight didn't show any outward reaction besides the slight widening of his eyes and the clenching of his fist. He had more questions, many more, but they could wait for right now. The boy was clearly reaching his physical and emotional limit.
And, he needed time to process what he just heard.
Michael had spent five nights alone in a building with subpar safety trapped with violently aggressive robots that had killed two adult men. Even more frighteningly, that reaction indicated the teen had been fully aware of what happened to him. He had been conscious when his organs had been ripped out. That didn't even account for the following week he'd been missing before being found in his home almost dead.
The fact that this was the eighth case of a crime against a child with a connection to Fazbear Entertainment in eight years made it more concerning. It seemed like every year, without fail, there was the death of a child at one of their facilities. And that was just known cases in Gotham alone. But, he did have someone he could question about it right outside.
Batman stepped closer to the teen as he began drift off, occasionally jolting himself back awake for a few seconds before slipping back under. Grabbing the thin sheets, he pulled them a bit higher over the dozing boy, "Get some rest." Stepping through the door, the Dark Knight leveled a glare at Henry Emily as he let Dr. Thompkins pass to check on her patient. "We need to talk."
Henry gulped, following the vigilante into an empty room, nearly jumping as the door closed behind them.
The Dark Knight watched as the man nervously wrung the hem of his wrinkled shirt, shifting from foot to foot as they stood alone. "Four missing children, murders of three kids, the disappearances of several technicians, two reported work-related deaths, and now an attempted murder, and I would be willing to expect more the further I dig. I'm going to give you one chance to explain, Mr. Emily. What are you hiding?"
The blonde sputtered, jaw dropping in shock, "You—you don't think I have anything to do with this!"
The Dark Knight knew he didn't. The evidence he'd found in the Afton house had basically confirmed that the man's business partner had been acting alone. But it was best to make sure that he wasn't going to be sending an accomplice back to sit by whom he suspected to be the man's most recent victim. "You are the owner of the company."
"What does that have to do with killing children?! I would never—God!" The man took a deep breath almost looking sick as he sank into a chair. "Listen, I know it's hard to believe, but please, I would never do anything to hurt anyone, let alone a child. I don't want anyone to go through that pain. And, I know my company has never had the best track record, it's something I've been trying to fix for a long time. But Will is in charge of East Coast operations and I haven't talked to him in a while. I don't know if he's cutting corners to save face. I've been living in Central City for almost five years now, I just…couldn't take being here anymore after…" the man trailed off running a hand through his disheveled hair, "You're more than welcome to access anything you need to figure out what's going on."
Batman had already accessed the company's systems, but Mr. Emily didn't need to know that. Though, the data he found did provide some credence to the man's words. The facilities in the Midwest and on the West Coast did have a significantly lower amount of work-place injury reports. The most recent severe ones being a robbery in California three years ago and an attempted kidnapping by a well-known criminal in Utah about a year ago.
"How long have you been unable to get in contact with Mr. Afton?"
Mr. Emily blinked, "I, uh, lost touch with him not long after Evan—his youngest—passed. I just figured he'd been taking it hard, especially so soon after Lizzie."
Yes, Michael's siblings, both of whom had died a year after each other. One under mysterious circumstances, the other due to a prank gone wrong.
Running a hand through his hair again, Mr. Emily hissed through his teeth, "I still don't know what made Fredbear malfunction that way. The hydraulics of his jaw shouldn't have been strong enough to crack a kid's skull."
No they shouldn't have.
"I think Mikey still blames himself," Henry continued resting his elbows on his knees. "It was a cruel prank, but you can tell he didn't mean it. He's a good kid, Will just tends to be a bit hard on him sometimes."
That was the understatement of the century.
"Were you aware that Michael has been living alone for almost two years?"
"What?!"
"None of his neighbors or teachers have seen William in two years, any time they ask about him Michael says he's on a business trip or is at work. The only time he's reached out to talk to Michael was a recent letter about checking something out for him at one of your company's locations—the same one where he was attacked at."
"Two years? Mike has been living alone for two years?" the man said, his knuckles turning white as he clenched his fist. "And I'm guess that isn't the worst of it, is it?"
"No."
"I'm gonna kill him."
The Dark Knight almost expected the man to storm out of the room to try to hunt down the man himself. Especially if he told him the rest of what he had discovered. "Doing that won't help Michael."
"I know," he sighed, deflating back into his seat. "I'm just…frustrated about all of this. Mike's a good kid, if I'd known what he was going through, I would've been there in a second." Rubbing the back of his neck, Mr. Emily, leaned back in his seat. "Listen, I know you're probably busy, but this accident…I don't know what it's done to him. Do you know of anyone who could, uh, help him through this?"
"Yes, I do."
