A/N: You guys seemed to really enjoy the plot twist I came up with for the end of Nightmare's arc. That makes me so very happy to hear, thank you all! :D

Nightmare's threat has passed, the demon lord's shadow gone from the family at last. But he's left quite the mark on the little ghost children, and now it's time for them to deal with the legacy that Nightmare has left behind.

Rebiele: to clarify, Nightmare was NOT making a win-win situation for both himself and the ghosts. He was only making sure that HE would win. Whether or not the family stayed strong or broke apart was not his concern.

The children themselves have kind of been out of focus ever since Nightmare started his attack. I think it's time we switched our attention back to them, wouldn't you agree? Specifically on Liz (for obvious reasons) and, this might surprise you, but also on Gabe. I always interpreted Gabe to be the "leader" of the kids after Mary since Freddy was the "leader" of the animatronics, even though I don't think there's any direct evidence supporting this, but it makes sense. And this chapter will show you why.

Chapter 25 – Picking Up the Pieces

The room was in complete silence as the ghosts looked uncertainly at each other. Mike and Nightmare had moved to the kitchen after the demon lord deactivated the fire barriers, Mike utterly refusing to traumatize his children with the details no matter how enraged he might be at William Afton. They didn't hear anything for several moments, and then they heard Nightmare laugh in the kitchen, promising that he would use every single suggestion Mike had presented to "DRAIN EVERY DROP OF AGONY AND DESPAIR FROM AFTON FOR THE NEXT THOUSAND YEARS." They could hear a rush of flame, and then a few seconds later, Mike came back alone.

One look at the children gathered around him, and Mike was already beginning to regret exploding into rage the way he had. Not because he cared about William Afton – he didn't give the slightest shit about what happened to the man now that he had lost his malevolent wager. But he could see it in the ghosts' eyes – they were terrified. Not just because of Nightmare, or even the revelation that William Afton had tried to torment them from the depths of Hell. That fear and terror was because of him, and how monstrous he could become if he let his dark side run rampant. Mike felt guilt gnaw at his insides as the children waited nervously for him to say something. He was a terrible father if his own children feared him.

"He's gone," Mike declared, and all the ghosts breathed out a sigh of relief. "Nightmare's gone. He won't bother us anymore." He sat down heavily on the couch and began to groan loudly. "Urrrrrrrgggghhhhh…."

"Dad?" Cassidy asked worriedly. "Are you all right? What's wrong?"

"I was running on a giant adrenaline rush the entire time," Mike muttered in reply. "The rush is over now that Nightmare's out of here, and I just feel so…goddamn…tired…gah."

"You need rest, Mike…" Mary insisted, "and you need it now."

"Yeah dad, you should get some sleep," Jeremy agreed. "You definitely deserve it."

"You're probably right," Mike admitted. "I might need some help getting up the stairs though. Liz, Mary, would you mind helping me get up to my room?"

"Of course," Mary agreed, and Liz nodded her willingness to help. The Marionette put her shoulder under Mike's and lifted him up, while Liz did the same. Mike barely registered the fact that Liz seemed a lot stronger while in her Scrap Baby form as the two of them carried Mike up to his bedroom between them. Mike sighed heavily as he leaned back onto his bed.

"I'm sorry…" he suddenly said to Liz.

The ghost looked up at him in confusion. "What?"

"I'm sorry," Mike repeated, his tone laden with regret. "Mary and I…we both knew that you killed your brother from the beginning. But when you came here…you were going through a horrific depression worse than anything I'd ever been through. We kept that part of your past hidden from you because we didn't want you to break completely."

"It's my fault…" Mary interrupted. "Mike wanted to tell you sooner rather than later, but I thought it would be better to wait until you had gotten better and been a part of the family for longer," she sighed. "Mike warned me that I would regret waiting too long…but I didn't think that something like this could possibly happen."

Liz shook her head and looked down. "It's not your fault," she replied quietly. "I'm not blaming either of you for this. The only person who deserves to suffer for what I did to my brother…is me."

Mike felt his heart sink. He had hoped that his challenge against Nightmare earlier would be enough to rouse Liz out of the despair that the demon had caused, but either she'd been too absorbed in her own grief and missed it entirely, or it just hadn't been enough.

"I…I knew I was a monster," Liz continued, her voice cracking. "I just didn't know how…how much of a monster I actually was."

Mary's eyes glowed and she scanned Liz briefly. "You're not a monster," she firmly asserted. "We told you this before, and we'll say it again. Your ability to transform into Scrap Baby isn't evil or corrupting by its nature. It's simply a power you possess, to use however you wish."

Liz shook her head. "That's not what I mean. I murdered and betrayed the only person in my old family who cared about me. What…what kind of person am I? I feel like every time I use my regular human form I'm just lying to myself and everyone around me about who and what I really am!"

Mike didn't have an answer to that. He'd had no idea just how badly her mental state had been shattered ever since she'd been freed from her corruption. Hell, he hadn't even understood what the core problem was until now.

Scrap Baby. It wasn't just the animatronic that Liz had possessed and become. Only now could he see that to her, it was a representation of every evil act she'd ever done, corrupted or otherwise, and everything she hated about herself. And she couldn't separate herself from it, no matter how much she wanted to. Even her very voice had transformed from her original English-accented one to Baby's American one in her new form, something that Mike hadn't noticed until just now.

"I wanted to see him," Liz whispered brokenly, black ichor welling in her robotic green eyes. "More than anything, I wanted to see Mikey again. But now…why would he come near me? He must hate me almost as much as he hates my old dad."

"Those were Nightmare's words," Mary gently tried to comfort her, "words that have no basis in fact. I would not trust what the demon says no matter how quote-on-quote honest he claims to be."

Liz tried to wipe away her tears with her arm, though the black streaks kept flowing regardless. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how I can move on from this," she looked up to her father desperately. "Dad…what do I do?"

Mike could only look at her sadly. Throughout his entire life, it had been incredibly rare for him to feel truly helpless. He'd always prided himself on planning the important parts of his life out, taking control of every situation as best he could and trying to get the best possible outcome. But now, as his adopted daughter wept in front of him…he hadn't felt this helpless since his father had beaten him as a child. He didn't know what to do, any more than she did. And as much as he wanted to, he couldn't hide the truth from her, not now. Not after everything had gone so disastrously wrong the last time.

"I don't know, Liz…" he confessed, hating the fact that he had to admit defeat. "I don't know…"

Liz's shoulders slumped and she looked down despondently at the ground. There was a time when Mary had thought that she would never look at Scrap Baby with anything other than hatred or revulsion. She'd never wanted to be proven wrong like this. "I don't blame you for that, either."

Mike tried to say something, but he felt a burst of pain and exhaustion erupt in his head. "Arrrrggghhhh…" he growled. Mary immediately rushed over to help get him more comfortable, and Liz decided to leave. Her father deserved better than to be burdened with problems that were her fault to begin with.

She silently floated over to her room and sat down, leaning back into the opposite wall. Her tears started to silently flow again as she slumped down to the floor.

"You shouldn't have saved me, Mikey…" she mumbled. She raised her claw and stared at it for a moment with utter loathing, and then lowered it to the ground. "You should have just left me to rot in the dark. You deserved your life, your freedom, more than I ever did. Monsters like Springtrap, like me…pain and death are the only things we deserve."

"You don't deserve either of those any more than we did."

Liz recognized the voice almost immediately, though she was surprised to hear it. "Gabe…"

"Do you mind if I join you?" Gabe asked. Liz wordlessly gestured towards the spot next to her, which Gabe took as an invitation to sit down. He floated over to Liz and sat down. "It's been a rough night, hasn't it?"

The words were spoken in a light-hearted tone, but Liz could hear the concern and worry in his voice regardless. "Yeah…"

Neither of them said anything for several seconds. And then, Liz suddenly started speaking. "I remember…when I first came here. You and Jeremy…neither of you really trusted me. You didn't know for sure that I wasn't like Springtrap."

"…"

Liz lowered her head into her knees. "You…you were right about me," she whispered. "You were both right about me from the beginning."

"No, I wasn't," Gabe answered so forcefully that Liz looked up at him in surprise. "I was completely wrong. I was so wrong, it would almost be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. We were sent here to better ourselves, and yet I keep making the same goddamn mistake again and again!"

"What mistake?" Liz's curiosity briefly overrode her despair.

"Ever since I died, I kept putting the Purple Guy's actions on other people's heads," Gabe explained. "It's the same mistake that killed so many innocent Night Guards, it's the same mistake that nearly got our dad killed…and it's the same mistake I made with you." He shook his head. "Fritz was always the joker who never took anything seriously, but he was more mature about this than I ever was. It shouldn't have taken you literally trying to attack a demon for me to realize this!"

He looked straight into Liz's eyes. "I remember something you said to us, back when we were looking through those pictures of Dad's past. You said you wouldn't judge us for anything we did to Dad back at the pizzeria. Do you remember that?" he asked.

Liz nodded almost imperceptibly. "Yeah…that hasn't changed. Especially not after…what happened tonight."

"Then I don't care about anything you did in the past," Gabe asserted. "I don't care about anything you did at that last pizzeria when you looked like this, and I don't care about the fact that you accidentally killed your brother when you had no idea what was going on."

He took a deep breath. "I care about what you do in the here and now, Liz. I care about the fact that tonight, when Nightmare grabbed Dad, you were the ONLY person brave enough to try and stop him."

Liz shook her head. "It's not like that even mattered in the end," she muttered. "Nightmare had something entirely different planned. He was never going to harm Dad to begin with."

"But you didn't know that, Liz!" Gabe interjected. "You didn't know any of that at the time, none of us did! As far as we knew, Nightmare was going to kill Dad or horribly torture him, and you tried to save him! You tried to do the right thing while the rest of us just sat back and watched! Isn't that the definition of being a hero?"

"What? I'm not a hero!" Liz protested. Gabe was calling her a hero? The idea was almost laughable, when she was the exact opposite. "I'm not even close to one!"

"You were braver and better than any of us were tonight," the Freddy inhabitant gently interrupted her. "That's a fact. And it wasn't just Nightmare you were afraid of, were you?"

"…"

"You were afraid of us," Gabe vocalized what they both knew to be true. "You were afraid that if we saw this, we'd hate you. That we'd only see what the Purple Guy tried to turn you into and throw you out of our family."

"...I wasn't just trying to hide this from you," Liz admitted wearily. "I was trying to hide it from myself, too. I was trying to hide the truth about what I am from everyone around me."

Gabe shook his head. "I might have been freaked out a bit if you had shown this to us earlier, without Nightmare stealing the show, but I can't really blame you for that." He sighed. "I'd have probably done the same if I were you. And the truth? The truth is that appearances and reality don't have anything to do with each other. Dad was still a teenager when he did his shift at Freddy's, but survived for 20 days in a Hell that killed people years older than him in 3. We're a bunch of ghosts that were secretly inside those animatronics for decades. Nightmare acted like he wanted to break us apart, but he had something entirely different planned from the beginning. And you?" He looked straight in Liz's eyes. "You're the hero who tried to save Dad from a demon lord. You just look a little creepier right now than the princess or the knight in shining armor that you usually hear about in most fairy tales."

"That's the understatement of the century," Liz muttered, but Gabe could see that she didn't seem quite as depressed as she had been seconds earlier. He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, eager to keep the momentum he had gathered going.

"Liz…I might not have trusted you when you first came here, and that was before I knew you could turn into this. But now?" he smiled reassuringly. "I trust you completely. I'd trust you with my life if I still had one. Any doubts I had about you died the moment you attacked Nightmare with your claw."

Liz sniffed. "You saw what Nightmare showed me. You saw how I murdered and betrayed Mikey. How can you trust me after seeing that? Do I even deserve to be a part of a family anymore?"

"Do we deserve to have Mike as a Dad when we tried to kill him as a teenager over and over again?" Gabe countered firmly. "You have more of a right to be here than any of us ever did, except for maybe Mary. And like I told you before, I don't give a damn about anything you did before you came here. And I don't care whether or not Mikey thinks you deserve to be his sister or not. Because after what I saw tonight, one thing I can say for sure…is that I'm honored to call you mine."

Before Liz could say anything, Gabe leaned forward and wrapped her tightly in a hug. Liz sat there stunned for several seconds, and then after a seeming eternity, she closed her eyes and returned her adoptive brother's embrace. As she wrapped her left arm around him, tears began to flow from her cheeks again in earnest, but for the first time that night, the emotion behind them was something brighter than despair.

"It'll be all right, Liz…" Gabe comfortingly reassured her. "Everything will be all right. Everyone here cares about you. You're one of us now, and you always will be."

Liz was still too overcome with emotion to say anything, overwhelmed by the fact that the ghost she thought would hate her the most had done the exact opposite. Gabe let go of his hug and got to his feet. "I've gotta go. I've got a lot to talk about with the rest of the guys, and I can't stay around as much as I want to. Nightmare wasn't nearly as harsh towards us as he was to you, but there's still a lot of things we need to deal with, and there's no way in Hell that I'm gonna add our problems to yours." He pat her lightly on the shoulder. "Get some rest, Liz. You deserve it the most out of all of us."

He started floating towards the door. "Gabe…"

Gabe stopped and turned around to look at Liz. The tears were still there, but for the first time that night Liz was genuinely smiling, and he could see the warmth and gratitude even through Scrap Baby's grotesque mask. "Thank you."

He returned the smile with one of his own. "You're welcome," he breathed, and then he was gone. Liz decided to take her brother's advice and slowly closed her eyes, despite her fears over what tortuous visions and horrific nightmares she would face in the wake of Nightmare's cruelty. But it seemed the night had some mercy left after all. There would be nothing to torment her in the world of dreams.

/

Gabe wearily floated down the stairs and back down to the living room. After Liz and Mary had helped Mike up to his room and neither had returned, he'd decided to go up and see how they were doing. Fritz had wanted to be the one to check on Liz, probably cause they had always been very close to each other, but something in Gabe's mind had urged him to be the one instead. Considering what had just happened, he was very glad he'd followed his instincts.

The other ghosts were waiting for him when he returned. "Are they all right?" Susie asked immediately.

Gabe nodded. "Dad's gone off to sleep right now, and Mary's taking care of him. Liz..." he struggled to find the right words. "…she's in a rough spot, to put it lightly. I think she's doing as good as we can expect, though."

"Guess that's the best we can hope for, then," Jeremy muttered.

"Yeah…" Gabe sat down, and then he looked up at everyone's faces. "Before we start talking, I have to ask…does anybody here blame Dad for everything that's happened because he set the animatronics' AIs to zero?"

Every single ghost looked both horrified and insulted at the question. "How could you even ASK us that?" Susie exclaimed as though Gabe had spit in her face.

"You saw what Nightmare showed us!" Jeremy added vehemently. "All the innocent people we killed. You said it yourself, Gabe. We NEEDED to be stopped, and Dad was the one to stop us. None of this was ever his fault."

"Only an ungrateful little shit would hate on Dad after everything he's done for us," Fritz snapped. "I know why you brought the question up, Gabe, but if you ever ask us anything like that again, I swear to God I'll beat the everloving crap out of you!" The look on his face made it abundantly clear that he wasn't joking.

Gabe sighed in relief. "Okay…" he replied, "I just had to make sure, you know? Anyway…we've got a lot to talk about, don't we? About what Nightmare showed us?"

"Yeah…" Jeremy agreed. "Nightmare might have tried to screw with the truth, like Dad kept saying, but that doesn't make what he said about us wrong. We did kill a lot of people, and we haven't done a damn thing to show that we've gotten better."

"It's even worse when you look at the other two ghosts living with us," Susie added. "Remember, Mary and Liz never attacked Dad at all so they don't owe him nearly as much. Mary's had an entire year to help out Mike whenever he needed it, and Liz literally attacked a freaking demon for him! What have we done?" she lowered her head in shame. "Nothing."

Gabe nodded. "You're right, Sus. And we need to change that. Nightmare told us that we should have gone out of our way to help Mike with his life. And as weird as it sounds to agree with a demon, I think we should do just that.

"How do we do that, though?" Cassidy asked. "Dad's pretty much always done his own thing, and he seems pretty happy with himself. It doesn't seem like there's much we can help with him."

"He always does his own thing," Gabe repeated. "There's your answer, Cass. He always makes his own meals, does the laundry, cleans the rooms, he does all of that by himself. Before, he didn't have a choice. But now…"

"…now we can do that for him, instead," Fritz finished. "Holy crap, Gabe, that's perfect!"

"Dad's not getting any younger," Jeremy added. "Just imagine how much easier his life would be if he didn't have to take care of the entire house by himself. He'd be so happy!"

"We can't let Dad know why we're doing this, though," Gabe interrupted them. "Otherwise, he'd try and stop us."

"I'm more than happy to help, but what about Mary and Liz?" Susie asked. "Should we tell them about what we're gonna do tomorrow?"

"Oh, hell no!" Fritz growled. "They've already done PLENTY tonight! Neither of them need to do jack shit, as far as I'm concerned!"

Gabe raised a hand to calm his friend down. "I don't think it's that simple, Fritz. For Mary, sure. But it's more complicated for Liz."

"The hell do you mean?" the Foxy inhabitant asked impatiently.

"Well, from what I can tell, Liz has always been kind of a daddy's girl. I don't mean that as a bad thing," he quickly clarified, as Fritz bristled at what he probably thought was an insult. "It's not a good or bad thing by itself. Yeah, it was the reason why Liz tried to follow the Purple Guy and be another child murderer, but it's also the reason why she fought a freaking demon to save Dad."

"Well, the difference is that Dad deserves that kind of love and the Purple Guy definitely doesn't," Susie commented.

"True, but you're missing the point," Gabe interrupted. "The point is that she'll do some extreme things, both good and bad, to keep whoever she sees as her Dad happy or safe. Don't you think she'll see something like cleaning the dishes as easy in comparison, and something she'll do whether we ask her to or not?"

Fritz's anger visibly deflated. "True…" he admitted.

"And another thing," Gabe added. "She kept that whole Scrap Baby transformation thing hidden from us cause she thought we'd hate her for it. She's hidden it pretty well up until now, but I think she was afraid we'd kick her out of the family or at the very least stay away from her. Obviously, that's a load of bullshit, but if we stop her from helping us out tomorrow, how do you think she's going to interpret that?"

Fritz's eyes widened as he realized what Gabe was saying. "Fuck…" he muttered. "Still doesn't feel right asking her to help with chores after all the crap that happened to her tonight."

Gabe shook his head. "Well, we don't have to ask her to do anything. All I'm saying is that if she wants to help out, don't stop her from joining."

"That sounds good to me," Fritz replied, and all of the other ghosts made similar noises of agreement.

"It sounds like we all agree on the same things, then," Gabe commented. He looked around at the other ghosts with a determined gaze. "Dad welcomed us into this house and gave us all a family," he declared. "It's time for us to show that we deserve it. We owe it to God, we owe it to the ones who finally freed us, we owe it to every Night Guard we ever attacked or killed…

He closed his eyes, "…and we owe it to Dad."

/

This took me quite a long time to write for quite a few reasons, not the least of which was because my WiFi decided to fuck off and die at the absolute worst time. Cause that's always fun.

Liz really needed a goddamn break after the mountain-load of crap I put her through in Chapter 22. I could have had Mary be the one to comfort Liz in her room instead of Gabe, but I thought Gabe was the better choice. Remember, he and Jeremy didn't initially trust Liz when she first came into the family, while Mary did. I think the scene has more of an emotional impact if the person comforting Liz was someone who didn't trust her at first, but definitely does now. But maybe that's just me.

Even though her connection with Baby isn't evil or corrupting anymore, you can imagine why Liz is really not happy about it. Yeah, her "physical" strength (aka ability to interact with the physical world) is much stronger when she's Scrap Baby, but that doesn't really make her feel better about it all. She was probably hoping that God would get rid of every trace of Baby entirely while He de-corrupted her, but He didn't. There are reasons for that. Both in the past…and in the future. But that's for later down the road.

Hope you guys enjoyed!