I've been thinking a lot about FNAF recently, and I reread my own fics from forever ago (2015). I still have a special love in my heart for my fic "Just a Puppet," so this is a re-imagine of that story; the original was purely speculation, because we didn't really know anything for sure about the Marionette's origins or who the killer was or how the night guard fit into the story or anything like that, so for this rewrite I wanted to explore what we know now about the characters and their storyline, while also keeping as much of the original creepy vibe as I could.
In my re-imagining, the night guard isn't really "Jeremy Fitzgerald," but that's what he's called. I know a lot of people believe Jeremy Fitzgerald is a separate person, but, for my story, the night guard with that name is really Mike Afton, using the name of one of the Missing Children's Incident kids for an alias. (The spirit inside Bonnie, to be specific.)
This also takes place during FNAF2 but after both Sister Location and FNAF1, because... I don't understand the timeline at all, tbh. This was just easier than trying to parse that mess out.
If you don't like any of this, I don't want to hear it. The purpose of this story is to have a little fun exploring an interaction that could have happened, not to be 100% to every canon fact or theory out there.
Anyway, here it is:
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"Just a Puppet: revisited"
February 24, 2022
1,962 words
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I hang delicately in my corner of the restaurant, dangling from the single wire in my back. My body is thin, and made of cloth and plastic, and this wire is the only thing they need, both to hold me up and to operate me, giving my body simple commands during the day.
It isn't day time, now. The holes where my eyes should be look out over the restaurant, and I can see how the sunlight has waned, replaced instead with the purple-ish hues of dusk and the approaching night outside.
I wish the prize corner wasn't facing any of the windows. The time of day and the colors of the sky make my chest ache. My heart would be pounding if I still had one, and my lungs would be struggling to breath.
Momentarily, all I can see is the purple color of the dimming outdoor light, and all I can feel is that thin operating wire in my back. It's painful, and piercing, like a true stab in the back. A feeling I know all to well, and always feel again and again at this time of the night.
At least it isn't raining outside, I suppose. Rainy evenings are the ones that get really bad. They fill me with nothing but fear and panic, and the overwhelming urge to escape.
Escape before everything that makes me feel good is taken away again, replaced only with sadness and pain, and I am no longer a little girl, but a puppet that is being controlled, playing right into the hands of one who she trusted.
I am startled from my thoughts by footsteps, and this is when I see you for the first time tonight. You're walking around, checking doors and closing window blinds, leaving the restaurant in nothing but the flickering artificial lights it's allowed. These lights make the shadows bigger and deeper, and plunge whole segments of the restaurant into darkness. Once the daylight is gone, it's become an entirely new world inside this building, a world full of shadows and despair.
My eyes follow you as you walk across the room. Your uniform tells me that you're the current night guard, so I know your shift will begin soon. I can't tell if you're new or not – we go through so many night guards here. But... there's something familiar about you that I can't quite place.
You're carrying a flashlight with you, holstered at your side almost like a gun on a cowboy movie. This makes sense – it is your best weapon of defense in this place. You also carry your second best weapon in hand, the large company issued Freddy mask dangling from your fingers.
There's something about your movements. Something wrong. Something strange. But, also, something familiar. It reminds me of the time when Papa twisted his ankle while struggling to get one of the springlock suits off, and he walked with a limp for awhile – the footsteps familiar, but different somehow.
Now you've got your flashlight out from its holster, and you're walking around the room, using it to inspect us. You're studying the toy animatronics on their little stage. It's like you're looking for something, the way you're staring into their eyes and whispering. Are you whispering to yourself, or to them? I cannot tell from here.
"They aren't alive," I whisper, speaking to myself. The toys are merely machines, made to play with the children and watch over them, and while they may be fun to watch perform on their stage, and they may be easy for me to control, they aren't my friends like the others are.
To my surprise, you jump in place. Like you heard me. This strikes me as odd; I have no voice box in this cloth body, and no one ever hears my whispers. But I can see the way your ears have perked up, listening for something, and I can see the way you angle your flashlight around, searching for the source of a sound.
Your flashlight beam glances off of me at first, but then you pull it back, focusing it on me. Your eyes stare at me. I can see your lips moving, your mouth working, trying to form words and failing.
But, just as your staring, so am I. I can now see your face from the front, and it makes my entire body feel cold. Like I'm being stabbed in the back not by this little wire or by a knife, but by an icicle.
Fear and rage course through me at once, and my body begins to vibrate from it, shaking the gift box mechanism that holds me in place.
I know your face.
It's the face I see in my nightmares every evening.
You slowly begin to approach me, and I want to run, to hide. Anything to escape you. But I can't move, trapped in my corner. I couldn't escape you then, and I can't escape you now, either.
You're standing in front of me, your eyes widened with shock, and... fear. What would make a monster such as you feel fear, I wonder?
That's when I notice... Your eyes are different. A robotic, grey-ish color, which shine with their own light. Like you are an animatronic yourself, now.
Serves you right, I can't help but think bitterly. From this close, I can see how sunken your face is, and how decayed your skin is, and I can see where you've stitched and stapled yourself back together. As fitting a fate it may be for you, it still makes me want to recoil in shock and disgust. You look like a zombie on those movies Papa wouldn't let me watch.
Your mouth is moving again, trying to force words out. Finally, one word comes out, and it sounds like it's being made by the same kind of speaker that the animatronics use. The origins of the sound don't surprise me near as much as the word itself, or the soft, worried voice that accompanies it.
"... Charlie?"
My name. But not how you and Papa always said it. Not Charlie Emily. Not Charlotte. Not the way adults always addressed me.
Charlie.
The way Sammy said it, full of affection and familiarity.
The way the others still say it, calling to me when they're scared and in need of a hug.
The way Elizabeth and her brothers always said it, your family's accents softening the sounds in all the wrong places.
Like the way you had just said it.
"Charlie?" you say again, and I can that speaking is difficult for you. There is something wrong with your throat, your vocal cords, and you've badly replaced them with a voice box, one that you can barely get enough air through to make sound. "It is you, isn't it? You're a spirit now, aren't you? Like... like the others?"
I don't know how to answer you. You're not who I thought you were, and now I'm not sure who you are.
Your name tag reads "Jeremy Fitzgerald," but I know that's a lie. Jeremy's soul is with the others right now, and I'm not sure I appreciate you walking around with his name.
You're shaking your head in disbelief now. "The others... they said I would find you here. My brother told me... but I didn't believe them. Not at first."
… 'Brother?'
I want to ask you what you know about the others. I don't move much, just enough to tilt my head at you, but you still give me a sad answer and a sad smile.
"I went to see them first." It comes out from you like an apology. "My sister, then my brother. I didn't even know you were... I didn't know to come looking for you. Not until they told me."
I am confused, and then I'm not. I'm horrified.
You aren't the monster I thought you were, at first. No, you're a different sort of monster. The kind of monster that would pretend to hug me and ruffle my hair just to twist my arm and hear me cry until Elizabeth made you stop. The kind of monster who would make fun of my fear of the dark and lock me in the storage closets until Papa came to rescue me. The kind of monster who cut the strings on my favorite puppet toy and laughed in my face about it, just because you were older then me and bigger than me and I couldn't do anything to stop you.
The kind of monster that would lock me out in the rain late at night, much too late for a child like me to be out, and not even worry about what could happen to me. What did happen to me.
"You locked me out!" I manage, watching your face contort as my voice fills your ears. "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you!"
Anger rolls off me in waves. I was never an angry child, and Papa often remarked that I never once threw a temper tantrum growing up ("Not like your little monsters," is what he said to your father once), but now? Now I feel nothing but anger. Toward your father, and toward you.
Your face falls in shame, and you shuffle awkwardly on your feet.
"... I know," you finally say. You sound utterly ashamed of yourself. Ashamed and exhausted. Like you know and understand the full extent of your mistakes, and that you know there's nothing you can do to make up for them.
Maybe, just maybe, I'll forgive you someday. I hear your brother talk about you enough to know that he's forgiven you, and, someday, maybe I will, too. But that day is not today.
If I had eyes anymore, I would be crying. But, in a way, I guess I'm always crying, now, aren't I? The paint on my face letting everyone see my smile and tears all at once.
It's the kind of thing you would have made fun of me for when we were kids, but now you say nothing. You just stand there, a strange, sad look on your face. It's like everything that made you you was ripped out and replaced with something else. No wonder I don't recognize you when I look at you.
Reaching behind myself, I remove the wire from its hook I hang from. The wire falls against my back, and my cloth body goes limp, dropping into the large decorative gift box. There is music playing in here, an endlessly repeating song that Papa used to hum to me before bed every night. It soothes me.
"Your mask and flashlight won't work on me, Michael," I tell you before the lid closes over me. They may work on the others, or even on the toys, but I am not like them. "So please, for your sake... don't let my music box stop playing. I'd probably feel bad if I actually hurt you."
You look shaken, and the idea of you being afraid of me for once is almost laughable. It's the last I see of you before my box closes, and I am locked away in the dark, my ears filled with the sounds of music.
I let myself drift off to sleep, knowing I'll be seeing you again sooner than either of us think. After all, all of this is nothing more than a drawn out game, isn't it?
We'll both play our parts, with you, a monster playing the part of a person, and I, a person playing the part of a monster, and we'll both be puppets to the story around us.
