"You were almost late, Lea," Alex muttered as her sister returned.

Bonnie had quickly gone over to help Lea carry in some of the many grocery bags she was lugging over.

"I know, I know," Lea replied. "I ended up going down a rabbit hole in my research." Bonnie paused a moment to look at her. "That…was not an intentional pun."

Alex took some of the bags and began to remove the contents and put them away. "Well, at least you're back, I guess."

"Anything interesting happen while I was gone?"

Alex shrugged and opened the fridge to put away a jug of milk and other cold items. "That Puppet somehow managed to fit itself in the storage space in the ceiling above the bed. I thought they were stuck, but when I asked, they said no, so."

"Yeah, they seem to like confined dark spaces."

"Puppet used to live in a present box at the pizzeria," Chica said cheerily. "Then, they would pop out at the end of 'Pop Goes the Weasel' to give the birthday kid a present!"

"They better not jump out at me…" Alex grumbled.

"By the way," Chica continued curiously, "why are we calling Puppet 'they'? That sounds like more than one person, but isn't Puppet just one person?"

Chica had no idea how close she was to figuring that out, Lea thought.

"Are they a boy or a girl?" Alex asked her.

"Um," she looked confused by the question.

"That's why."

"Alex," Lea fussed.

"What? And if what you think is true, then they might be –"

"Alex!"

Alex stopped and continued putting the groceries away in silence. The four present animatronics exchanged confused and curious glances.

"Um," Bonnie said carefully, "so, Lea, what were you researching at the library?"

Lea felt a strange feeling in her belly. "Oh. I was looking into some things about that pizzeria. It was just…a lot of information. Freddy, can I take another look at your voice box?" She felt bad for changing the subject and not telling them the whole truth, but she still could not decide the best way to tell them. Maybe she should find a private place to tell Alex first before they left tomorrow? Or maybe she should talk to Puppet first. They obviously knew and remembered a lot more than the others. Lea had still never told anyone about the Golden Freddy she had seen back at the house. It looked an awful lot like the character in children's drawings and promotional artwork she had seen during her research.

Later, as the sun left the sky, Alex left the RV to go close the storage shed's door, sweeping the outside of the RV in cold darkness. The lights in the RV made the shed's interior look even darker, so Lea carefully avoided looking out the windows for fear of seeing that Golden Freddy again. In fact, at some point, she closed the little curtains to all of them without a word about it then set her attention back to Freddy's voice box.

In the front of the RV, Foxy and Chica were busy bugging Alex and playing with the radio. The three were bickering over what station to leave it on before finally all getting distracted listening to a gameshow station. Now, they were bickering, albeit playfully, over the answers to trivia questions. Every now and again, one of them would get very excited and loud when they ended up being correct, every time causing Freddy, Bonnie, and Lea to look over at them.

After a few hours, Lea realized that it had been silent for a while, aside from the voices on the radio talking amongst themselves. She looked up, wincing slightly at the soreness in her neck, and looked around.

Alex had fallen asleep in the driver's seat; the seat was reclined. Nearby, Foxy was curled up on the carpeted floor. Chica was on the floor too, but her head was leaning against the cushion of the booth-like seat behind the driver's seat where the little kitchen table was. Bonnie was curled up on the sofa with Lea, his head propped on the arm of the sofa.

Lea got up slowly and quietly made her way over to the front to turn off the radio before turning off all the lights one by one. When she got to the back of the RV, she found Freddy asleep in the bed. He must have gone there some time ago to escape the noise. She stopped and stared up at the storage space hanging from the ceiling. She could not see inside of it.

"…Cassidy," she said, then quickly glanced around to see if any of the others had stirred. No sounds or movement. She turned her attention back up to the storage space. "Susie." Nothing happened. "Charlotte." Still silence. "…Charlie?" She flinched at the sound of something moving in the space.

The Puppet's head had appeared at the mouth of the storage space to look down at her, tilted in curious silence. Lea was not particularly afraid of the Puppet, but the permanently fixated smile was unnerving in the dark.

"Are… Are you Charlie?" Lea asked quietly.

They were silent for a few more moments before finally responding in that strange whispering voice. "I was… Is that what you found in your research?"

She nodded. She could barely see in the darkness of the RV, but she could make out two silver eyes watching her from behind the mask; they never blinked. "Why didn't you tell me your real name?"

"I had almost forgotten it… But I remember now… My name was Charlotte Emily. …They called me Charlie."

"I learned some other names, too. I don't know if they're the names of any of these guys though." Lea gestured a hand out behind her. "Susie, Fritz, Jeremy, Gabriel, and Cassidy. Do you recognize those names?"

They seemed to be thinking the names over. "I know Cassidy… She was one of the last. …And one of the angriest."

"Is she one of these guys?"

"No… The yellow bear was destroyed a long time ago."

"Charlie," Lea said. "Tell me what happened. Tell me what you really remember."

There was another long silence before Lea realized that the Puppet had begun to crawl down from the storage space. It reminded her a little of those aliens from the old movies. In the darkness, she could only just make out the white stripes on its limbs as it slunk past her towards the exit of the RV. Without question, Lea followed.

Outside, the Puppet was waiting patiently for her, squatting down like a strange frog. "It's cold…"

Lea nodded and squatted beside them, focusing her gaze on them as she was still afraid of what she might see in the dark.

The Puppet turned to meet her gaze. "I do not remember their names…but I remember other things… The first, after Charlie, was another little girl. I think he followed her home… He brought her to the pizzeria late at night…after everyone else had gone. She cried a lot… He put her in the chicken."

Chica… Lea tightened her grip on her knees as she listened intently.

"One boy… He tried to fight back. He almost got away… Almost. He put him in the fox. Then, once, there were two at the same time. I think they were brothers…"

Brothers? Hadn't Bonnie mentioned something about a brother?

"The older one was caught first. He put him in the bear. He thought the boy was already dead, but he was not… Not quite. The younger one found him…bleeding, crying, whimpering within the bear's belly. He started crying, too, because he couldn't figure out how to get his brother out. Then the purple man caught him, too…"

Lea had an awfully positive feeling that that was the boy within Bonnie. It matched up to the dream Bonnie had told her about. So, did that mean that Freddy was inhabited by the older brother?

"Then there was Cassidy… The little princess… She was so blinded by hatred after dying that she didn't care who she was hurting. She couldn't tell the difference and didn't care. Adults were evil to her… He put her in the old yellow bear."

"What happened to that one?" Lea finally spoke and her voice cracked a little. "The 'yellow bear', I mean. Why are you and the others around but that one isn't?"

"Over the years, I watched them tear apart and put back together all of the others over and over. We are what's left…"

"They never found the bodies when they took them all apart?"

"He had already moved them… I do not know where. But their souls stayed behind… Just like mine."

"Then… What happened to the purple man? Who was he? Was it… Was it William Afton?"

The Puppet's eyes seemed to glint at the mention of the name. "I remember… Yes… Vile, filthy, rotten man…" They giggled a little. "He came back one night… He destroyed the yellow bear… Smashed it to tiny pieces… Then, he tried to destroy the rest of us, too. He thought it would get rid of us… Cassidy was angry… We watched her chase him into the backroom. He looked so scared… Then, he put on that stupid suit."

"Suit?" Lea remembered the articles mentioning the killer using a mascot suit to lure children, supposedly.

"The yellow rabbit… Stupid man… Stupid rabbit… He put on the suit to scare them…to remind them what he had done to them. But those suits were faulty… The ceiling was leaking in that corner… A little drop of water caused the suit to lock and snap and crack his bones. Blood poured from all the joints. But he did not die… not truly. He still wants them… wants us…"

"But why?" Lea almost raised her voice a little too loud. "He's dead! You guys are –" She stopped herself. "…What could he possibly want with you all now?"

"He had discovered something… a way to bring them back… His son and daughter. But it doesn't work the way he thinks it does… or the way he wants it to. He called it remnant. He used us for experiments with it… The remnant…and our hate and fear…is what keeps us here. The remnant…and his obsession...is what keeps him here. That…and Cassidy…"

"Cassidy? How is she keeping him around?"

"Her hatred is so strong… She won't let him rest in peace. She torments him…but he still persists. She doesn't know that she's making it worse…she doesn't care. …Are you going to tell the others the truth?"

"I… I want to, but I don't know how. What will happen if I do?"

The Puppet only shook their head. They did not have an answer.

"He will find us again…"

"I know," Lea said without really thinking. "I… I know. I don't know what to do about it yet, but I'll figure something out. …I also think I need to find a way to deal with Cassidy, too."

The Puppet cocked its head to the side inquisitively. Lea noticed this.

"A few nights ago, back at the house, I saw the yellow bear. It – Cassidy spoke to me. I'm not sure why. I don't really know what she wanted from me, but maybe I'll see her again soon. I've had this weird feeling all day that I might. At first, I was scared, because she was aggressive and angry, but now… Now I want to talk to her. I need to talk to her."

To be continued…

So I've always had an ending planned out for this story, but ever since Security Breach came out with that ending with "Glitchtrap"/ William, I'm not sure if I'll change the ending of this story or not. I might leave it the same though.