A/N: Another big chapter coming in hot for you guys 😊
Superior: The gravestone in the background is probably the Puppet with the bottom five being the murdered kids (Liz died separately from them and was technically their enemy in FNAF6, even though she isn't now for obvious reasons). Also, I'm one of the people who actually doesn't think the Bite Victim is the ghost in Golden Freddy. The first game has Golden Freddy accompanied by a little girl's laughter, for one thing. More substantially, the Bite Victim's body was never stuffed inside of an animatronic body like the other murdered children - he died inside a hospital far away from Freddy's, if I recall correctly.
Trigger Warning: Depression. Yep…it's one of THOSE chapters.
Chapter 31 – Return to Freddy's Part 2
"Did you ever go to the original Freddy's, dad?" Liz asked as Mike drove back onto the main road. She was now back in her regular human form, a change that she felt significantly happier about even though nobody could see her anyway thanks to her invisibility. The sun had set while they were in the 1993 pizzeria, and by the time they had gotten back onto the road night had already fallen.
Mike shook his head. "Nope," he blithely answered. "I was still dealing with the absolute clusterfuck that was my childhood back when that place was still open."
Liz shuddered. "I don't know how to feel about the fact that you can joke about that so easily," she muttered.
"Like I told you guys before," Mike replied as they cruised down the road. "My sense of humor is kind of warped. That's the only thing about my terrible childhood that's affected my adult life on a regular basis. All in all, I think I lucked out."
"And we lucked out too," Liz thought as Mike pulled into the parking lot of the original Freddy's. Just like the 1993 Freddy's location, the building was completely abandoned and any decorative aspects had long since rotted away into oblivion. One thing Mike noted was that the building was significantly larger than the pizzeria he had worked at, although externally there weren't any noticeable differences otherwise. Without waiting for Mike to ask, Liz shifted to her Scrap Baby form and the two of them got out of the car.
"So far, everything seems to be the same," Mike commented as they approached the chained-up front entrance. "I think I remember Mary telling me that Fazbear's Fright had a couple of Toy animatronic heads. But I don't know if they picked them up from here or from wherever they scrapped the toys."
"The toy animatronics…" Liz's head whipped up as a horrifying thought suddenly occurred to her. "Were there…were there MORE children that my old dad killed?" she gasped. "Children that possessed the toys too?"
Mike shook his head. "Nah," he answered, and Liz breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Only the originals were possessed. The Purple Guy fucked with the toys' facial recognition programming, but they weren't ever haunted. And thank God for that, because the tragedy of Freddy's is bad enough without adding five more murdered kids into the catastrophe. Besides," he added with a chuckle, "there's no chance in Hell I'd be able to take care of twelve ghost kids."
Liz giggled half-heartedly as she approached the front door. Having already done this once before, it took her significantly less time now to cut open the chains blocking the door with her claw. And just like before, Mike pushed at the door and it swung inward, leading into complete darkness.
"We're gonna have to be a bit more careful this time around," Mike told Liz as they futilely attempted to scout the area from outside again. "I knew my way around the 1993 Freddy's, but I have no idea what's inside this building." He took out his cell phone and spent a few seconds moving through Internet pages before he finally found what he was looking for. "Best we can work with is this map of the place. You ready for this, Liz?"
"Ready as I'll ever be…" Liz muttered as she followed Mike into the pizzeria. Once again the door closed behind them, and once again they were plunged into darkness with only Mike's flashlight and Scrap Baby's eyelights to help them navigate through the shadows.
Mike flashed his light around the room they were currently in, which was just as large as the other pizzeria's dining room if not larger. Back when it had been just her keeping him company, Mary had told him how the dining hall had not only been the main place for eating pizza and celebrating birthdays with the animatronics, but also contained a game corner with a few rides and a prize corner where she had handed out prizes to children and kept her silent vigil as the Marionette. He couldn't see the entirety of the room with the meager light that he had, but he could already tell that most of the objects and decorations in this Dining Area had suffered the same fate as the ones in the 1993 pizzeria. "Damn…they really cleaned this place out."
Liz looked over in the direction of the Game Area, her supernatural nature granting her keener vision. Her eyes widened. "Maybe not, dad! Look!"
She pointed out with her animatronic hand. "There's gift boxes over there!" she declared.
"Wait, WHAT?" Mike trained his flashlight in the direction of Liz's finger. In the distance, he could see three large gift boxes stacked together. "Holy crap, you're right!" he exclaimed.
"You don't think…they stuffed our family's bodies in those gift boxes, do you?" Liz asked, both excited and nervous at the prospect of what they would find if they opened them.
Mike shook his head. "Doubtful. One of the reports I read about the tragedy was about complaints to the health inspector about the mess the dead bodies left behind. In those gift boxes, there's a decent chance that they'd still leave a noticeable mess or at the very least smell really bad." He sighed. "Still…couldn't hurt to look anyway just to be sure."
They made their way over to the music boxes just to be sure. Liz carefully opened every single lid, wondering if she was about to be greeted with the corpses of her new family. But just like the animatronics in the other pizzeria, all she found was empty space. This time, however, neither she nor Mike were fazed by the failure…the likelihood that the bodies were in these boxes had been low to begin with.
"Still…" Mike said as Liz put the lids back on. "We're gonna have to check every room here. I just don't know what to expect since I've never been here before." He led Liz over to the room adjacent to the Prize Corner and checked his map. "This place was once called the Kids' Cove."
"It seems like it's just an empty, smaller version of the Dining Hall," Liz commented. She scanned around with her eyelights. "I don't see anything, not even any gift boxes this time around."
"Maybe we should check the walls," Mike suggested. "Check for any cracks that might hide a secret compartment." He looked around dubiously. "Maybe not here, though. Place seems a bit too exposed to the public for that."
"Can't hurt to take a look around just in case," Liz replied. The two of them spent the next few minutes looking for a hidden compartment in the walls, but neither of them found anything noteworthy. They returned to the Dining Hall and continued their search. Mike even climbed onto the Show Stage to see if the secret they were looking for was hiding in place sight, but once again their search proved fruitless.
"Hmm…" he mused, "…nothing so far. Wait…" he snapped his fingers. "I got it. If there's a hidden safe room in this pizzeria, the best place for it to be would probably be the Parts/Service Room. It's hidden away from the rest of the pizzeria and only employees should have access to it. Not to mention the fact that it's even bigger than the one in the other pizzeria. I think we should check there next."
Liz was about to agree, when a sudden thought occurred to her. She smacked her face with her ghostly robotic hand. "I'm an idiot!" she shouted. "I can just FLOAT through the walls to find the hidden places we're looking for!"
Mike's eyes widened. "Why didn't I think of that?" he gaped. "You're a genius, Liz! When we get over there, let's use that strategy to save us some time!"
Liz grinned at the praise, and the two of them made their way into the Main Hall with high spirits. Mike scanned his phone. "It looks like the room we're looking for is right in front of us, over there." He pointed to a door in the distance. "Looks like we might resolve this faster than I thought we would."
He approached the door and pulled at the doorknob. To his surprise, however, the door didn't budge. "What? Locked?" he asked in confusion. "But…the Fazbear's Fright people…surely they cleaned out everything inside here for their props. And if they didn't care to lock the front door, why would they lock this one?"
"It doesn't matter, dad, remember?" Liz gently interrupted him. "We still have our other plan, right?"
Mike took a breath and nodded. "Yeah, you're right, Liz. Go right ahead."
Liz approached the door and attempted to phase through it…only to run smack into it as though she were a normal, living person. "Wh…what?" she gasped. "I…I can't go through the door!" She tried to enter through the wall next to the door, but her actions met with the same failure. "This isn't working! How? I should be able to float through just fine as a ghost!"
"Maybe it's because you're Scrap Baby right now?" Mike suggested. "Maybe you'll have better luck in human form?"
Liz shifted to her human form and tried again, but her attempts to go through both the door and the adjacent walls ended in failure again. She transformed back into Scrap Baby. "It's not working!"
At this point, alarm bells were ringing in Mike's head. The door being locked could be explained easily enough, but the room itself keeping an incorporeal ghost out? This wasn't just a simple lockout. Something supernatural was preventing them from accessing the Parts/Service Room. Something…or someone. And he had a sneaking suspicion that what they were seeking was inside that very room.
"What do we do, dad?" Liz's worried voice broke through his thoughts.
Mike shook his head. "The best thing we can do right now is go to the office. If the desk is still there, then there just might be a key to the Parts/Service room inside it. But to be honest, Liz, I feel like there's…something missing. Something we're not seeing. And I don't know what it is." As he guided Liz down the Office Hallway, the girl couldn't help but think back to the strange vision she'd seen on that poster and the feeling of being watched she'd experienced back in the 1993 pizzeria. Could that thing, whatever it was, have anything to do with why they couldn't get into the Parts/Service Room here?
The two of them entered the 1987 pizzeria's office and scanned the area with their lights. Mike was very glad that he had worked in the other restaurant's office rather than this one, because he honestly wasn't sure he would've been able to survive without the security doors protecting him. He could see two vent entrances on either side of the room with two light switches on top of them. Despite the uncanny atmosphere, he rolled his eyes. "What kind of building has vents that you can literally crawl into?" he asked. "For fuck's sake, a bunch of kids could crawl into those and mess with the vent system or even get hurt! Then again," he added sarcastically, "maybe expecting basic safety features is too much to ask for the Freddy Fazbear corporation."
"You…really don't have much respect for the management of Freddy's, do you?" Liz asked, welcoming the lighthearted distraction from her dad.
"Not in the slightest, Liz," Mike replied in a deadpan tone, earning a giggle from her. He flashed his light onto the center of the room and was surprised to find that, unlike the Office in Freddy's, the desk was still there. There was absolutely nothing on it, but the object itself had not been removed. "Well, that's a surprise. At least I can try and look for the key to the Parts/Service Room now. If this desk was gone I'd really have no idea what to do." He walked over to behind the desk and knelt down to start rummaging through it. "Nothing here…nothing here…"
It took him several seconds to realize that Liz had stopped talking. "You all right, Liz?"
"Uh…dad?" Her voice was filled with nervousness and fear that hadn't been there before, instantly putting Mike on full alert. "D-dad?"
"What's wrong, Liz?"
"W-we're not alone in here a-anymore…"
Mike's head instantly shot up above the desk and realized that they now indeed had company. But it wasn't a human or even an animatronic that had joined them. A being made entirely of shadows stood a few meters away, staring at them with an unfathomable emotion through the blank white eyes that, apart from a row of white teeth, were the only lights in its otherwise black frame. Mike didn't know who or what this thing was, but he couldn't afford to show any fear, especially not in front of Liz. "Who are you?" he demanded.
"Who am I?" the figure repeated in a voice as deep as the darkness that created it. Strangely, it didn't seem to emanate evil, or at least not any that Mike could detect. He had stood in the presence of Nightmare himself and had felt the demon's malevolence almost as though it were palpable object. This was something altogether different, or at least that's what his instincts were telling him. Still, Mike wasn't stupid enough to let his guard down. "My true name is utterly incomprehensible to the minds of mortals. Perhaps the name that best fits me in your tongue would be…Shadow Bonnie. Yes…Shadow Bonnie would do."
Mike could kind of see it – now that he looked more carefully, the being did seem to have a Bonnie-like appearance. But it wasn't a form of Bonnie he was familiar with – maybe this thing looked like Toy Bonnie? Before he could think any further, Shadow Bonnie began to float closer towards the center of the Office.
The moment he did so, Liz instantly sprang into action. There was no way she was going to let anything harm her dad while she could do anything to stop it. In a second, she was in front of Mike, glaring at Shadow Bonnie with glowing green eyes and her animatronic fangs gnashed together in a snarl. She moved her claw out in front of her into a battle position and snapped it twice, making it clear that she was fully ready to attack. "Get away from my dad!" she shouted. "If you want to hurt him, you'll have to get through me first!"
The figure stopped, though its expression didn't change. "You will not be needing that here," he rasped. "I have no intention of harming either of you. And even if I did, I am beyond your ability to comprehend, and beyond your ability to destroy. I, however…I know exactly who you are." He raised a hand and pointed a finger at Mike. "You…you are the Chosen Guardian. The one ordained to bring those who were lost to the greatest of tragedies before their time back into the light." He moved his finger over to Liz. "And you…you are the Penitent Daughter. The one who seeks to cleanse the taint left behind by the legacy of a monster and to atone for the darkness of your past. I have been waiting for you."
"Then you know why we are here?" Mike asked.
Shadow Bonnie nodded almost imperceptibly. "The children…their souls are now free, and yet their bodies remain broken and desecrated. They have not been given the respect that is due to all the dead, and it is time for that wrong to finally be corrected." He beckoned to them. "Follow me…I shall lead you to that which you seek."
Mike had a feeling he knew where Shadow Bonnie was taking them, and he was also aware that the bizarre entity could possibly be leading them into a trap. But something deep within him told him that he could trust Shadow Bonnie, that his intentions were genuine. Mike and Liz wordlessly followed it back through the Office Hallway and into the Main Hallway, back in front of the locked Parts/Service Rooms. Shadow Bonnie looked at the locked door. "Let the shadows of the past be dispelled!" he intoned. Mike and Liz instantly felt a shift in the atmosphere of the pizzeria, and the door suddenly glowed with a bright light for several seconds. Then, the luminescence faded, and the world plunged into darkness once again. "Go forth," Shadow Bonnie commanded. "Another waits for you within."
Mike grabbed the doorknob and pulled it open. This time, it opened quite easily, and both Mike and Liz were able to enter without any problems. The Parts/Services Room was definitely larger than the one in the other pizzeria, there was no doubt about it. To the side, Mike could see three old arcade machines for games that had likely long gone extinct in the present day. But what really got his attention was the second shadow animatronic that was gazing at them. Unlike Shadow Bonnie, this one was slumped down on the ground, as if waiting for his new guests to sit down and join him. And unlike Shadow Bonnie, this one had more of a definite shape and form and looked closer to the animatronics that Mike had grown familiar with during the Night Shift. One animatronic in particular. Liz shuddered and felt a spike of fear in her soul – she immediately recognized its face, the very same face that she had seen on the poster at the other Freddy's.
"Are you…Shadow Freddy?" Mike hazarded a guess.
"An appropriate name for one such as myself…" Shadow Freddy responded in the affirmative. He focused his attention over to Liz, and for the briefest moment, she felt something…familiar…with the dark figure that was sitting in front of her. But before she could even begin to try and decipher what that connection was, the moment passed, and Shadow Freddy divided its attention back to between the two of them. "The bodies of the children…they were kept hidden away by a management riddled with incompetence and selfishness. Hidden inside a safe room that not even most of the employees were aware existed. Ever since then, the two of us have watched over this place, ensuring that they were not defiled or dishonored any further." He raised an arm and pointed to the arcade machines that Mike had noticed earlier. "The secret lies behind the relics of the past."
"How did the Fazbear's Fright people miss this?" Mike asked incredulously. "Heck, why didn't they even move the arcade machines to begin with?"
An amused laugh emanated from Shadow Freddy, even though his mouth barely moved. "My partner, Shadow Bonnie…he has been watching over this place for far longer than even I. He influenced their minds…convinced them that three broken arcade machines were not worth the trouble. He diverted their attention away from the hidden secret and focused them on what the humans truly wanted in the first place...the suits, the masks, any legacy of Freddy Fazbear that they could get their hands on. Only the worthy have the right to our precious secret. And the worthy have finally come."
His hand started to glow and both Liz and Mike watched as the arcade machines moved to the side, revealing an empty space. Empty…except for the outline of a hidden compartment…and a handle attached to the left side.
Mike turned to Liz. "You should be the one," he told her in a serious tone that was completely different from the lighthearted tone she was familiar with. "I don't know how, but I just know…you should be the one."
Liz nodded silently and nervously approached the door to the safe room, Mike and Shadow Freddy both watching carefully. She hesitantly reached out with her Scrap Baby's hand, firmly grasped onto the handle, and gingerly pulled the door open. Even before they looked inside, Mike could smell it. The smell of death, of violence…it was something that he would never forget. Swallowing down his fear, he flashed his light into the compartment while Liz knelt to peer into the safe room with her eyes.
If Mike had not been hardened by the trials of his childhood, he had little doubt that he would've vomited upon seeing the five broken corpses that lay sprawled across the floor inside the safe room. He had known this was coming, had tried to mentally prepare for it ever since Oskar had commanded him to carry out this task; even then, he felt himself grow nauseous at the sight. These were his children, children whose ghosts he had left behind at his home not a few hours ago. The laughing and smiling ghost kids who spent their days playing video games and having fun in his house and these bodies ruined beyond recognition…his mind just couldn't properly process that they were, in a way, one and the very same.
As Mike struggled to comprehend what he was seeing, Liz was consumed by the horror and grief of seeing her friends and family in such an unthinkable state. And as she felt that horror fill her soul, it opened a floodgate of other emotions and thoughts that she had tried desperately to withhold. And a new thought entered her mind, one that made guilt and regret overwhelm everything else in her mind. "There was a time when I thought that doing this was a GOOD idea!" The thought made her feel sick to her core, and now a jumble of thoughts rushed through her mind and escalated her mental state into outright panic. "I was going to murder children like my friends and throw their bodies away to rot in holes like this! What if that last pizzeria HADN'T been a trap and my plan succeeded? What if I'd done this to ALEX or MEGHAN? What if…?"
"Liz?" Mike's voice cut through her thoughts.
She couldn't take it anymore. "I…I would have done this…" she choked out. "I…I would have done this to…to…" she collapsed onto her knees and began sobbing uncontrollably, gingerly placing her hand on top of one corpse's head without touching it. Even if she didn't accidentally break apart the skull with the slightest touch, she didn't deserve the honor of cradling the bodies of her father's victims.
Far away in his room, Fritz suddenly jolted as a weird sensation coursed through him. For a moment he could have sworn that he'd felt Liz's presence and that she was crying out of either pain or sadness. "Liz?" he called out but received no answer. Of course he wouldn't. His sister was out with dad doing something that he'd refused to divulge. But then why had he felt her so keenly…
As Mike watched Liz grieve over her new family's deaths and her own sins, he knew that he had reached the critical point. What he said and did next would decide whether bringing Liz here would weaken her chains…or weaken her spirit. A small part of him had hoped that it would not come to this, but the more dominant and wiser part had long accepted that it had been inevitable. This was his first real test as a parent ever since Nightmare's attack, and he would need to rely on an entirely different set of skills this time around to prove his worth as a parent.
Mike bent down on his knees and gently wrapped his arms around the Liz's waist, hugging her tightly to his chest as she let her sorrows flow openly. Neither of them made a move or said a word, and it wasn't until several moments later that Liz's tears finally subsided. Mike looked around and found a chair a few inches away. He raised an eyebrow at that – he could have sworn the chair hadn't been there seconds before, and Shadow Freddy hadn't moved at all from what he'd seen. Still, he didn't question it. He slowly picked up Liz, who to his surprise was still as light as air despite being in Scrap Baby form, and sat down on the chair, hugging her all the while.
"When you first came here, Liz, I didn't truly understand what you were going through," Mike murmured quietly into her ear. "I didn't understand until the day Nightmare invaded our home. He was so much crueler to you than to the others…but if there's one good thing that came out of his attack, it's that I finally understand what was and still is torturing you so much at the core." He sighed. "I'm not going to pretend that my life circumstances were even remotely like yours, but that depression and despair…I've seen it before. I know what it feels like. And I think I understand what's causing all of this for you."
He pat one of Scrap Baby's shoulder plates. "Tell me if I'm right, Liz. It's all tied to Scrap Baby, isn't it? This animatronic you can turn into…it represents every mistake you ever made, everything you hate about yourself, every evil action you ever did whether it was your choice or not. And it's tearing you apart from the inside. You feel like you'll never escape from all this negativity, that this is all you'll ever be and that you'll never get the chance to be anything better than a brother killer or a murderer's daughter." He tilted his head down to look Liz in the eye. "Am I close to the mark?"
Liz sniffed. "Isn't that what I am, though?" she asked with a wavering voice. She gestured towards the corpses of her family. "Baby was created to be evil by my old dad, especially as Scrap Baby…and even before he found me all I've done is terrible things. The only reason why I didn't end up murdering more children like this is because the pizzeria I tried to invade was a trap designed to destroy us all." She lowered her head in shame. "Evil ran in my blood and in my circuits."
Mike began stroking her wire-like hair with his hand. "You're so much better than you think you are, Liz. But I know that simply hearing those words alone isn't going to be enough to convince you…just like it wasn't for me…" the last words were muttered under his breath, but Liz could hear them anyway.
"You wouldn't have spent 20 days at Freddy's if it was…" Liz murmured, and her dad nodded solemnly.
"Liz…when Scrap Baby was destroyed, the actual Scrap Baby and not what you can turn into, all of that negativity and everything you're afraid of…none of it is there anymore," he gently told her. "You tried your best to hold it off, and you only failed after years of being alone and being corrupted by that worthless murderer's programming. I think God knew that none of this was your fault, and He knew how hard you tried to fight it. And once Scrap Baby was destroyed, He could finally purify you back to what you were supposed to be. Considering how you don't seem anything remotely like the insane animatronic that Mary told me about, I think God did a thorough job in wiping your soul clean of all that nastiness. It makes absolutely no sense to me that He would forget to remove something as obvious as a Scrap Baby transformation unless He was certain that you wouldn't be corrupted by it again. And don't forget, Mary checked all this after Nightmare attacked, right?"
Liz shook her head. "Then this must be a punishment," she sighed. "A mark of shame that I have to carry with me for the rest of eternity. I'm not going to complain about it, I know I deserve it."
"No, I don't think that either," Mike countered. "If God wanted to punish you, then why did He guide you over to my house to find a new family? Or for that matter, like we've told you so many times before, why didn't He just send you to Hell? I think you were given the ability to transform into this for a reason, and I don't think that reason was meant to hurt you."
Liz looked up at him quizzically, and after several seconds of not saying a word Mike took it as a cue to continue. "There were a lot of ways I could have done this," he explained. "I could have brought Mary with me to the two pizzerias, since she watched over the other children for years and I'm sure she would've been more than happy to help me find the bodies of the kids. I could have called one of my closest friends to help me find them after swearing them to secrecy. Or I could have done all this alone. But I didn't. I chose you as my partner for this mission, and I wanted you to use your Scrap Baby form specifically."
"You…planned all this out?" Liz asked in a quiet voice. "Even the part about Scrap Baby? Why would you want to be around the body of a monster?"
Mike sighed. "Liz…you're so convinced that Scrap Baby is nothing but evil. And yet all the evidence points to the opposite. I and a lot of other people would argue that any of your intentions as Baby shouldn't count in the first place since they weren't done of your own free will, and I think God would agree with me. But even we did count them…what evil actions have you actually done? You might have killed your brother and turned him into a walking corpse, true…but you genuinely had good intentions back then for the other animatronics at Circus Baby's Pizza Rental, you didn't know who he was at the time, and Michael sacrificed himself on purpose, so he has just as much responsibility for what happened to him as you do. I've seen normal humans do far, far worse to other people and for far worse reasons without any outside influence whatsoever."
"Like an abusive parent…" Liz murmured.
"I wish that was the worst of it," Mike answered grimly. "And as for when you fully became corrupted as Scrap Baby, Henry knew what happened to you and he did everything he could to make sure that you wouldn't end up hurting other people. That was one of the reasons why he made the trap pizzeria in the first place. And it worked. Thanks to him, you didn't actually kill a single person, let alone any children. For someone that's supposed to be pure evil, you never did a lot of it even at your worst."
"…" Liz remained silent, still processing what her father was telling her.
"But everything good you've done as Scrap Baby?" Mike continued, and now he was smiling at her. "You attacked one of Hell's most powerful demons to try and keep me safe. And you've helped me with my mission to find our family's bodies in so many ways. Cutting open the chains on the pizzeria entrances, pulling open the animatronic bodies at the other pizzeria, even things as simple as helping me look around or trying to protect me from Shadow Bonnie when you thought he was a threat. Those all matter to me a lot more than any thing you did in the past, and more importantly, those were all things that you could do entirely out of your own free will. Liz, I brought you with me and asked you to help me because I wanted to show you that there is nothing inherently evil about you or what you can turn into, even or especially your Scrap Baby form."
"N…nothing?" Liz stammered.
"NOTHING," Mike firmly asserted. "And there's nothing about you that's unwanted or unloved either. To anybody who truly cares about you, what really matters is that you try to do the right thing and be the good person that I know you are. Everything else doesn't matter."
"…"
"Liz…are you all right? Did you hear m…OOF!"
He was interrupted as Liz suddenly turned around and wrapped her arms tightly around her dad, returning the hug that he had given her a few minutes before. "Dad…" she mumbled as she buried her head in his chest, and now she was crying tears of joy instead of despair. "D-dad…how…how do you do it? H-How are you such a good person? H-how do you know exactly what to say to make me feel better? Y-you always have a solution for everything, no matter how b-bad it might be. A-are you an angel in disguise? F-for the first time…I…I f-finally feel like I can be b-better…m-maybe I'm n-not a monster after all…"
Mike inwardly sighed as he gingerly returned the hug. Despite Oskar's warning, part of him had hoped that he would be able to free her spirit entirely. Still, judging by her reaction to what he'd said, he'd made progress. He'd said the right thing, and he hadn't failed her. That was enough for him.
"Thank you. Th-thank you…for everything. I…I wish you were my dad…" Liz's voice interrupted his thoughts.
"Uh, what? Liz, kiddo…last time I checked, I AM your dad," he joked, though he had a feeling he knew what she meant.
She shook her head. "That's not what I mean. I wish you were my dad from the very beginning. Things could have been so much better if you were my parent from the start instead of William Afton."
"How do you mean?" he asked.
"Everything would be perfect," Liz explained wistfully, and she had to hold back another set of tears as she thought about what could have been. "You would never have let the accident that killed Evan ever happen. None of the murders would have ever happened because you would have been there to stop them. The Freddy Fazbear's franchise wouldn't have been ruined by all the terrible things that happened, and it would have been what it was meant to be with you watching over it – a place where children could celebrate their birthdays, play with their friends, be happy and safe. And you would've…you would've created Baby like she was supposed to be. A regular child entertainer animatronic that wasn't designed to grab innocent children, drag them inside her body, and kill them. My favorite animatronic wouldn't have been a death trap, and my old family would still be together. Everything would have been so, so…wonderful," she concluded sadly.
"Are you so sure about that?" Mike questioned. "Oskar told me something once. He told me that a lifetime of hardship and suffering can either destroy your morals forever or forge them into something unbreakable. And everything I experienced in the early parts of my life, both the good and bad, turned me into the person I am today. You clearly think that I'm a great person, and at the risk of sounding pretentious, I think I've done my best to stick to my principles throughout my life. But if I hadn't gone through any of it, would I have been as good of a person as you think I am after entirely different life circumstances?"
"You would have been better than William Afton," Liz said in a voice barely above a whisper. Mike had to concede that this was very likely true. Being a better parent and a better person than William Afton was not a very difficult standard to meet in the slightest. "Did he even care about me to begin with?"
Mike snapped back to reality. "What?"
"Did he ever care about me at all?" Liz repeated, her voice quivering. "Or was I never anything more than a tool to him, even when I was alive?"
This was NOT a question that Mike had been expecting, and the first thought that coursed through his mind was that no, William Afton had never cared about her. Nobody who loved their children would ever put them through the Hell Liz had been through. But as he looked down at Baby's face, the words died in his throat. He realized that Liz must have thought the world of her father back when she had been alive. It had been one of the reasons why she'd given in to him after being cast out of Ennard and why she'd been so emotionally devastated by his betrayal after the final pizzeria burned down. If he outright shut her down, then he'd effectively be telling her that a huge part of her childhood when she was alive, likely the ONLY time she'd ever been happy apart from her time with him and the other ghost kids, had been nothing but a lie. And he couldn't do that to her, not after he had only just now started to raise her morale. But he couldn't answer in the affirmative either. His hatred of William Afton was well known by all the ghost children by this point and if he simply told Liz that Afton did love her at one point, then his words would sound completely fake and they would both know that he was lying.
"Do you remember anything particularly good or bad that William Afton tried to do for you at any point in your life before he died?" he asked.
Liz thought for a moment. "I don't have any bad memories about him from back when I was alive, though my memory is kinda fuzzy," she answered. "And I think…I think he tried to stop me from seeing Baby. He knew that Baby was dangerous and didn't want me to be a victim. Not that it meant anything in the end," she finished bitterly.
Mike didn't say anything for several seconds as he carefully considered his answer. "IF he ever genuinely loved you, Liz," he finally said after a seeming eternity, "it was back when he was still a normal human. It shouldn't surprise you that I hate the idea of giving William Afton credit for doing anything good, but it is possible that he did care about you back when he and you were both normal humans. That's flimsy evidence, but it isn't nonexistent. But if you're talking about after he became Springtrap, then no. What he did to you was corruption and manipulation, plain and simple. If there was ever any goodness in his soul towards you, then it died along with him in that Spring Bonnie suit. Of that, I am certain."
"I guess that's the best I can hope for, then," Liz sighed. Mike wasn't sure if his daughter's question even had a right answer to begin with, but it didn't seem like he had made her feel any worse. All things considered, he'd take what he could get.
Liz shifted her body so that she was facing the corpses of the murdered children again. "What are we going to do, dad?" she asked. "How are we going to get them out of here?"
Mike grimaced. He'd been so caught up with taking care of Liz that he'd forgotten about why they had come here in the first place. "Unfortunately," he muttered, "we can't just take them out of here, as much as I want to. Their bodies have been here for such a long time, and if we tried to move them ourselves we'd very likely end up causing even more damage. And all that aside, we can't just stuff them in the trunk of my car. It wouldn't be right, and if anybody ever found out that I had a bunch of dead bodies in my car that would cause a massive load of problems that would be very difficult if not flat-out impossible for me to handle. I need to handle this slowly and carefully."
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
Mike shook his head. "This is something that only I'll be able to deal with, Liz. You simply can't interact with the real world like I can. I have a strategy planned out, but it'll take quite a bit of time to carry out. No matter how much I don't want to do this, we're going to have to leave them here for now. At least here we'll be sure that nothing else will happen to them."
"We have stood guard over this place for decades," a voice interrupted them. They turned to see Shadow Bonnie standing a few feet away. He had joined Shadow Freddy inside the room and both were watching them with unreadable expressions. "A little more time means nothing to us compared to our duty," Shadow Bonnie continued. "We will wait for as long as necessary."
"I have a few friends in the police," Mike told them. "One of them being a very close friend and one of the few people apart from my new ghost family that I trust. Would it be acceptable for them to come here and pick their bodies up eventually?"
"We will sense their intentions and judge their right to complete your task accordingly."
"That's good enough for me," Mike said as he got up from the chair, finally letting go of Liz in the process. "You can count on me to see this through."
He gestured for Liz to follow him out, but Shadow Freddy suddenly raised his hand. "Hold," he stopped them. "I would speak to your daughter for a moment, if you would allow it."
Mike shrugged. He highly doubted that either Shadow would hurt them at this point – they would have done it a long time ago if they'd wanted to. "Go right ahead. I'll be waiting outside." He left the Parts/Service Room and stepped a few feet away to give them some privacy.
Shadow Freddy turned his gaze fully to Liz, who suddenly grew nervous. Was Shadow Freddy about to attack her? Would she have to fight him with only her claw to defend herself with?
"I have this to say to you, Elizabeth," Shadow Freddy continued, and Liz jolted at the mention of her full name. How does he know who I am? "A word of advice that I believe will serve you well in the days to come. The shackles of your past are only as powerful as you allow them to be. Whether they drag your spirit down or you cast them aside to free yourself from your own darkness…that is for you and you alone to decide. Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?"
"I…I do."
"Then for you, the path forward is clearer than it is for others trapped within themselves." Shadow Freddy gestured towards the door. "Now go. Your father is waiting."
Liz nodded her thanks and left the room, and as she did so she could hear the door to the hidden safe room close behind her. Mike gently put a hand on her shoulder plate. "Don't tell the others about what we did tonight," he instructed. "The idea that we went searching for their murdered bodies might be too much for them to handle."
"You can count on me, dad!" she promised. She tilted her head up at him, and even through Scrap Baby's nightmarish face Mike could see the bright and happy girl she had been meant to be more clearly than he had ever done in the past. The former Night Guard returned the smile and took his daughter's ethereal hand in his as they left the abandoned pizzeria together. Despite the grim nature of their mission, he thought, tonight had been a good night after all.
Shadow Bonnie and Shadow Freddy watched as the entrance to the pizzeria slammed shut, leaving the building in total darkness once again. "He is a worthy father indeed," Shadow Bonnie commented. "The ghosts of the children will find the peace and happiness they need under his care. The ones murdered by your father all those years ago…" he turned to look straight into Shadow Freddy's eyes, "…and your sister as well."
Shadow Freddy met his partner's gaze. "William Afton is not my father," he snarled, and his eyes flashed with hatred as he allowed fury and rage to enter his voice for the first time. "He gave up the right to be my father when he slaughtered those innocents in this pizzeria. He gave up the right to be my father when he let my sister die, and he MOST CERTAINLY gave up the right to be our father when he corrupted her into something that she was never meant to be!" The being forced himself to calm down. "But finally, after far too long, the wheel of fate has shown mercy to his victims. Peace has come to us all at last."
Shadow Freddy looked back towards the entrance, where he could still visualize Mike contentedly holding Liz's hand as they left the pizzeria behind. "Your future is brighter than it ever was before, and a new life awaits you. Good bye, and good luck…Lizzie."
/
A/N: Well, this was quite the beast to write. As you've seen, helping Liz deal with her inner demons was Mike's greatest test as a parent aside from defending the ghost kids from Nightmare…but this test required an entirely different set of skills altogether. I think he did the best that he could, all things considered 😊
Shadow Freddy is often identified with either William Afton or Nightmare, but that didn't really work for me at least with regards to this fic. I've already established who Nightmare was a long time ago, and as for the Purple Guy, I actually have my doubts that Shadow Freddy is meant to be William Afton. Afton didn't display any supernatural capabilities as a human as far as I can tell, and he was definitely still alive back in 1987 since he didn't get trapped in the Spring Bonnie suit until after the events of FNAF1.
So, who is Shadow Freddy here? You guys were right when you thought that Shadow Freddy was one of the Afton brothers…but which Afton? I don't want to spoonfeed you all the hints right away…though if you think about it, you'll find that one answer much more sense than the other. But I like playing with ambiguity just as much as the next person, so I'll keep things vague for now. For those of you wondering why Shadow Freddy didn't simply reveal himself to Liz in this chapter, I'll explain that in the future.
As for who or what Shadow Bonnie is? Man, I have no fucking clue, to be honest. He's a complete enigma with almost no background information given about him, though the fact that he helps give cake to one of the crying children in FNAF3 suggests that he isn't malevolent, or at the very least, not affiliated with the murderer. I actually contemplated the idea of Shadow Bonnie being the Afton instead, but decided to go with Shadow Freddy for reasons that either (a) will be explained in the future or (b) you'll figure out before then.
Hope you guys enjoyed!
