Author's Note
Just wanted to say thanks for all the amazing reviews lately. I'm glad so many people are still enjoying this story. :)
Chapter 83
Crocodiles?
Ruby snickered as Puppet stalked away. She'd actually eased up on Puppet a lot lately but she still enjoyed it when someone messed with him.
"Enjoying your freedom from the hospital?" She asked teasingly.
Hedy's first thought was that Ruby looked tired. That was odd. The Originals weren't hovering over her so they weren't more worried about her than usual.
She smiled at the teen, making a mental note to watch her. Ruby probably just hadn't had that much sleep that day.
"Oh yes. Remind me never to get stabbed by a psychopath again. I hate hospitals. Needles. Gowns. Poking. Prodding."
"Ironic..." Puppet mumbled.
"Trust me," Jeremy said. "They're just as happy to be rid of her."
Hedy dropped her smile to glare at him. "Hey."
"What did you do?" Ruby asked curiously after shuddering at the mention of needles.
The bots were looking curious too, wondering what she could have done to irritate people who were used to dealing with a certain night guard.
"Nothing!...Much..." Hedy said.
"I got several calls this week about her 'breaking' hospital property," Jeremy said, rolling his eyes.
"I did not break anything," Hedy insisted.
"She accidentally rewired the PA system into a radio station and blasted disco music for half an hour..."
"It really was an accident! I fixed it. I was just curious if they would actually put those wires where someone could reach them. That's dangerous. I was using the radio to test if the current was live! I didn't have my volt meter."
"She took apart the monitors in her room and freaked out a bunch of nurses who thought she was dying because the alarms went off."
"Oh my god, Jeremy. Shut up," Hedy said, covering her face. He was making it sound like she was just as bad as Ruby. It really wasn't all as bad as it sounded!
"Then, of course, a few of them are salty about losing upwards of 800 to someone who's never played poker before."
Ruby was on the floor, laughing, by then. The Originals looked genuinely surprised that Hedy had done all that.
"Is Ruby that bad an influence or was she always like this?" Freddy wondered.
Foxy shrugged in response, watching Ruby. It was good to hear her laugh again. She'd been a little withdrawn lately. He wasn't sure if it was because of Spring or Jeremy's wife. The Originals were all wary of the woman purely because she seemed to put Ruby off so much.
Amelia had been quiet, though she smiled. She sighed and shook her head as she and Jeremy shared a look. Hedy shouldn't be allowed to get bored.
"...No, that's all Hedy..." Teddy admitted with a grimace as bad memories came to mind. "That sounds a little like some of the stuff Hedy did to us at the Warehouse."
Toby shuddered at the reminder of Hedy hacking a PA system.
Mangle laughed and nodded enthusiastically as Hedy glared at them. The fox bent her arms to her side and pranced around humming a crackling rendition of the "Chicken Dance."
"NO!" Chi shrieked and halfway tackled Mangle. "That is not getting stuck in my head again!"
Puppet grunted in agreement. Hedy was practical in her survival methods back then, but playing that awful song over a loudspeaker for six hours rivaled Ruby's cruelty. There was no escape in the Warehouse.
Hedy glared at all of them.
Ruby finally managed to quiet her laughter to snickers and sat up again.
"I'm so proud." She gave Hedy a wicked grin.
It was a little concerning how her eyes lit up at the sound of the song.
Hedy scoffed and rolled her eyes. "You're terrible."
Mangle shot Hedy a smile and jumped in front of her and pointed at her throat. She bounced on her feet like a child.
Hedy grinned. "Yes. Ok. You do know that I can't get it finished in one night right?"
Mangle still nodded, her smile not dampened at all and ran off to get her box.
Ruby smiled fondly after the bot as Teddy asked the mechanic how long it would take to fix Mangle. All the bots were curious about the answer so they didn't notice Ruby glance down at her phone and grimace before shoving it back in her pocket.
Hedy noticed but only answered Teddy. "A couple of days. Two maybe three. Most of it is wiring and programming. Programming takes a while."
"Are you including breaks?" Amelia said.
"Yep," Hedy said, understanding Amelia's concern for her rest.
Ruby rolled her eyes at Amelia's question. Well, seemed like there was still a problem there. Ruby didn't let go of these kinds of things easily. At least she seemed content to stay quiet when Amelia wasn't talking to her.
She really was just acting like a bratty teenager though and that wasn't helping.
Amelia was starting to get a bit frustrated with the girl as well. Nothing she did eased Ruby's dislike of her and while she didn't particularly care if the teen liked her, Amelia was still concerned by her resistance.
"Where are the twins?" Hedy asked her.
Amelia cracked a smile at the thought of her babies. "At my mother's enjoying a sleepover with their grandmother."
"Aw you didn't bring them?" Hedy chuckled.
"I'd never get them to sleep with all the robots to play with," Amelia said while Jeremy groaned and nodded. "Nor am I keen about two six-year-olds shooting me with a paintball gun." She shot a look at Ruby.
"We have to at least wait until they can hold the things without falling over," Jeremy joked, nudging his wife who just glared at him.
Hedy snorted and looked at Ruby, "Are you already trying to corrupt my niece and nephew?" She went to a nearby table to wait for Mangle.
Ruby's glare that was pointed at Amelia softened into a smirk as she turned to Hedy. Really the girl gave them all emotional whiplash sometimes.
"You never said anything when I handed out those modified bedazzlers during the day shift." she pointed out.
Hedy gave her a tired look as the flashbacks hit.
A few bots shuddered at the memory. Ruby was very good at turning sweet children into her own personal glittery army from hell.
"Or the paint balloons. Or the paintball gun day I held."
Teddy just groaned. Those had been nightmare days.
"Or the water guns filled with glitter glue."
Everyone paused.
"Wait, you haven't done that before." Freddy frowned.
"Oh, sorry. That's still coming." her smirk widened and all the bots groaned. Well except Bonnie and Foxy. They looked more interested than worried.
"Remind me to miss that day," Hedy said as Mangle came back.
The fox handed the box to Hedy.
"Where do you want me?" she signed.
"On the table," Hedy said.
Mangle complied and hopped on top of a table, making it shake a little.
Hedy climbed up next to her. "Put your head on my lap so I can reach." She patted her lap.
Mangle did so, resting her admittedly heavy head on Hedy's legs, and opened wide as Hedy took a flashlight and shifted a bit.
Jeremy couldn't help feel a little nervous with Hedy leaning over so close to Mangle's teeth and sticking her hands in Mangle's mouth. He knew the fox wouldn't hurt her, but Mangle's teeth looked especially deadly from that angle, even if she wasn't swinging at him.
Amelia looked like she wanted to protest but had a fist pressed against her mouth as she watched with curiosity and a little trepidation. This was Hedy's job? A robot doctor? Right now she looked like a dentist.
Hedy looked up after a minute. "Why are you all watching? This is the boring part. I'll tell you when I'm almost done and it's not going to be tonight."
Ruby promptly turned to Foxy.
"Open your mouth. I want to re-enact people sticking their heads into crocodiles' mouths." she demanded, pointing at him.
Foxy blinked while everyone else just sort of stared at her. Hedy paused in her work and looked up while Mangle looked at Ruby out the corner of her eye. That was one of the weirder things they'd heard her say.
"No." Foxy decided and then groaned when the teen immediately put on the puppy dog face. The Toys hadn't seen it yet but the Originals knew it was practically lethal. Wide green eyes with just the right amount of hurt in them and trembling lower lip.
Hedy thought she looked ridiculous. Ruby was sixteen for goodness sakes, well past the years of puppydog eyes. But it somehow worked on the bots.
Bonnie was already covering his eyes. "You said you wouldn't use that face anymore!"
Foxy looked legitimately torn between sticking to 'no' and giving her what she wanted.
"Please?" she cocked her head just slightly which made the entire expression a hundred times more potent and Foxy was covering his eyes now.
"Stop lass." he groaned. "I'm not a crocodile."
Jeremy muttered under his breath.
Hedy snickered and pulled her head back as Mangle laughed a bit, stifling herself so she wouldn't move her mouth too much.
Hedy set aside a couple strange looking devices she unscrewed from Mangle's throat. She took a pair of tweezers and detached a small computer chip from the wreckage and set it carefully aside. "Don't touch that," she said.
"What is it?" Chi asked tilting her head.
"A memory chip with Mangle's unique voice. That's why I couldn't just replace stuff and she's good to go. It got damaged so I had to recover the information, but I didn't have anything else to put the data back on and all the other devices that work with it are broken too." Hedy scooted the new equipment closer. "You all have one."
"Ew," Toby said.
Hedy shot him a look. "In case you haven't noticed, you're a robot, Toby. You have thingys inside you."
"Still weird."
"Humans aren't any better," Hedy retorted.
"Yeah you're just squishy."
"Yup. Bots go clang. Humans go splat." Ruby added cheerfully from where she had apparently won the battle of wills since Foxy was sitting on a chair with a grumpy expression.
The night guard was bouncing excitedly in place.
"This'll be great practice for the visit to the zoo. I'm getting un-banned next week."
"Wait what?!" Freddy's head snapped to the side in alarm.
"I still don't get the whole fuss. The lions were sleeping anyway." Ruby shrugged.
"What?" Amelia snapped. She pinched the bridge of her nose. "She's joking. Please tell me she's joking."
"I really don't know," Hedy said without looking up, back at work and not showing if Ruby's words freaked her out like Freddy. She nudged Mangle's jaw open a little more and stuck her head in to peer at something.
"Don't put your head in...!" Amelia sighed as Hedy did just that. Amelia covered her face as she shook her head.
Jeremy chuckled.
"You two are going to give me a stroke..." she muttered. "I think I have a headache." She eased into a chair, rubbing her temples.
Hedy glanced up to grin at her. "Don't lump me in with Ruby. I've been the one risking insanity being here so long. You've been hanging around what? Less than a week?"
"This is normal, sweetheart," Jeremy assured. He paused and looked at Ruby. "I think..."
The teen was now standing on the table so she was above Foxy and was talking in a Australian accent for some reason as she explained the adventure she'd had at the zoo after climbing into the lion enclosure when no one was looking.
Suddenly Jeremy was hit by the memory of a very frazzled Sergeant Stone taking long drinks of coffee as he explained to his colleagues how his daughter had gotten into the lion enclosure at the zoo years ago. She'd apparently wanted to get up close to the 'kitties'.
Ruby would have been five... She was apparently leaving that out of the story.
"Now open up Foxy." she smiled sweetly.
Hedy had to laugh at the tone she used and looked up just to see Foxy's expression.
"I'm not helping you practice sticking your head in a crocodile's mouth!" he sounded halfway panicked. Only Ruby ever managed to get that reaction out of the usually composed fox.
"I'm doing the crocodile thing whether you help or not so that's neither here nor there." Ruby made a dismissive gesture.
"RUBY!" the Originals all yelled in sync and the Toys suddenly had an idea of what it was like for them when the teen was a customer there.
"Come on Foxy, don't let her bully you," Hedy teased. "Also, Ruby, you better just be messing with us." Hedy scolded, though she had a little smile. "I don't want Cecil taking it out on me if either of us end up back in the hospital right after I got out."
Amelia was looking a little panicked, the last several days making her question if Ruby was serious or not.
Jeremy just looked resigned, knowing Hedy would handle it somehow.
"Though…" Hedy said slowly, glancing at the ceiling in thought. "If you do pull it off, I demand a picture. I'm going to frame it in the front room."
"Hedy!" Chica scolded.
"You're supposed to discouraging her!" Freddy said as Jeremy snapped around to stare at his sister.
Amelia was glaring at Hedy now too. "Hedy."
Ruby naturally just gave Hedy a grin. Whatever had been bothering her seemed to have evaporated by now as she started poking at Foxy's teeth while he growled at her.
A puppy dog expression later and he gave up, letting the night guard do what she wanted. The rest of the bots weren't sure if they were supposed to find the visual of Ruby sticking her head in Foxy's mouth funny, or disturbing.
"If I can pull it off right, you'll see a picture of me doing it in the newspaper." Ruby told Hedy from inside Foxy's mouth, her neck about two inches from a row of teeth on the top and bottom. "I'll probably get banned again but it'll be so worth it. I can get you a picture of me sitting on the lion though. My mom snapped it while my dad was screaming like a girl."
That was the first time any of them heard her mention her parents so casually, with a fond tone. If she ever talked about them, it was with clear pain.
"You could have gotten eaten. I think Stone gets a pass," Jeremy said tiredly with a snort, "Though I will say the only screaming I ever heard from him was him yelling at me to do a hundred push-ups so I'm having a hard time imagining him with the high-pitched panic of fatherhood."
Amelia looked mad and worried all at once, too preoccupied with watching the animatronic and night guard to think too hard about what Jeremy just said.
Foxy's silver teeth and a couple of gold ones with a speckling of rust was not helping, nor was Ruby's precarious position on the table. She could slip at any moment and the animatronic could take an eye out.
The teen stilled suddenly, frozen in place before her head whipped out to face Jeremy. There was an expression on her face that none of them could place for a long moment. When she spoke they figured it out.
Pain. Pure pain twisted her features as she stared at the former night guard.
"What did you say?" she choked out.
They'd never seen her like this, clearly shaken and all of her masks abruptly ripped away.
Jeremy realized his mistake and went quiet, immediately guilty for accidentally ruining Ruby's smile. She was happy damn it.
Hedy looked up again and stared sadly. "Ruby..."
Mangle shifted and Hedy nodded slightly and took her hands away so the fox could sit up.
The teen was still staring at Jeremy, a slightly wild look in her eyes. The bots were glancing between them in concern, trying to figure out what was going on.
"What...did you just say?" Ruby's voice was shaky as she repeated herself, cracking slightly as though she were on the verge of tears, even though her eyes were dry.
She lost her balance and Foxy barely caught her in time but she still didn't look away from Jeremy. She'd never looked more her actual age than in this moment. Even the Toys felt the sudden urge to comfort the upset teen.
Jeremy looked pained too. His eyes apologetic, he spoke gently. "I think Stone gets a pass," he repeated carefully. "Though I will say the only screaming I ever heard from him was him yelling at me to do a hundred push-ups so I'm having a hard time imagining it. That's what I said." It wasn't the whole truth, just the funny part, he had thought. Stone was scary when mad and he could get loud.
Ruby's expression twisted into further agony and the room was hit by the realisation that this was what she felt all the time, even when she was smiling and laughing with everyone. This deep pain was only hidden behind the masks she'd built up and up to now they'd only caught glimpses of it.
Jeremy had accidentally ripped those masks away though.
"You knew my dad." it was a flat statement, not a question, pained green eyes still locked on him.
"...I went to training here. He was my mentor," Jeremy said honestly and the others saw that Hedy didn't look surprised, just pained to a lesser degree than her brother and Ruby.
Amelia touched Jeremy's hand in a worried question. Her hand was shaking a bit. "Jeremy..."
Jeremy looked at his wife. "Rose and Derek were Ruby's parents. They passed away about six years ago."
Amelia looked shocked. Derek was...gone? And Rose. She hadn't thought about Rose in years. Her eyes went to Ruby and widened, suddenly seeing Rose in the teen and she felt awful that she didn't recognize her immediately. Oh no. Ruby was an orphan. How had she not...? She looked at Jeremy in a sad mix of betrayal and disappointment.
"I know. I'm sorry I didn't tell you," Jeremy said softly.
Amelia sagged a bit. "Why?" she asked sadly, with a twist of anger. It's been so long. How long had Jeremy known? Was that why he was so lenient with Ruby?
Jeremy flinched. "I know you." Amelia would have immediately been like a mama bird and try to be more involved than she was attempting now, and Ruby would absolutely hate it.
Ruby wasn't looking at him anymore, she was leaning against the table trying to steady her breathing. For a long moment she looked on the brink of a panic attack and the Originals watched her worriedly.
Finally she drew in a sharp breath and released it in a choked laugh that made them all flinch. "Of fucking course he was." none of the bots even commented on her language as they watched her pull herself together inch by inch. "Because life hates me." she breathed deeply again before turning back to face Jeremy, eyes hard now instead of open and vulnerable.
The expected explosion didn't come surprisingly.
"Can't even blame you for not telling me. Since I would have still reacted like this." another deep breath. "Dammit, how long since you figured it out? You didn't know in the beginning or you would have mentioned it." she reached up and tugged on her hair, a nervous habit the Originals recognised. Foxy gently pulled her hand from her hair to stop her from hurting herself. "Did you even know they..." she trailed off, gaze now on the floor.
"Last week," Jeremy said, gently. "The night before Michael-"
"The day of Night 3," Hedy added.
"I went to the station to look at case files and they told me. I'm sorry. I never knew. We hadn't talked in so long since I moved away. People didn't know to tell us."
Amelia went to stand next to Hedy and Mangle, leaning back on the table as she watched Ruby carefully, refusing to deal with her own sadness at the moment. This wasn't the place. She had seen Ruby once, she realized, a very long time ago.
Ruby was just a baby at the time and Amelia was barely a high school graduate.
The teen closed her eyes as she wrestled her emotions back into place. She clenched her hands so tightly that they were sure she drew blood and Hedy just knew she was using the pain to center herself. It wasn't the first time she'd seen her do it.
"Right. Okay." she took a final deep breath before opening her eyes again, masks firmly back in place. "Drop a bomb like that again and those twins are the last kids you will ever have." she threatened before pulling herself up to sit on the table beside Foxy, body tense.
Jeremy winced, subconsciously covering himself as Hedy cracked a startled laugh.
"Duly noted," he said, stepping back. "I'm sorry, Ruby. I didn't mean to drop it on you."
Hedy sighed. "Great. Tension. Can't have one freaking happy night back can I?" She climbed down to her chair. "Be right back."
"Where-" Teddy asked, uncomfortable.
"I need to get something out of Parts and Services."
"I can get it," Chi said, more than willing to help. She also wanted an excuse to leave the tense room.
"No, I got it. I need to move around. I'm tired of people getting stuff for me," Hedy said, waving her hand with a smile. "Sit tight, Mags."
Mangle crooned and nodded, albeit she looked a little impatient.
Ruby was still glaring a hole into the floor. At least she didn't seem angry with Jeremy, more like she was angry at the entire situation.
None of them doubted that the first one to irritate her would be the one she vented on though.
The Originals glanced at Toby who was physically holding his own mouth shut. Seemed he could learn.