Author's note:

Hi everyone! We know a few people had issues with the last one-shot and we're acknowledging that everyone has different experiences and different opinions. We do want to remind you that this is an exaggerated story and the one-shots are especially more exaggerated. We know the last arc was especially tough, but this is still a comedy story and what Jeremy did would not have been out of place in a lot of tv shows. Doesn't make it right, of course.

If you had a lot of problems and were uncomfortable with the last chapter, you can skip this one and the next. The one-shots technically aren't required reading. However, this one-shot is about consequences to what happened in the last one. It might address some concerns that were brought up. We'll be back to regular chapters after the next chapter.

One-Shot 7.5

Bots are Okay

"Hey Amelia, if you didn't agree with what I was doing, then why did you go along with it?" Jeremy asked, ears still ringing from the screaming lecture Hedy just gave him.

"What the fuck were you thinking?! You buried him, Jeremy!"

If it wasn't obvious, she was pissed.

Amelia gave him a sad smile. "I was there to make sure you didn't do something you'd regret, Jeremy. I love you, honey, but your morals are skewed when it comes to Hedy. You don't think straight. Mike's a sweetheart, I don't think he's going to do anything to hurt Hedy on purpose."

"Logically I know that," Jeremy sighed. "I just…"
He trailed off.

"Is it because his full name is Michael?" she asked gently.

Jeremy flinched and despite logic trying to win over, he felt his stomach drop in fear just a little.

Amelia could see the pain in his eyes. "That's not his fault Jeremy."
"I know. But it doesn't help me disconnect the name from the person Amelia. I just… when did Hedy start keeping so many secrets from me? She started working at that warehouse, she got a job at Freddy's, and then she started dating. I found out about all of those through other sources or purely by accident."

Amelia sighed. "She knows you, Jeremy. She knows how you act when you're worried about her. You ever think you've conditioned her to not tell you things to avoid your reaction?"

Jeremy's jaw tightened. He wanted to argue but…

Amelia rubbed his arm. "Just talk to her." She gestured toward the garage/workshop where Hedy had holed herself up after her justified fit.

Jeremy groaned. He stood by the door and shot his wife an unsure look.

Amelia gestured at him to go on before sitting at the table in the adjacent kitchen.

He knocked on the door. "Hedy?"

"I'm not talking to you right now," Hedy spat through the wood.

Jeremy could hear her tinkering with something at her desk. He turned to leave but Amelia gave him a look.

"What?! She doesn't want to talk to me."

"Jeremy."

Jeremy sighed but turned back. "Hedy, come on. Look, I'm sorry. Will you just let me explain?"

"You could have killed Mike! What is there for you to 'explain'."

"N-No, I wouldn't," Jeremy insisted. "Hedy, he was perfectly safe."

"You drugged him."

"It was just a common sedative," Jeremy said. "I had my EMT buddy with us. You know Gavin."

"Isn't he the one on suspension?"

"That's completely unrelated."

"Oh, is it?"

"Hedy-"

"Irresponsible is what that was."

Jeremy leaned his head on the door and tried to open it, but it was still locked. "Hedy. Hedwig. He wasn't going to get hurt."

"You don't know that! You had him walk alone, in the middle of nowhere," Hedy said. "We have wild animals outside the city, Jeremy!"

"He-! Hedy, he wasn't alone! Alright? I had some guys tailing him the whole way, Gavin included, with a bunch of medical gear. I know I'm crazy but I had a clear enough head that I wasn't going to let him die out in the wilderness!"

Hedy didn't respond.

Jeremy banged his head on the door a little and squeezed his eyes shut. "I like Mike, okay?"

"You got a funny way of showing it."

"We all do! We're all screwed up in the head! Didn't you taze him?"

"When I met him and thought he was an intruder, not while he and I were dating."

Jeremy continued. "Look, he's a good person." He tried to distract himself with how easy it was to say that without Mike there. He probably wouldn't be able to tell Mike that face to face for a while, and he was rightfully ashamed of that. "He's a better person than probably any of us weirdos involved with damn Freddy's deserves. You're lucky, Hedy. As much as I hate that you're dating, you're so lucky, and so is he. I think he's better than the past couple of people you dated, if I'm being honest. And I only learned about them after you had already broken up."

Hedy scoffed. "You didn't know about Sullivan."

"Who's-!" Jeremy bit his tongue and banged his head on the door again. "Ugh." He took a deep breath. "I'm your brother and...damn it Hedy, I don't know why I'm like this." Jeremy huffed and felt out of breath as he spit his feelings out and nearly suffocated on them. "Maybe...maybe I just can't stand trusting anyone else to take care of you."

He was more sure after he said it than before.

But he kept going. "It's terrified me practically your whole life to have you out of sight. Your accident didn't help in the slightest. In fact, I think I got worse when you were twelve. I hated leaving you to join the army and leaving you and Dad to take care of each other, then I hated being away for police training. I hated you starting high school. I hated you going to college. That was the worst, honestly. I wasn't upset about your girlfriends as much as I was about your boyfriends, and I know that isn't fair or right. It's ridiculous and unhealthy and just plain sexist, but I just never could trust men I didn't know around you."

"I'm not some fragile damsel in distress from those old fairy tales," Hedy said, but she sounded more subdued.

"I know. Hedwig, I know."

"I can take care of myself," Hedy said. "I…" She grunted and Jeremy could hear her closer to the door. Her voice was just above a whisper through the wood. "Jeremy…you need to listen to me for once."

She paused, sorting her words.

"I have had so much taken away from me. My childhood. My friends. Dad. My health. My dreams. Most of my autonomy. When I have any choices in my life, I have to take them. And some days it feels like I don't have very many, so when they come along they're mine, and I'm selfish as hell with them. All those things you hated? It sounds like you hated time moving on. It sounds like what you really hated was me growing up. Some part of you wanted to protect my innocence. You wanted me to rewind and stay a happy little girl."

"I-"

"Shut up and listen to me. Jeremy, she died!" Hedy's voice cracked, and Jeremy wasn't sure the lump in his throat would have let him speak if she let him. "That little girl died when I was six and we were too late to salvage everything. It was not your fault, but it happened. Your desperate scrambling to hold the pieces together was another obstacle I had to figure out how to live with," she said. "You always mean well. And I love you. I will always love you. But damn it Jeremy, you can't kidnap and traumatize people because you've got an irrational fear of anyone who comes in a five-foot radius of me! That's some Ruby bullshit. You especially can't do that to Mike, whom up until three days ago you adored except for the puns."

"I don't 'adore' him," Jeremy muttered.

"I overheard you offering to take him to a range to give him handgun training and you were talking about showing him tactical driving and some stunt car maneuvers. You taught me that stuff when I was fourteen. You practically adopted him just like you did Ruby."

"She has a point. She has many points," Amelia said.

Jeremy shot her yet another pleading look but she wasn't moved.

Hedy huffed. "You need to apologize to Mike. Not me."

"I...can't," Jeremy said through his teeth.

"Jere-!"

"I will, one day," he corrected. "But I have to mean it, Hedy. It's not right but I just…I just can't apologize yet. I need time to adjust to this."

Amelia softened a little. "He needs time, Hedy," she murmured through the door. "It was unexpected and, well, you shouldn't have kept it a secret. I'm pretty sure everyone was a bit hurt by that. But you know how Jeremy reacts to anything he might perceive as a threat to you. Everyone made mistakes in this situation. Well, except Mike. He's just caught in the middle."

Hedy was very quiet for a moment. "Mike's an angel," she said insistently, then paused. "I shouldn't have kept it a secret. I was worried about the what ifs," she admitted. "'What if it doesn't work out?' I didn't want anyone to be angry with him if we broke up."

"You can't control everyone's reactions around you, Hedy," Amelia said gently.

Hedy let there be another stretch of silence. "I'm still mad and I'm staying in here for a bit. But I'm not as mad and I might give you two a hug later if I can swallow my pride."

"Alright," Jeremy conceded quietly.

Mike wasn't too sure over how safe he was in Freddys right now. Hedy was still giving Jeremy a bit of a cold shoulder and the reactions from the bots to the story had been varied.

Goldy smacked Jeremy over the head and yelled at him while Spring looked disappointed in him.

Puppet looked amused.

Freddy, Chica and Bonnie looked horrified while Foxy seemed to be taking notes.

Toby laughed, making Mangle smack him too. Chi fussed over Mike and Teddy just looked exasperated.

Then there was BB.

"I don't get it. You didn't seem mad when Ruby did it to me?"

"Ruby buried you?!" Mike asked in horror.

"No. She locked me in the craft box and hid me in the vents for a few days."

"Days?!"

Ruby shrugged. "He was irritating me."

"You can't do that to people!"

"Don't tell me what I can and can't do!" Ruby bristled. He'd noticed she did that anytime someone directly told her she couldn't do something. (Note to self, tell her not to do something indirectly).

Foxy intervened and distracted her with a sword fight.

Mike watched everyone go about their business mournfully.

"My girlfriend's brother and sister hate me…"

"Not really," Goldy appeared next to him, giving him a fright. "Ruby doesn't react well to change. It's a psychological thing she's talked to her therapist about before. As for Jeremy, I remember how badly the whole thing with Michael screwed him up. Finding out Hedy was secretly dating a new guy named Michael? Yeah I think he had a mental break."

Mike looked a little dubious and shifted uncomfortably. "I never liked being called Michael. It was a fine enough name, but I just never liked it. Now it's practically ruined for me. I don't like sharing a name with…" He tried to come up with a good way to describe Michael.

Puppet, always ready to talk shit about the shit ghost, looked up and barely hesitated. "A bitch."

Mike blinked. "Yeah, that." He frowned off towards Ruby. "I guess my karma doesn't count for much with trauma in mind." He glanced at the bear. "What about you?"

Goldy smiled. "I'm a simple person, Mike."

Mike nearly snorted at that. Simple?

"I see you being the good person you are -sticking around for us even when your life is in danger and there's nothing in it for you. And I see Hedy happy. That's enough for me. Besides…" she scoffed. "Why should anyone tell a couple of good adult humans whether they can love? Unless it's dangerous, of course."

Mike stared. "How the hell are you more reasonable than most people?"

"Heh. We are people, Mike."

"I dunno," BB groused, "No one seeming to care about me getting locked in the craft box says otherwise. I'm not a person, apparently."

"I think you qualify as a gremlin, BB," Spring said. "Not a person." At BB's sour expression, he backtracked. "I'm sorry! You're a person just like us! It was just a joke."

"Ah! SPRING! I don't want a hug!" shouted BB. "NO! I know it was a joke! LET GO!"

"Nah," Spring said, but he had a suspicious grin.

Mike shook his head and looked back at Goldy. "I mean people other than you."

Goldy watched Spring with a fond expression. Ruby was actually a good influence on getting him to open up again and Hedy's support helped a lot. She turned to look back at Mike.
"Hedy and Ruby don't see any difference between us and humans, you know."

"I know," he said. "I don't either. Not to call him out, but I think Jeremy struggles occasionally."

"He would," Puppet said. It didn't sound like guilt, but there was acknowledgment to the trauma he caused Jeremy.

"What Michael did to Hedy messed him up, but so did we," Goldy agreed softly. "Jeremy's pretty good at pretending he's stable, but it's a front."

"Right...Uh. You didn't really answer my question."

Goldy looked at Mike. "What question?"

"How come you…" he gestured at her and the other bots, "...Are more reasonable than most other people?"

"Don't jinx it," Puppet muttered.

"Puppet, shush. For the Toys I think it's a mix of liking you and not much experience dealing with some normal human things. Everyone else? Eh. I think we're just used to things changing around us."

She looked over to where the Originals were standing and watching Hedy's passive aggressiveness towards her brother.

"We've seen a lot Mike. Finding out that Hedy is dating was a bit surprising, but that was it. Remember, we like her, but admittedly, the Originals are more attached to Ruby. If Ruby had been revealed to be dating secretly, they'd have thrown a fit."
"Foxy would have probably done worse than bury them," Puppet agreed.

They both looked at Foxy and Mike had to admit he could see that. Foxy was ridiculously overprotective of the teen, and unlike Hedy, Ruby did little to stop it. She actually thrived under the attention.

As he thought about it, it was a slightly uncomfortable thought to imagine Ruby dating, for a myriad of reasons. He wouldn't fucking bury some poor dude, but he probably would feel the same discomfort if his little sister started dating.

He needed to call Mary sometime. Check in on her.

He pulled himself out of his thoughts to frown, barely noticing when Puppet left to go rearrange his Prize Corner like he usually did before opening.

"Mike? What is it?" Goldy asked.

"Should I tell Jeremy I have claustrophobia?" he asked. "The whole thing was a bit more upsetting than he probably intended."

Goldy's eyes widened. "Yes. Absolutely yes. He wouldn't have done what he did if he knew. He needs to know that was actually scary for you." She shot the older man a glare that softened when she saw how he was looking at his still-irritated-sister.

He did look like a sad puppy that had been scolded for chewing on the slippers. She also noted that Ruby looked confused by the entire thing. (She'd also heavily cut back on the manipulating thing when Goldy took her aside to explain that was not what a person did to people they cared about. The teen was trying to have healthy relationships, but she still struggled sometimes. It was sometimes surprising to see how little Ruby understood about how to act toward people.)

Goldy sighed to herself. She didn't think this was anywhere near over, but she was glad these idiots were all actually talking to each other. She hoped Ruby took note of that before getting into as much trouble with Hedy as Jeremy had.