Can't Leave

by Chironex27

Prequel to Don't Leave the Office. In the games, the player sees through the perspective of the night guards, but this focuses on the perspectives of the spirits in the animatronics throughout the years. Big thanks to Reading a Pulse for help in characterization (especially with the Mangle) and advice on story. Rated T for implied violence against children.

40. What can we use?

Things should have been different, but they couldn't have been worse. Will, Robbie, Lucy, Greg, Peter, Ben, Liam, Gina, Hayden, Vince, and Val were all still in the store, but with no body. Robbie could still use the Golden Freddy suit, but it was like living in a cardboard box. They understood what needed to be done to free them, but as if fate was mocking them, what needed to be done was near impossible now.

The Purple Man wasn't dead. He wasn't alive either though. He was still in the suit. Sometimes, he could move and writhe around, but nothing beyond that. He should have died, but he was clinging to what remained of his body. He didn't want to move on. He knew where he would go if he did. So now, he was stuck in a half-life, still able to feel, see, hear, and smell, but unable to really live. The Purple Man had the same desires he had in life, but no way to satisfy them.

The children's spirits were stuck in the Ethereal now, always cold and lonely, no matter how many of them there were. They couldn't feel happiness or warmth of any kind, and they were stuck in a cold, dark, wet store that people had forgotten about. Sometimes, they were able to take a form of some kind through the pictures on the wall, but that was only when people walked by the decrepit store and peered in, allowing the children their imaginations and fears to take form. There was only one other vessel that they could inhabit; the store's security system. Even though the power had been lost long ago, the children could enter into the system and see and hear through the cameras. They were able to use the now archaic computer that the security was linked through to take the form of pixels. The children existed this way for years.

One day though, the children noticed a door opening in the system. There was a link with the outside, through something that still belonged to the store. They funneled through it, and saw someone. The man was damaged, very damaged, but the spirits had encountered this person before.

An idea, an impossible idea occurred to them.

Could they talk to this man?

Could this man help them?

Could this man save them?

To be continued in Save Them.