Chapter Text
The hands of the clock on the office wall ticked monotonously, filling an awkward silence, broken only by the nervous tapping of Felix's foot on the floor.
He waited for Henry to finally say something, but he was silent. He looked at the papers in front of him, sometimes briefly shook his head, as if trying to decide to peel off the weight of the past like a band-aid. Sighing heavily, Guy had already opened his mouth, wanting to hurry his former boss, but he was interrupted by the vibration of an incoming message. A new notification was hanging on the phone screen. Felix was distracted by him for only a few seconds, but it did not escape Emily's gaze, because, apparently, he was just happy to shift his attention to something besides the papers in front of him.
"I know this facial expression," the engineer smiled, making the former employee embarrassed, "Problems at home?"
"No, not that ..." Felix was already beginning to justify himself, but then he exhaled noisily through his nose, pulling himself together, "Mr. Emily, all my problems are arising now only because you will not sign these papers. I have no right to rush you, but look at the time! My working day is already over, only you and I are left on this floor, and you didn't even take a pen. If you change your mind, tell me right away, there is no contract yet. Just don't waste your time and mine."
Henry shook his head and immediately turned his gaze to the documents, and then picked them up, starting to reread them. Probably for the twentieth time this evening.
Guy raised his eyes to the ceiling, saying, come on, seriously, again? He really didn't understand this indecision, even if he couldn't help but sympathize.
"I'm wondering if there will be such a madman who decides to make more than just an advertisement out of this franchise," Henry suddenly grinned without taking his eyes off the papers, scratching his stubble, "By the way, not the most successful. The theme of animatronics and anthropomorphic animals has long outlived itself. They were popular when it was new to people, but now what? On every corner, both. And with our reputation..."
Felix sighed and rested his elbows on the table. He looked for a while, and then thoughtfully said:
"No one is talking about what needs to be done the way it was before, right?" reflecting on this, Felix unconsciously began tapping the pencil eraser on the surface of the stapler, "But if they upgrade the design and expand the functionality... Yes, even, say, write songs for them yourself, and not take existing ones... I think whoever buys your franchise, if they have brains, will definitely find a gold mine."
Henry was silent. When Guy looked up at him uncomprehendingly, the engineer was looking at him without looking away. No sooner had a bad feeling crept up to Felix, as the interlocutor nodded with a soft smile.
"You're right, someone will be lucky."
Felix exhaled and smiled back, unobtrusively pointing his finger towards the papers, but Emily suddenly continued talking.
"You know, when Wi... When we started, everything was really good," the engineer leaned back in his chair and put the documents on the table. Guy seemed to feel his eye twitch "I especially liked watching how children wanted to get attention from animatronics, not realizing that it was just an endoskeleton around which the suit was assembled."
Felix smiled. A memory of one of his day shifts surfaced in his head, when a five-year-old girl ran around Foxy shouting "Catch me, fox, catch me!", while the animatronic reacted to the movement and turned his torso in one direction or the other, which led the child into wild delight. However, then, it seems, she forgot herself in this game and crashed off the edge. The howl sounded like she'd broken her arm, no less, but no, she was just scared.
Behind these thoughts, the man did not notice that Henry frowned, and therefore continued.
"It's a pity that you chose the wrong person as your partner."
As soon as these words left Felix's lips, he suddenly felt that the hair on his head was moving, and abruptly raised his head. Had he offended Emily?
But, fortunately, Henry looked even relaxed. He clasped his fingers in a lock on his stomach, smiling.
"What do you mean, Fel?"
Felix looked away guiltily, and then tapped his fingers on the table.
"Well... You are a person with great talent and purpose in life. I do not dispute that William probably helped a lot in the development of the mechanism itself, but your work with him only led to decline," Guy said cautiously, but he did not raise his eyes to his former employer, even when he straightened his back, "I think if you had parted with him then, maybe this place would really be like this as you intended it to be.
Out of the corner of his eye, Felix saw the engineer nodding in agreement, and therefore, with a smile, pushed the documents towards him.
"Mr. Emily, I really want to go home. Please sign it."
But Henry didn't answer.
Sighing heavily, the man was already thinking to say that his working day was over and just get up from the table, but Henry beat him to it.
"Can you give me a couple of days? I need to think it over carefully."
"Only for a couple of days, Mr. Emily."
On the sixth day after this conversation, Guy involuntarily thought that he seemed to be being deceived.
He called Henry, as they had agreed, two days later, but he asked for another delay. Then he referred to business. And last day he didn't pick up the phone at all.
So, trying to suppress righteous anger, Felix went straight to the engineer, fortunately, he left his address at the first meeting.
Standing in front of his door, the man knocked gently and listened, expecting to hear footsteps outside the door. The cool wind ruffled his blond hair, making its way with bony fingers to the roots, so that Guy shivered.
He didn't get any footsteps, so he knocked again, much more demanding.
"Mr. Emily! Open up! We have already found buyers, we just need your signature!"
Of course, he exaggerated, but he hoped that Henry had not changed his mind after all, but was simply holding on to the past, so the speed of the process could push him to take decisive action. No one came out. Moreover, there was a feeling that there was no one in the house.
Guy didn't want to return empty-handed. Felix put his hands on his hips and thoughtfully tapped his foot on the veranda floor, and then pulled the door handle. It was locked, of course. Hopefully knocking again, he sighed and picked up the briefcase, which he had placed at the door when he approached it, hopefully the back door was unlocked.
And it's not that Guy was so desperate to get through to Henry; right now he was really afraid that the engineer might have a nervous heart attack or something worse.
"Fel, what are you doing?" Felix thought with irritation, walking around the side of a poor house, getting his feet tangled in nettles and tall grass. Obviously, Henry saw no point in caring for the yard. Or, which is unlikely, he didn't have the money to hire someone for the job.
The heavy back door was really unlocked, and led to a bright kitchen. The first thing that caught Guy's eye was cleanliness. Even, one might say, quite frightening cleanliness. Of course, not everything here was in its place, however, it seemed forgotten and untouched. It was as if there had once been life here, but the residents simply disappeared, as if they had never existed.
Only the absence of dust indicated that this was not the case, and life in this house was still going on.
"Mr. Emily?" Guy called softly, carefully closing the door behind him and going inside the apartment, trying not to touch anything. At least not to leave fingerprints, if anything.
The kitchen was empty. For a moment Felix had a desire to take the tangerine from the fruit bowl as a moral compensation, but he suppressed it and moved on. Let it be light, the house was pleased with the presence of large windows, but still Felix had an irrational desire to turn on the lights everywhere.
Henry wasn't in the living room either. As well as nothing at all that would indicate that he had been here recently, because even the crumpled seats of the chairs spoke only about their age, and not about the presence of a person in the house.
"Mr. Emily, I don't want to violate your personal space. Are you asleep?" Felix tried to call again, examining the mantelpiece. What is remarkable is that neither in the kitchen, nor in the hallway, nor in the living room, there was not a single photograph, only abstract faceless paintings, as if this house was going to be photographed for sale. And only above the mantelpiece, in a small frame, there was a photograph of a young guy with a newborn girl in his arms. Felix hardly recognized Henry in this happy man, and the photo itself was so small that he had to come close, circling the coffee table.
Guy was warm, but he still shivered exactly the same as he had outside a few minutes ago.
Sighing, he picked up his phone and dialed the number of his former employer. The phone rang from the kitchen.
Going back out into the corridor, Felix ignored the door under the stairs leading to the basement, and was about to go upstairs when he suddenly heard, just from behind this door, the ringing of fallen iron. Felix was scared.
The desire to turn around and just leave the house was growing, but the only thing that stopped him was the thought that the engineer might really need medical help now. Suddenly he fell down the stairs, broke his leg, and can't get back up?
Hesitating for a second, Felix touched the door handle and pulled it towards him. It yielded, thank God, without a creak, but Felix could not find the switch on the wall, and therefore he tried to look down into the darkness. He was ready for anything, especially to see two pupils glowing in the dark, carefully looking out for him, but when he looked down, he saw nothing but a strip of light.
"Mr. Emily?.." Guy called loudly, but uncertainly, swallowing nervously, expecting that mechanical hands would pull him down or at least something would push him in the back, but he was relieved to hear a new ringing, quiet swearing, and then Henry's grumpy voice.
"What the hell, Fel?" Felix heard and immediately felt the tense atmosphere let go of him, it even got warmer somehow, and the house no longer seemed so ominous, "Come down, since you've come, my hands are full"
Felix shook his head, feeling his temples ache from a momentary panic, and then began to descend, carefully holding on to the walls. The basement turned out to be a well-lit workshop, and here Felix felt at ease. The walls were hung with posters, children's drawings, apparently donated personally to the owner of the pizzeria, and photographs. Mostly, of course, from the workplace, but there were also photos with a girl, which Guy recognized with Charlie, but what surprised him, Henry had almost as many photos with Michael. On one of them, a young man of about fifteen, in whom it was not immediately possible to recognize Mike, familiar to Felix, was photographed exactly at the moment when he was laughing. The reason for the laughter remained behind the scenes, but Felix still involuntarily admired the photo.
Henry was sitting at his desk bent over, not paying any attention to Guy, not interfering with the study of the workshop.
Felix looked around. He was afraid to see the face that came to him in nightmares, but, unfortunately or fortunately, he did not find any photos with Afton. Although, on Henry's desk, it seems, there was one frame with two men on it, but as soon as Guy approached, Emily stretched out his hand and removed it without looking up from his occupation. Felix was embarrassed.
"In general... Yes, we... Found buyers. You... It's just necessary to sign, and that's it," it turned out to be much more difficult to say this standing next to Henry himself, who no longer looked like the defenseless man of pre—retirement age as he seemed a few days ago, and Guy's thoughts did not come together. Henry just nodded at nothing, but didn't say anything, so Felix looked over his shoulder. A plastic bear's head was lying on the table in front of the engineer. It had not been painted yet, there were no eyes in it, but the design itself looked new and so animated that Felix at first did not believe that it was made by the hands of the person who created those creatures that torment him with terrible memories.
Guy could not restrain an enthusiastic sigh and, putting the briefcase on the floor, pulled a stool closer to the engineer.
"Where..!" before Henry could warn, Felix, not noticing the missing leg of the stool, had already fallen to the concrete floor. When Guy looked up, Emily could barely contain his laughter, "You almost fell."
With a snort, Felix got up and put the stool back down, sitting down so as to keep his balance.
Unable to restrain himself, Henry still giggled, reproachfully flashing his eyes from under his work glasses at the former employee, and then, ignoring him, continued to collect the jaw.
"Have you already started making a new animatronic?" Guy asked, watching Henry adjust the spring.
"Huh?" Emily didn't seem to expect this question. He froze for a second, and then waved away, "No, not at all, I would never put this design on an endoskeleton, I printed all the details on a printer. This is just a prototype. I decided to see what it would look like..."
And it looked, in Felix's opinion, really good. Felix could already imagine this bear's face on the poster of the opening of a new pizzeria.
The confidence that he would be able to make a deal with Henry was running out, but, contrary to common sense, Guy was not upset. Now he was more interested in the drawings on the walls above his desk. Now they were no longer children's, clearly it was the design of past animatronics. There were mostly sketches in one style, which Felix assumed belonged to Emily himself, but several of them were of much better quality, out of the rank of a working sketch. The best, in Felix's opinion, was a drawing of a black bear with red cheeks. Getting up, the man carefully unhooked the piece of paper from the wall, examining it, but then he was visited by an idea that Guy tried to drive away from himself. If all the other drawings were Henry's, then that means...
"Mr. Emily?"
With a heavy sigh, the engineer looked up from his work and looked questioningly at Felix. Noticing the sheet in someone else's hands, he smiled slightly, and a quiet thoughtfulness was visible in his eyes.
"This is Michael's sketch," Emily dispelled the assumptions of the former employee, and then completely put down the screwdriver. Obviously, Henry caught Felix's keen interest in the workshop in his eyes, and therefore pushed the bear's head aside altogether, looking into Guy's face.
"Fel, I don't think I should sell the franchise," he finally said, but before Guy could add anything, he shook his head, "This is my whole life, and I wouldn't want other people to do for me what I could do myself."
Surprisingly, Felix didn't even feel annoyed. Looking at Henry, for some reason he only hoped that he would be able to start all over again. Without William, the missing kids, and all that stuff.
Returning the paper to its place, Guy first looked down, tapped his fingers on his thigh, and then bent down and picked up his briefcase.
"I expected something like this. Then I'll probably go."
Henry nodded at him, saying, "Go, go," and turned away.
Realizing that Emily would not tell him anything new, absorbed in his work, Felix went towards the door, but stopped, thinking about something. He didn't want to leave his former boss like this, after all, he was no longer young, without a family, left all alone with a damaged reputation. Before he even had time to think about the fact that, in fact, it shouldn't concern him, he had already turned slightly to Henry.
"If you need any help, call."
Emily just grinned.
"Come back anytime, Fel."
Felix smiled slightly and started to climb the stairs, hearing a quiet "I think you need me more than I need you."