Archive of Our Own ^beta

You always thought Dave would make a good mechanic.

It felt like the most obvious career choice for him, even long before you’d gotten to know him countless times over. Your memories of your past life were hazy – hell, your memories from the past ten afterlives were fuzzier than they should’ve been – but Henry and William were hard faces to forget. Whether or not that was because one of them killed you and the other wouldn’t leave your life wasn’t relevant. Probably. It was easier to just think it was because they were company fundamentals. Nobody could talk about Fredbear’s or Fazbender’s without a few names coming up, and two of them were the co-founders of the family diner that started it all. To say you always held them in high esteem then, or that you held them in high esteem now, would be a bold-faced lie you didn’t feel like entertaining. Credit had to be given where credit was due, though, and Dave deserved credit for his robots.

You were scared shitless of some of the animatronics. Again, not something you cared enough to lie to yourself about. Those moments when their eyes grew hollow and they stared at you with leering white pupils did not make you think of them more favorably. Shocking. They’d spit garbled phrases that reminded you not-so-fondly of your own soul, accusations of this being all your fault that were far from misplaced, the occasional plea for you to do the right thing. No matter how much you actually contributed, they were equally bitter. You probably deserved that. The vision in your head of the life leaving their eyes was all too vivid for you to pretend you were even remotely worth putting yourself above Dave…

…You decided not to dwell once you got on that train of thought. After all, you’d just be turning back the clock whenever things went awry, like hitting try again on an arcade machine screen. What did the gnawing guilt matter? What did anything you thought matter? You’d come back. You always came back, even from things that reminded you all too hauntingly of the sound of a child crying. Of Dee crying.

Nope. Not thinking of that. A killer didn’t deserve to mourn. What were you on about again?

Right. Dave and his tech-smarts. For as impulsive as the guy was, he was damn good at what he was versed in, and one of those things was gutting robots and rewiring them to do just about anything he felt like. You’d seen his little stunts plenty of times over, the various incidents where Freddy would try and self-cannibalize or Chica would decide to usurp Foxy’s strip club brand sticking in your head more than you honestly wanted to think about (which was not at all, you didn’t think of Dave at all). At least they were different, you supposed, which was better than the same loop over and over that never seemed to have a happy ending. 

Sometimes you wondered why Dave didn’t go into mechanics, though you’d quickly be reminded why that was, either by your own mind daring to know things or one of Dave’s spiels about the pink fuck. Henry. He always came up, as persistently annoying as you were sure he was in life, and you hated to hear his name said so saccharinely from Dave’s mouth. It felt like you were as good as Henry, in Dave’s eyes, and that was revolting. Not wrong, maybe. Weren’t you both child killers?

Maybe you just hated that Dave thought you were good?

Ah, whatever. You thought about that enough on your own time. Back to Dave. A strange sentence to think of, given that most of the time, you were trying your damnedest not to think of him (and you did great at that. It was fine. You were so normal). It was easy, though. Simple. Simpler than you liked.

The times you’d followed along with his plans in some vain hope or another, you’d get a front row seat to his weird and wonderful ways of dissecting the animatronics. It’d be accompanied by one of his long rants, most times, often landing on a subject you had few to no thoughts on and even less care to hear about. Still, you would listen, because Dave was easy to listen to. You’d come to tell yourself that was just because it made the day go by faster, and not because his smile was the first thing that made you feel good in the past few hundred loops of Tuesday. So you listened and you kept your eyes off of him. His hands were easier to watch. 

He worked efficiently and carefully, every motion deliberate and knowing. Sure, you were also a mechanic for a time, but you knew you couldn’t make the animatronics do half of the shit Dave thought up. Everything in your line of work was routine maintenance at most. Dave knew exactly how to reprogram the tiny circuit boards in Freddy’s head, the perfect buttons that would let him wrench out Foxy’s voice box and pocket it for later, the precise locks to wind back to prime a springlock suit. You wished, some days, that you’d never watched Henry’s tapes in a few dozen timelines you could faintly remember. Everything Dave did these days was tainted in a thin coating of Henry did this that made it feel odd to appreciate. Persistent fucker.

But those were Dave’s hands, weren’t they? Henry couldn’t grasp onto Dave’s hands and guide them the way he may have a decade and some change ago. Henry couldn’t be Dave’s limbs. Henry couldn’t live under Dave’s skin like a creeping parasite even if he’d long since breached Dave’s brain. What was left of it.

So you focused on Dave’s hands.

His thin fingers slinked easily into the chest cavities of the robotics, blunted nails weaving underneath wires and pulling them or pushing them away to reach the mechanical endoskeletons. You’d noticed at one point that he painted his nails black, though you never thought to comment on it much. They reminded you of claws, which only made the scratching sound of Henry’s voice in your skull start up again, not too dissimilar to a stray cat clawing at someone’s front door desperately for attention. You should be the one with claws. Maybe that was your own voice. Still, you didn’t budge this time. In the future when it all got too much? Not unlikely. You certainly had before. Right now? Dave’s hands were working, and Dave’s hands were his own.

(Yours never were.)

Sometimes, he’d try and explain what he was doing as he worked, one knee pressed against the abdomen of Foxy or Balloon Boy – depending on the day, the time, the choices you made in your exasperation and whatever you could remember from Denver between Dave’s rants and Henry’s barking – while he opened up the animatronic’s mouth to sharpen their teeth. See, they got these lockin’ mechanisms on their jaws, right? Got ‘em put in after the Bite, so they can’t go maulin’ more kiddins. But they’re real shitty. Most things in this place are. So ya do a lil twist to the screws, an’ bam! We can make a brand new tragedy, Old Sport! He beamed far too bright for a man planning to bust someone’s skull open, but maybe you should’ve just been happy at the time that he wasn’t doing it with his bare hands. 

Everything Dave made around you was horrifying. Was it you, maybe? Surely he was capable of more mechanics than just sharp-toothed lobotomizing demons and freakish abominations that would give Phoneys heart attacks. He never quite answered right when you asked. It always led into what Henry wanted, and Henry figured we could make ‘em real lifelike, so I let ‘im take the lead, and honestly, Old Sport, can’t we get back to th’ plan? I’m not seein’ what the mechanics of ol’ Spring Bonnie have to do with fuckin’ blendin’ this place like a breakfast shake. Never an answer that helped you understand. There was the chance he just saw it as his only purpose – not unlikely, with Henry’s track record of treating Dave like a misbehaving dog more than anything close to a human being. You’d have bought it even before hearing those tapes, even before watching Henry gun down each of your closest friends with words alone. Even before waking up knowing none of it really mattered.

He did listen to you, after all. You hated that.

Sure, you weren’t a mechanical genius, and you already knew quite well that you couldn’t do anything to the robots the way Dave’s mind could. There was one thing you knew better than anyone, though, and that was Fazbender’s lore. Childish? Sure. But who was going to judge you when you were the only one who even cared about it? It’d never come up, and you’d get to have one bit of joy in the same place that had become your purgatory, tomb, and prison all in one. You didn’t deserve that bit of comfort, arguably – with the two people arguing being yourself and your soul – and you knew that plenty well. Still, your collector’s spirit was unshakable, and anytime Dave would start fussing about one of the animatronics, you couldn’t help your own fun facts.

He listened and you loathed it, because his listening meant that he cared. That was wrong. That was all wrong.

You’d run around doing everything to avoid him, to purge him from your brain like a sickness that had clung onto you and was sapping any bit of reluctance from your bloodstream. You pushed him away, you denied his offers, you fucking springlocked him! You were just as bad as anyone else, if not far, far worse. And he came back. He always came back. And he always listened to you, no matter what bile was being spit from your mouth, because all that mattered to him was that you were talking. It was infuriating. These days, you felt like a cornered animal, retrying days just in hopes he would move on.

What was this? Your canon event or something?

Insufferable. But it wasn’t like you were trying that hard, much to your own agitation. After all, if none of this mattered, what was the harm in sitting down and listening to your friend – not a friend – partner? Worse. What was the harm in listening to your aubergine coworker talk about robots while he turned one into the worst nightmare any Phone Guy could suffer, right? It’d all be lost the next day for you, which was the same day for everyone else, which meant no time at all had passed and your time didn’t matter.

The least you could do was listen, even if it made you sick. You weren’t the one wasting time here, after all. Dave had a life. He could do great things if he could just get his hands off of you and realize there was nothing for him to care about. Stealing your heart was impossible – you didn’t have one under your ribs.

But he’d taken something from you that made you trail after him like you were on a search for murder clues. Granted, you weren’t in the worlds where you perched on the safe room table and watched Dave bend metal to make Foxy a tongue that was too long for comfort. All that Dave thought he was taking was your time. Unfortunately, you knew all too well you’d happily waste that time for him, whether today would loop forever or Friday would suddenly come and things would be normal again. Normalcy was foreign.

Your new normal was Dave. You hated it until the bitter end where you watched your boss-slash-long-lost-brother get his head chomped off.

You woke up on Monday, the thought of thin, purple fingers inside the animatronic’s innards too vivid for you to ignore.

Dave would’ve been a wonderful mechanic if it weren’t for you.

You always thought Dave would make a good magician.

He had a bit of a theatrical flare to everything he did that caught your eye even when you kept your gaze far away from the aubergine freak. Dave was sneaky when he wanted to be, managing to slip through your fingers on the days where you turned him down with exaggerated venom in your voice, but when he wasn’t? You could always pinpoint him with his wide gestures and shining grin. A persistent fucker. You supposed he got that from Henry, too. He worked as though he were on stage during even the most menial of tasks, and a few times you’d told him you know what they say – all the world’s a stage, right? only to watch his eyes shine like you’d told him the secret to life itself. Those days always ended in a grin that felt a bit more genuine. It made you feel like a good person. It made you feel like an atrocity, by extension, but, hey. What’s new?

You stopped bringing up that phrase when you noticed that. That’d make you want to stay, and your story didn’t end in anything except your back turned to a man you trusted not to stab you in it, no matter how many times you’d invited him to do so. You couldn’t stay next to him. You couldn’t be the source of his happiness.

Nothing you said – or didn’t say, rather – could get rid of his desire for stardom, though. It made sense. You knew too much now and you’d always know too much for what Dave did not to make sense. No matter how much you wanted to keep biting your tongue and pretending you didn’t think of Dave, your head was a scrawled whiteboard full of explanations for what Dave did. Every single mannerism that gave you more thoughts than you liked to confess. Every single change. You wished he understood your predicament. You were glad he didn’t.

At the very least, his theatricism made him stand out, that much was true. Dave always managed to be a shining difference amidst the dreariness of Fazbender’s, so no matter how you tried to drive him away, he’d be a splatter of purple acrylic paint on a cheap white canvas. Short of literally murdering him – something you were certain was impossible unless you pulled out cement and gasoline and had a few days or months on your hands – Dave was here to stay and you weren’t as willing to return to black-and-white checkered tile with no aubergine man to stain it in barbecue sauce as you wanted to be. The desire to see him again was persistent. The desire to hate him more than you didn’t was worse.

Maybe if he had been a magician, things could’ve been different.

He would’ve still worked at Henry’s circus, perhaps. He’d be one of the stars of the show, balancing on top of those colorful balls and pulling (fittingly) rabbits out of a purple top hat with a pink bow around it. The crowd would cheer and applaud, and one day you would take Dee there and see him. You two would talk. He’d see Henry’s flaws for what they were. You’d beat the man’s head in with a baseball bat, given the opportunity, and then you and Dave and your family would run off and live a new life. A life where the thought of Dave sprawled on your chest, sleeping without tension for once, didn’t make you want to start burning your throat with bleach or bourbon. Whichever was nearer. It didn’t matter.

None of your wishes mattered. The fact you could still wish at all irritated you to no end. Fitting – didn’t Dave say that Henry taught him how to dream? In the same way, Henry killing you hadn’t taken away your ability to dream, so you supposed him and you were even in that regard. Maybe Dave could take all your dreams and you could rot somewhere. It’d make this ordeal a lot easier.

All your dreams were full of seeing him again, or lying under him while he snored against your throat, or seeing his eyes shine with a light that wasn’t flames from you burning a restaurant with him inside. If he got your dreams, he’d finally get the ego he deserved, and didn’t showmen usually have an ego to begin with? Henry, the fucking bastard, sure as hell had one the size of the bear that had brought you back to haunt him. Or was he haunting you, now? Semantics. Point was, Dave could be on his own, and you could rot.

You were pretty sure he wouldn’t even remember you were there enough to miss you. Fine by you. Honestly, the whole die and leave my soul to Dave deal was looking prettier every day, if Blackjack wasn’t such a vengeful beast. You’d work it out sooner or later, and the plan would sit in your mental vault with the rest of the problems you’d said that about until then. Man, you were good at this.

For now, though? That was a pipe dream. So you thought about the fact Dave’s hands were his own instead.

He’d told you once that he had learned to pickpocket while he was out on the streets. His hands were made for it – you didn’t say that part out loud, but you knew in your head that hands like those made for plenty of good uses. Not in a weird way. Maybe in a weird way? You suddenly got the strong desire to stop thinking about Dave.

Back on topic, you told yourself at the time, condemning any thoughts about you and Dave in Vegas and the idea of his hands against your face. You were so good at this. You were so fucking normal.

You weren’t particularly surprised – of course the kiddie strangler dabbled in some more petty crimes – and would’ve honestly been more shocked if he said the murder was the only crime he ever committed. Mostly because you would’ve known he was a liar, given you’d watched him hold a restaurant at gunpoint, burn down at least one restaurant, and commit various food crimes by that point. Still, he seemed insistent on showing you other uses for his skill in pickpocketing, even when you tried to gesture towards the animatronic your screwdriver was halfway through the neck of.

Sportsy! Sportsy, c’mon – he snapped his fingers a couple times until your head turned and your eyes narrowed. There ya go! Yer a real good listener, y’know that? Always listenin’ to my schemes – besides the times you hadn’t, you thought – an’ lettin’ me hang around you – besides the times you’d thrown him into springlock suits and locked him in saferooms – yer my orange baby, my clementine, my cantaloupe! I’m tellin’ ya, old sport, once I can make good on my promises? We’ll be set for eternity! Boy, did you know that much.

And then he was oddly quiet, one hand shoved in his pocket and the other dropping to his hip.

Was that all you wanted to say? 

Yep! Nothin’ more from me!

There was absolutely something more from Davey. Dave. Christ, you could not start calling him Davey in your inner monologue. Not even bleach could scrub that kind of memory from your brain. Still, in spite of your mounting suspicion, you had relented and returned to working on trying to rip Bonnie’s head off his shoulders. Only a few seconds passed before a familiar noise started playing. Dave’s ringtone. It was a weird, clumsy melody, the kind you would’ve heard on cartoons if you had watched them much as a kid… had you? You realized it was a bit blurry and decided not to dwell. What else had you forgotten?

Nevermind.

Dave, who’s – A pause. The buzzing was coming from your pocket, and when your eyes met Dave, he was looking at you with the most shit-eating grin imaginable.

Well, old sport? Ya gonna pick up the phone? It’s rude to jus’ leave a guy hangin’, y’know. In your attempt to not look at his stupid, stupid smile and focus in on his hands, you realized –

God fucking dammit, Dave. He was holding your phone. Give that back. Dave’s phone in your pants pocket had stopped ringing by now, so it took a second or two longer to fish through and find it with the buzzing not being able to guide you. You found it soon enough and held it out for Dave, who took it and cackled the whole time as your phone was returned to you. You wouldn’t have even wanted my phone. I think I’ve had the same one since the 60’s. It’s a piece of shit.

Awww, c’mon, old sport! Yer not even gonna compliment my pickpocketin’ prowess? Dave set both hands on his hips. I’d be offended if I knew ya weren’t jus’ jealous of me! He winked. You winced. Don’t worry, sportsy. I’ll teach ya aaaall the tricks o’ the trade soon enough! Keep yer pretty orange head on straight – Bonnie took an elbow to the gut – unlike the fuckin’ rabbit is, and you’ll be as good as yer pal Davey in no time! 

The memory of learning how to steal from people would’ve lasted, if you ever got the chance to have it. You were pretty sure that entire week ended in you backing out from Dave’s offer to kill the janitor, then lying in bed counting cracks in the ceiling until you passed out.

You woke up on a Monday.

You were certain Dave would’ve made a great magician if it weren’t for you.

You always thought Dave would make a good musician.

A part of you drew it back to his hands, but for once you were trying to avoid thinking of him in general. An impossible feat, you knew. You might as well have been trying to save the souls of every child who died in a massive west-coast pizza chain, or something absurd like that. Monsters like you never succeeded at crazy tasks like that. No matter how hard you tried to scrub every purple-colored stain from your grey matter, it would inevitably take on that royal hue, and you’d be stuck drumming the same tune he tapped on walls and tables and had made his ringtone long before you knew him well enough to hum the tune to yourself.

You never thought of him being a songwriter when you thought about him being a musician. If anyone in your partnership with him – a partner in crime thing, mind you, don’t get any bright ideas, you told yourself – was writing up fancy lyrics and waxing poetic about the people in their life, it was you. But you knew he was made to make music somehow. He had the street smarts to make himself a living playing instruments, and with his stage presence, he’d fit right in if some indie band scooped him by the scruff. Hell, he could even make a living perched on the stage next to the animatronic band, if any of the Phoneys let springlock suits up there. Not after what happened in Fredbear’s, they’d all murmur as if programmed to do so. Your bet was on them literally being programmed to do so. Not a far stretch. You remembered Steven’s constant threats and would wonder, sometimes, if that’s what all Phoneys thought in their AI-busted heads.

Probably. You did too, when you managed a Fazbender’s sometime in the future now and again. Christ, this timeline shit was weird.

On the note of timeline stuff, you could recall Dave telling you one or three or five times in the Flipside (did the amount of times really matter if you could remember it so well?) that he’d played trombone on the street for money as a kid. He was a creative kid, you figured that much. That trait hadn’t faded with adulthood, either. At least Henry hadn’t pulled everything out of Dave with his organs and brain. Not like you were giving any credit to the salmon-colored fuck for leaving the tiniest shreds of what William Afton was and could’ve been even minorly in tact. Nah. You still wanted to bash his brains in, and you lulled yourself to sleep with the idea of him gruesomely bleeding on the tile.

Did that make you as bad as him? Eh. Nobody would judge you besides yourself. 

(No, really, Blackjack’s main hobby was judging your thoughts with narrowed eyes and a twitching tail. You tried not to pay it much mind. Go away, shadow doggo! You had enough guilt to feed off of without a yapping puppy in your head, thanks!)

At some point, Dave had left the trombone behind – likely when he’d gone to pursue Henry’s circus, if you had to guess. Made sense. There was a new opportunity for Dave at the time. A dream that he could tangibly pursue, even if it was one that would put him six feet under if he were any less desperate. It was hard to blame him when he was so persistent. Even you wouldn’t have kept coming back if it wasn’t in your nature. Would you have?

You weren’t sure. It was less charitable to claim that you weren’t strong enough to claw your way back up without weird promise-bound bear magic, though, so you settled on that conclusion pretty comfortably.

Still, you couldn’t help wondering what could’ve become of Dave if he hadn’t found the circus. If he hadn’t become another casualty, a lab experiment to be put under the microscope and promptly thrown aside once it suited Henry’s whims, Dave could’ve been something. Anything. Everything to everyone except you. That’s how it should’ve been. You didn’t deserve someone as doggedly loyal as Dave, and in turn, he didn’t deserve someone as aloof and empty as you. Literally empty. Sometimes you wondered if he’d leave if you just cut yourself open and showed how there was no soul inside you. Nothing that rested between your ribs except an unbeating heart and plenty of guilt with nowhere else to go.

He wouldn’t. You knew he wouldn’t. The thought didn’t tempt you any less, because it’d mean you got to dissect yourself, and that was the most endearing part. You could flay yourself for an audience, and maybe then everyone would know how sorry you were. It wouldn’t make up for anything, but…

…Right, right. Dave Miller. You didn’t want to think about him nearly as much as you did, but if you couldn’t have a better life and had no interest in imagining yourself in a life you never deserved, you could imagine someone in the life they did. And Dave deserved more. So, so much more that you knew he’d only ever get in his grave.

There was a world – a world you liked to pretend was real, since it wasn’t impossible between the timeline shenanigans Blackjack cryptically mumbled about and your own little predicament of repeating the same week – where you and Dave never met. Some days you pretended you’d live a better life without him, but most days you didn’t feel like lying to yourself that hard. It took too much energy to fool yourself into thinking you’d be the same person without him. Better off was debatable, weighing all the pros and cons of him existing at all. A better life was out of the question. Maybe you’d be a little less burdened? It didn’t matter. You weren’t relevant in the fantasy world you made up, and that was one of the best parts.

Dave was the star. He played his trombone, or he’d pull rabbits out of hats and coins from behind people’s ears, or he’d gut robots for parts and make fancy computers. He’d do anything he wanted, and there was never a salmon fuck to boss him around. All that mattered was that he had dreams, dreams that nobody would rob from him, and he got to pursue them on his own terms. In your dream world, Dave lived a fulfilling life because you weren’t there to drag him down. Nobody was.

You were an anchor and he was a boat made to sail the world. It was a shame you promised to go where he went, albeit indirectly. More of a shame you could never really make up for it. Your footprint was buried in the mud by now, six feet deep just like the grave you’d dug for both him and yourself. You’d lie down in it and let him weigh you down.

That’s the least you could do.

But you always came back to him to see what he had to offer. Every day was a loop, but you could make some of them more interesting. One day, you’d asked him if he’d ever played an instrument (even though you knew full well that he had, which one, and when), much to his surprise. Probably fair, since he was in the middle of trying to figure out if Phone Guys tended to hate the desecration of Foxy or the mere existence of Balloon Boy more on the whiteboard stuck up to the wall. You were in the hallway leading to the safe room, busy contemplating a plan that – if you played your cards right – wouldn’t involve child murder.

It usually did. Who were you fooling?

Oh, yeah! Been a long ass time, but I did play a damn good trombone! People’d come ‘n stare at the kid on New York streets, playin’ the tunes for any person or rat that cared to listen… Dave clasped his hands at his cheek, sighing wistfully. I’d even make money, sometimes! ‘N when I didn’t, I’d jus’ steal it. 

Like a normal businessman? You quipped with a smirk.

Exactly! Dave clicked his tongue at you, returning to his whiteboard. He paused quickly after, however, white pupils looking over his shoulder. His neck turned just a bit too far to be normal for a human to twist their neck, head tilting at you. Why, ya wanna hear me serenade ya? Ya can’t flatter yer way outta my schemin’, sportsy. I’m hurt.

Just making small talk, you started, then backtracked. Shit, you could hear Dave play an instrument, follow some hobby he’d clearly buried ever since Henry’s shitty self came along, and he might not make up a reason to commit heinous crimes on Fazbender’s property? It was almost too good to be true. Actually… maybe I could get you a trombone, if you wanted to play me something. Y’know. Just to prove it. You wouldn’t be lying to me, would you, Dave? Me? Old Sport? Christ, when had you started using that as your alias? He was growing on you too much. Like mold, or ivy vines, or flowers on a cactus.

Annoying. 

Dave looked utterly indignant, slamming the marker down on the edge of the whiteboard where several erasers that hadn’t been cleaned likely since they were opened kicked up dust at the marker’s mere presence. You moved to cover your nose, then remembered you didn’t have one. Oops. C’mon, sportsy! I only lie about cool shit, not bein’ a New Yorker shit! New Yorkers’re greasy as fuck. I’d lie about bein’ from Florida, or somethin’!

Florida is just as bad – nevermind. I was talking about the instrument part. I… don’t think you playing a trombone is gonna prove your New York residency. You raised an eyebrow.

Oh, no, I wasn’t a resident.

Right. He was an orphan. You weren’t supposed to know that, though, so you just impassively nodded. Got it. So… trombone?

Dave took a moment of thought that looked far too serious for the circumstances. Trombone. Let’s get bonin’, sportsy!

Nope, okay, don’t say it like that. 

With reluctance that was only half attributed to your guilt about doing this – the rest was, of course, to do with the fact Dave was definitely going to make too many bone innuendos for the rest of this version of today – you had dragged yourself to the Prize Counter to talk to Matt, shaking a red solo cup full of tokens at him. He smiled at you with nothing behind his eyes. Did this fucker even think?

…On second thought? Having no idea what was going on behind Matt’s eyes was a good problem to have.

You have to tell me what you want, sir. I don’t read minds on company time.

You have a trombone here, right? Fazbender’s has everything here. Including cocaine. So if you somehow don’t have at least a trombone – Pause. You looked over from the shelves to stare at Matt, maybe a bit too wide-eyed judging by his smile… oh, who the hell were you trying to fool? That creep was always smiling. …Do you read minds… off company time?

Sure, why not? You were growing less and less confident he was even listening to you. All that mattered was that he did, finally, lean down and fish through a box under the Prize Counter, producing a brass trombone. He held it out by the cone-shaped end (what the fuck was it called? You were never a trombone guy.) like someone would scruff a kitten. Maybe a younger you would’ve sputtered out a few questions with a twitching eye, but you honestly couldn’t be bothered to invest that much emotional energy in this exchange with Matt. As an alternative, you flipped him off with one hand and took the trombone in the other, holding it in a way you were pretty confident was more proper – by the long curved part. 

Happy to help, sir.

Yeah, yeah. Get back to work, you smiley fuck. Unfortunately, you had to lower your middle finger to grab onto the trombone with your other hand, given it had a bit more weight to it than you anticipated. As you turned away, Matt nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off of you. 

You hated this job. So. Fucking. Much. But you had a plan. A plan that would maybe, probably, potentially work, and if it didn’t, who gave a shit? Only you would remember your failures, and maybe that’s how it was destined to be. They could fester in your chest and eat you from the inside out while everyone else was pulled away by the smell of decay from your skin. Rotting inside and out. Honestly, you deserved a prize for that much. Maybe they’d put it on your tombstone, if you ever got one. You hoped you didn’t.

After slipping through the main stage area and quickly finding an excuse to tell Peter on why you were lugging an instrument into the safe room (a pretty bad one, but it was one he stomached with only an exhausted sigh and an okay, employee, fine, which was a win in your book), you met Dave where he had retreated into the familiar back room. No cameras to remind you that you were here. Just your foggy memories and a few lazy dreams that would definitely surface from this moment.

This was worse than whatever impulse led you to make that promise. But, like the promise, you would do this all over again, and you hated yourself for that.

I got the trombone. You offered it out to him with awkward hands. I don’t know if you need to prep it, or if you should clean it, or… whatever you do with trombones. As Dave took it out of your hands – which were oddly clammy, what the hell was up with that – you gestured vaguely, folding your arms over your chest. Dave perched up on the safe room table, examining the trombone in the same way you’d watched him squint down at animatronics that needed some kind of fixing. Finally, he nodded and beamed.

No worries, old sport! The only risk with anythin’ from the Prize Corner is catchin’ Matt’s virgin aura! That and tetanus. And asbestos. But that ain’t Prize Corner exclusive. You quietly remembered another reason you hated this place. Ya ready for the tunes of yer lifetime, sportsy?

You’d made one mistake by not really expecting him to be good. Yeah, he’d sold his tunes on the street as a kid, but he was just that – a kid. One that was (or at least claimed to be – it was another thing you really didn’t care to sleuth out the truth behind) completely purple, no less! It was a novelty regardless of how bad his trombone playing was. When you nodded along with a casual lay it on me, Purps, you hadn’t anticipated him to start playing well. Your bad. He was always the wrong guy to underestimate. You’d learned that after the time he’d gotten just enough guts to try killing you right before you burned the restaurant down. Hadn’t your last words been I lov–

Nope. You were going to focus on his hands again. That was easier. So, so much easier. As much as you wanted to try and understand how he was playing this thing, looking at Dave’s lips (or, Christ forbid, his throat) was a dangerous slope.

Thin fingers. The kind a pianist would have, dancing across the keys. They served just as well for dancing along the length of the trombone, though. One hand rested near the mouthpiece, fingers wrapped around the bars in a specific position that meant very little to you. It looked practiced. Instinctual. You wished more of his instincts were honed for music than they were for holding weapons, when he wasn’t the weapon himself. His other hand slid the long, curved part of the trombone to make different notes, though it shuddered a bit with what you could only guess was unfamiliarity. You understood in your own way. If you picked up anything you used to love, you weren’t all too sure you’d remember to care about it anymore. 

The tune wasn’t one you recognized. You didn’t care much. Your mind was barely picking up on the notes, pretty as they were, in favor of watching blunt nails remain steady on the bars of the trombone and fingers that slowly grew steadier pull the slide of the trombone in tune. It felt good, watching his hands be put to good use. To see him gentle. You wished that you were soft enough to invite him to soften up more, but rotten skin never made comfy company. Nothing to be offended by. You didn’t want him around anyways. Probably. 

Well? What’cha think, sportsy? You jolted out of your own head, gaze swiveling from his hands to Dave’s grin. It was smug and proud, true. His eyes betrayed his own need for approval in spite of that. You can never doubt me again! Or I’ll have ta play ya some more tunes, and that’d jus’ be awful! The laugh he crowed out suggested that he knew it was not, in fact, awful at all. You furrowed your brows as if you didn’t know the same truth.

Better than I expected, honestly. Kinda surprised you aren’t more rusty after this long. You shrugged. His eyes gleamed like a kid on Christmas. The thought reminded you of the kids from a million lives before that wouldn’t get to see their gifts. You’d fix it. You had to.

You jus’ make it easy to perform, old sport! What can I say? Yer my partner in all my best breaks onto th’ stage! We’re a set. Maybe I’ll teach you how to play an instrument next! Ya ever play guitar?

That time didn’t end in you playing guitar. If your memory served you right – a risky thing to count on – the kids died anyway and you snuck into Spring Bonnie’s suit just to set it off. You got locked in the safe room. Peter didn’t believe you when you said you weren’t a killer. Hilariously familiar, you had thought before keeling over.

You woke up on Monday with an ache in your chest.

Dave would’ve been a mesmerizing musician if it weren’t for you.

You always thought Dave would make a good dancer.

It tied back to the flair in which he did everything, the pride he carried no matter how feigned, the way that even when he wasn’t in the Spring Bonnie suit, he was always putting on a show. You hated that you could connect all his mannerisms to reasonings. Dave was better when he was a bit of a mystery, and really, you hadn’t even learned it off of him willingly. Knowing just made you feel like a nosy fuck anytime you remembered what was on those tapes. That should have been Dave’s choice. Dave’s voice explaining things, followed by you letting him slump into you while you told him Henry couldn’t hurt him where you two were going –

Nope. You didn’t think about Dave at all, nor what he’d say about the tapes. You were so good at not even rolling the idea of that aubergine man in your head for a second. Jack “Old Sport” “Aubergine Killer” Kennedy, that’s what they called you in at least one time loop. The nickname should’ve felt better, but it felt as sour as the news broadcast about what happened to Dee. With that, you could hide behind not having held the knife. You had before. You probably would again, no matter how badly you didn’t want to, because things you wanted tended to slip through your fingers like sand, quick and elegant.

Like Dave. Who you were still not thinking about, and you were doing a great job at not thinking of him, mind you. You were just… planning.

Planning about the nights you spent in Vegas however many times. Planning about how it made you feel. Planning about Dave. William Afton. Bill A. 

…Christ, who were you even trying to fool? Yourself? You were reckless, not stupid – okay, well, stupid was still on the table. You weren’t stupid enough to believe there wasn’t a purple-colored leech clinging to your brain and chewing on your frontal lobe like a painfully slow lobotomy. Sometimes, you wished your memory slipped away far more than it did with each new Monday, but every thought you had was persistent as if it had happened the day before. Including every thought on Dave. Especially every thought on Dave. He always came back.

Irritating. That was your thing.

The thoughts on Vegas were exceptionally bothersome – and you knew it was serious, because you never used the word bothersome. Seriously, what kind of fucking nerd said bothersome? You, now. Dave was turning you into a nerd. God, the timeline you were having these thoughts in really was the worst timeline. You had half a mind to pitch yourself off the Fazbender’s roof right now at the fact you were this horrifically rotted over your coworker (more for his sake than yours), but you knew better than that. Fazbender’s wasn’t tall enough to kill you on impact. You’d probably just end up euthanized like a dog again, and you’d wake up on another Monday with the same train of thought mingled with why the fuck did you do that?

You’d live with this kind of thinking like a normal person. And you’d be normal about it. So normal.

Vegas was Dave’s idea and always had been. Your initial plan just involved killing the kids, then looping back and saving their souls in some way – usually burning the building to free them or something half-assed like that. That was all back when you thought the promise would be easy and not involve gutting arcade machines, waking up in the same week countless times, and hating your reflection more than ever. You were almost having fun, some days! You! Enjoying life! And meaning it! A pretty foreign concept, these days, but, hey. You deserved it. Can’t have your Happiest Day cake and eat it too. That cake went to people who earned Happiest Days, silly.

Y’know. Souls. Not abominations.

Since you were willing to give yourself a shred of enjoyment at the time, you’d relented to Dave’s specific requests to head off to Vegas and party your asses off. Nowadays, you were too familiar with the context, another thing you wished you could forget. It always made the memories a bit less fun when they were covered in a pink fog. Henry should be standing there, you’d think, and it’d completely ruin the moment. The thought of a world where you could’ve been everything Dave wanted and all he needed was amazing –

No, it wasn’t. You’ve always been a meatsack. Nobody counts on a raw steak for emotional fulfillment. At least when Henry had been around, he’d been something human, if only in soul. You couldn’t even be that.

Maybe you weren’t any better. But Vegas had happened anyway, and that was one of the million things you couldn’t change by now. No point in wishing that you’d died before Dave could haul himself to the casinos and have a blast. No point in thinking – knowing – that he would’ve had more fun without you. No point in praying to a god that wouldn’t listen that you could just get this over with and become as hazy of a memory as the pink fog that always coated your head.

Dave had ambitious desires for Vegas. You were pretty sure he was making up for lost time and you couldn’t blame him. You had a hell of a lot of time to make up for, and you were the one with infinite amounts of it. The passing idea that maybe Dave, too, was in his own loop, trying to chase after Vegas again and again, drifted through your head. Horrible. If that was true, you’d go from thinking the world hated him to thinking the gods themselves had it out for him. Regardless, you were fine with trailing behind him through neon-lit streets while he rambled out an itinerary you knew he’d only loosely follow. Once he got a few drinks in him, it was nigh-on impossible to keep him on any sort of track. You’d be a fool to try.

And besides. It was nice just knowing he was actually having fun, for once. Wasn’t that all you wanted? For Dave to finally reach his Happiest Day? For everyone to (minus yourself, but you didn’t count as a person enough for that to matter)? You’d already long since fucked up this round. The least you could do was go along with Dave’s whimsical wants that would likely end in you both blackout drunk and on some kind of stimulant. Not like that wasn’t your definition of a normal night, some days. You were more similar than you liked to Dave, and maybe that’s why you wanted to forget him. The fact you couldn’t said plenty that you wouldn’t listen to.

The first day of Vegas consisted of a lot of gambling. It wasn’t your personal vice, though you still did whatever Dave was asking in terms of the games around the casino. Roulette was one of his favorites, his eyes shining like a cat’s while he watched the ball bounce. You wondered if he’d be just as enamored by a ball of yarn as a cat, too. Weird thought, okay. He’d gotten bored quickly enough by the random chance of it all, though, and he’d eventually pulled you over to another area crowded in bright slot machines. The lights hurt your eyes. You didn’t care.

Anything for him, much as you hated how that statement came to mind so easily.

You mostly kept behind him and cheered on his slot-gambling endeavors. He’d ramble on and on as he did them – always liked the real tactile ones, y’know? Makes it less luck, more skill, ‘n how am I gonna get skill without practice? Ya jus’ gotta hone your eyes for when things’re in place… – except for when he was actually pulling the lever. If it wasn’t for the fact you knew Dave was going to blow his money on food and drinks by the next day, you’d be thrilled about the financial stability you’d soon have. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered. Money wouldn’t save them.

Even the slot machines started to wear on Dave over time despite his enthusiasm. Soon enough, he was taking you by the sleeve again – maybe he noticed how your vision was getting a bit fuzzy from staring at flashing game signs for so long – and pulling you to the front of the casino. How’s about we cap this night off so we can’t remember it, eh, sportsy? He had said with a wink.

You didn’t bother to argue about how you wanted to remember this night. Because you didn’t. You didn’t want to remember Dave Miller. There was nothing to remember. It was fine. Sure, why not? You started, then backtracked. Shit, that’s Matt’s line. I mean to say – yeah, what the hell? Let’s roll.

Dave cringed. If ya try ‘n taint me with Matt’s weird virgin aura, I’m leavin’ you in a cardboard box on th’ side o’ the road.

You didn’t bother to mention that he would anyway, and you’d let him because it’d be doing you a favor. That hadn’t happened this time. Not yet. Instead, you nodded with the most shit-eating smirk and made a zipped lips gesture. Off you two went (it was more Dave walking and you being half-dragged with your heels scraping the sidewalk once you were outside) to what you could only assume would be Dave’s choice of bars to crawl between. Much to your chagrin, you could very much remember Dave’s method of bar hopping. Pick th’ worst ones first, so then ya cap off the night with some real pretty ones! It’s fuckin’ foolproof! Easiest way to make a bad night good, old sport. You’d be toast without me.

That was probably the source of at least a few of his deaths, a thought you kept to yourself. You weren’t supposed to know that, and who would you be to judge? At least Dave hadn’t guzzled bleach just to start over on a shitty promise one or three or five times. Somehow, he was doing better than you on his track record of deaths, a thought that bothered you to no end and yet felt like exactly what you deserved. You still followed him to the first run down bar he stopped inside. And the next. And the next. And the next.

It took far longer than you were sure it should’ve to get to a bar that didn’t look like something out of a horror movie. Dave had gotten into a bar fight or two already and was a bit bruised, but he’d insisted you didn’t patch him up. You knew why. Knowing things always seemed to be the death of you. You knew what happened to Dee and it killed you. You knew what happened to the souls and it rotted you. You knew what you had to do and it always seemed to kill you. Just another tally on the whiteboard, you figured, dragging yourself into a bar lit up in blue LEDs. It had a futuristic sort of aesthetic, but there were vinyls and vintage posters hanging on the walls, paired up with an old-fashioned radio. Really old fashioned. Was the music even coming from it?

You didn’t get the chance to think on that, since Dave pulled you onto a bar stool and was already ordering your preferred drinks. You’d stayed fairly sober up until now – only because you were viciously uncomfortable leaving Dave unsupervised for however long you two would be inside the shittier bars this side of Vegas – but the temptation to let a shot of bourbon burn its way down your throat was coming to its peak, and you knew you couldn’t resist much longer. Once the shots were in front of you, you downed them like a man seeing water for the first time, met with a tipsy chuckle from Dave.

Jeez, old sport, ya could’a drank anythin’ else I offered ya… Dave huffed. What, yer too good for a bar with creaky floors, now?

I was babysitting, you jeered back, elbowing him in the side just gently enough for you not to feel how thin he was under his vacation shirt. You didn’t want to think of his organs. Or lack thereof. Now I can trust you not to get killed. You’ll just get your ass kicked. There’s a big difference.

Awww! Sportsy’s looking out for me! Dave leaned onto you and you felt his breath, warm and reeking of beer, fanning on your neck. You wanted to wring his neck. Promptly, you shamed yourself in a way that felt adequate for that thought, then turned your attention to the empty shot glass in your hand. This was a terrible idea. Everything about this was terrible, but you’d already caved to Dave’s plans several times more than you felt comfortable thinking about, and you weren’t too sure if you just hated the idea of being known or the idea of Dave anymore. They went hand in hand.

You’re my ride home, so I kinda have a personal reason to… y’know. Not kill you. It’s tempting. You narrowed your eyes at him. A shitty attempt to ward him off, since he was beyond the point where death threats mattered to him even when he was sober. 

Barking out a laugh and grinning in a way that looked too wide for his face to hold, Dave replied, don’t threaten me with a good time, old sport! These hands are made for stranglin’, y’know. Wink, wink.

Did you just say wink, wink out loud? You scoffed. You have eyes. Wink with them.

Dave blinked at you like a frog would – one eye, then the other. That good enough for ya?

You hated this man. You liked to think you did, at least. You shook your head and opted to put your mind on anything except the warmth on your long-rotted skin, which left you filling the silence in your brain with the music the bar was blaring. It was some Top 100 Hits pop song, if you had to guess – you didn’t listen to much music outside of Fazbender’s, and they only ever played crappy Kidz Bop parodies of those same songs. The covers haunted your every waking moment. God, you were glad the kid spirits gave you the chance to swap over to Rick Astley sometimes. One shining beacon of light in a terrible, terrible life.

Too caught up in your musings on music censorship and how kids were being conditioned to have the worst taste in media, you didn’t notice Dave tugging at your arm lazily until he started speaking. Sportsy, he whined, kicking his feet against your stool, c’mon! When are we gettin’ a chance to dance to the worst fuckin’ trash on th’ radio? Never! Not at Fazbender’s hellhole, anyway. We jus’ gotta dance to the worst trash off the radio, there. He huffed like that was a genuine issue that plagued him. How you wished that was the worst of your problems. You dropped your shot glass onto the bar countertop, turning just enough to give Dave the leeway to pull you off your stool. It wasn’t entirely clear what he wanted until you saw where he was leading you.

God fucking dammit.

Dave. Dave. Dave. You tried to dig your heels in, but Dave was freakishly strong. Probably to be expected from someone who heaved Foxy into the Grand Canyon. Hey, wait – didn’t you do that on at least one cocaine induced rampage, or was that a hallucination pre-imprisonment-slash-execution? I have a shred of decency. I am not dancing to some lazy pop music in front of a crowd. You can’t make me. I’m not drunk enough. Much to your disappointment. Not nearly drunk enough.

Dave turned and pouted, his grip on your arm only tightening. You wondered if he could feel the indents of your scars, faintly visible under the layers of orange makeup you put on. The springlocks had left grooves where they cut in, your rotten skin marred by flesh-colored lines digging just deep enough to be obvious. If Dave cared, he didn’t mention it. You owed him for that.

‘s it yer thing to be a fuckin’ square all th’ time, or d’ya jus’ do that with me? Dave huffed, his free hand settling a bit clumsily on his hip. It won’t kill ya to have a bit of fun, y’know. Would probably be good for ya. He looked you up and down. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? When yer just standin’ about, ya look like th’ loneliest guy on Earth! An’ I’ve seen ya dance in front’a those kiddins. Yer not embarrassed. So c’mon or I’ll drag ya over to the floor kickin’ and screamin’. He leaned forward, smugly adding, your move, old sport.

…What had you gotten yourself into?

…Sure, you said in the most unsure tone of voice possible. Nothing that mattered to Dave, since he clearly just heard approval and ate it up. Giggling in a way that made his tipsiness obvious even though he could talk fairly well – you didn’t like the implications of that for how functioning of an alcoholic he was, but, hey, same boat – he pulled you into the crowd of people on the flashing dance floor. The source of the sound was more obvious here. It was clearly coming from a few overhead speakers. Fake vintage radio fans. You were definitely leaving a two-star review, if you remembered tonight by the end of it all. And if your phone could open Yelp.

His hand slid down your arm and took one of yours. With a bit of fumbling, he got your other hand in his. If you looked at his face, you’d think harder than you wanted to by any measure.

So you looked at his hands. It was always his hands, wasn’t it? They were easy to look at because you saw so much potential in them. If you stared at Dave’s scars, his eyes, his too-wide grin, his body, then you’d have to look at what Henry made of him. What he was now. Focusing on the fingers that slowly weaved between yours, the blunted nails that nicked your skin now and again when they shift, the skin that didn’t look too dissimilar to yours and seemed stretched thin across the backs of his hands… that was him. It was all Dave. William Afton. The man who never got to exist.

You knew your feet were terribly clumsy, but Dave made up for it. His feet slid across the floor effortlessly, taking steps in the pattern of some dance you didn’t know and convinced yourself you wouldn’t ever bother learning. Your toes hit his a few times, and the alcohol certainly wasn’t helping your coordination. He acted like he was fresh and sober. Annoying prick. You wanted to see him like this forever and then never see him again. Was that so much to ask?

Fuckin’ hell, old sport. Dave’s voice got you to lift your head. He had been practically leering at you. You weren’t sure if you’d had the mind to glare back, or if you were too caught up in the (literal) glow of his eyes. Did it matter? Dunno how ya didn’t set off a fucking springlock suit by now. Ya got two left feet! He spun you around and you almost fell on top of him, which only made him laugh and grin all the more. You hated him. Maybe. When you met his eyes again, his stare was knowing, brows furrowed down in a gaze that screamed tell me I’m wrong. You knew what he wanted you to say. Your scars weren’t as hidden as you’d hoped.

You’d do anything for him but give him the chance to fall into you more than he already had. Really, you were doing him a favor. He should thank you for being so damn empty.

Sweep me off them, then, if they’re so clumsy. So much for that plan, you thought.

I thought you’d never ask!

Dave was right – you didn’t remember much of that night, though whether that was because it was too many loops ago or the alcohol was up in the air. You were pretty sure it ended in you overdosing on cocaine, but there was a similar time where you’d blacked out after watching the Real Fredbear take his final breath. Who was to say when it happened? Who was to say it meant anything?

What mattered was that you woke up on another Monday.

Dave would’ve been a beautiful – charming – he could’ve been a dancer, if it weren’t for you.

You always thought Dave would make a good partner.

It was hard to deny and always had been. You could fool everyone else, playing the normal freakish corpse next door until your brain felt numb with how many aliases and fake stories you had left to keep track of. After so many loops – years worth, you had to guess – everything just felt the same. Go to a Fazbender’s. Try your damnedest to fix things and usually fail. Wake up on Monday with a throbbing headache. Alternatively: succeed and then drown in alcohol and drugs until you couldn’t remember what world you were in, then wake up on Monday with a headache. It all ended the same, and everyone was the same, and you were so goddamn tired.

Except for Dave.

Realistically, he hadn’t actually changed. You had. You’d seen him enough times for the pain in your chest to be hard to ignore, watched the agony he went through by your hands too many times to forget that you couldn’t stop crying. You never cried. You didn’t cry. Forget that. Point being, Dave was a hard bug to shake, and he’d sunk his fangs right into the flesh of your neck. No matter what happened, you knew you’d come back. For the promise. For him. And in turn, he’d come back for you, even if you wished he’d stay down for his own sake. You couldn’t keep doing this – dooming him to a life spent by you, over and over, and fooling him into thinking you were a good person. You couldn’t be what he needed and you couldn’t stay. 

That was the worst part. You wanted to. Everyone else, you could fumble your way through an excuse for how they’d be better off without you, one that you knew they couldn’t disagree with. Peter and Dee had each other when it came to the end of the line that you’d gone through a handful of times. Steven was a solitary sort of guy, and you remembered him saying he’d had a boyfriend once upon a timeline. Whether or not that was true or some weird Scott-memory that was stuck in Steven’s head wasn’t your business to dissect, but regardless, Steven at least believed he had somebody else. You lacked interest in being the person for him to lean on. Not that he didn’t deserve the shoulder. He just didn’t deserve it to be the guy who reminded him of his guilt every time he met eyes with you. 

All other Fazbender’s employees were up in the air in terms of people they could go to, but frankly, you doubted most of them cared. Matt was just as much of a cryptid as you, if not moreso, with the way he just seemed to show up at the Prize Corner every morning and at least pretended to be blissfully unaware of the supernatural elements of Fazbender’s. You’d asked him about the possessed animatronics one time, just to get a rise out of him, and he’d inquired if you’d taken cocaine again before musing that you probably would’ve killed someone if you had. He was right. You hated that fact.

Ronaldo was a ghost by the time you made it to your own pizzeria – at least, he was this time around, and he had been the past few run-arounds of this same situation. You were pretty sure he’d eat anyone he cared about alive for breakfast. Then again, he probably thought the same of you. Silly Ronaldo! Cannibalism wasn’t up your alley! Yet. The ghost principle applied to Jimbo as well, though you honestly hoped Jimbo was going to rot in the closet of your Fazbender’s alone for eternity. That guy had sprayed you one too many times with Windex for you to care what happened to him.

There were your Phone Guys, who typically ended up fairly warm with you. Sometimes you’d forget to go through the audio logs and Jake would go into a panic before you sent him away. You didn’t understand that. You’d do a lot of heinous things to just be permanently put down, in your shoes or his. You still refrained. For some reason, hearing him beg for his life made you sick to your stomach. Maybe you saw Peter in him.

Harry was a unique case – you were certain you could vaguely remember him wanting to burn alive in a timeline or two, though you couldn’t place the rest of the details – but you’d still listen to his story and reminisce on a life he couldn’t remember. A familiar feeling, though you couldn’t admit that out loud. Every day, your recollection of when you were alive (or, hell, even the earlier days of you being dead) seemed to grow fainter, retreating into that same pink mist. It was perfect and it was horrifying. You wished all your memories would go like that and yet you hung onto them so dearly. It was why Dave had burrowed into your skull so deeply, wasn’t it?

You tried not to think about Dave. You knew you’d fail, but it was worth a try.

Then there was Roger, always the last of the three. He was the most anxious and stressed of the Phoneys on your roster… not that you could blame him. You just drowned all your stress in bourbon and drugs instead of having breakdowns in the ballpit room next to Music Man. Christ, you hated Music Man. At least Roger was vaguely entertained by the weird machine (because you were pretty confident Music Man didn’t count as an existing species beyond fucked up robot) when it wasn’t slamming its cymbals and crawling through the vents just to steal pizza slices from unsuspecting children. The fact you hadn’t gotten a lawsuit over that spider-robot-thing was probably only because people were terrified of the consequences. One time Music Man had said someone’s exact address. 

…Yeah, you really should’ve thrown that thing out before burning the restaurant down. Whatever. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered, etcetera etcetera.

You’d made sure the Phone Guys would have somewhere to go. They had something to live for (no thanks to you, you told yourself), so they’d take care of each other. Who better to help with the horrors of having a phone-head than a fellow phone-head, right? Besides, where you were going, you wouldn’t be helping anyone with anything. Exactly how you liked it. After fifty years (not counting the looping) of helping everyone with just about everything, you just wanted to lie down in your long-overdue grave. All your employees had been politely let go, which they were by and large eager to do. Granted, most of them were ghosts or otherwise in immediate danger of dying – see: the springlock costume actors, anyone who had to come remotely close to the animatronics, and Oscar on his rusty-ass pole that definitely harbored some ancient disease like those old icebergs scientists would melt – but it was the sentiment. All your loose ends had to be tied up.

Matt had stayed, bizarrely. You didn’t think about it. He was immortal (maybe? Had that actually been a joke?), right? Whatever. Good for him. Even if he wasn’t immortal, you couldn’t blame him for wanting to stay. Working at a Fazbender’s Prize Corner for fourty or so years would probably make anyone immensely suicidal. You gave him a thumbs up and then retreated into the main dining room for your final showdown.

Roger had said goodbye to you along with his new roommates. He was the brightest of the three in personality, giving a wide wave to you and patting you on the arm. You tried your best not to prickle at the contact, but with the way his hand had retracted as fast as it drew near, you had a feeling you hadn’t done a very good job. Oops. Whatever. He was hanging around Jake, for fuck’s sake, you bristling a bit when you were touched because you were about to kill yourself was probably the least shocking thing to come from the four of you. While you couldn’t read Roger’s face – there were no eyes to stare, no mouth to twist into a pitiable expression – you’d stuck around Phone Guys long enough to know their body language, and Roger was the most obvious of them all. He wrung his hands at his chest, taking one step back and then another.

Take care of yourself, alright, sir? His head tilted to the side just barely. It reminded you of a kicked puppy, though comparing Phoneys to animals felt wrong. They’d been dehumanized enough. Roger was just an employee trying his damnedest to empathize with his boss, for some godforsaken reason. You weren’t judging! Just… mentally inquiring. Ah, what the hell, you were totally judging. Roger’s breath wasn’t worth being wasted on monsters like you. Hadn’t he handled enough irresponsible brats for one lifetime, much less two? 

You were great at making promises you couldn’t keep, though. So you nodded and smiled with that gap in your teeth that hadn’t gone away since one of those nights in Vegas. He was stuck on you, even in your reflection. You wished he had anyone else. You knew he didn’t.

I promise, you said with all your nonexistent soul. It pacified Roger, at the least, and he nodded curtly before heading to Jake and Harry’s sides. They spoke a bit about heading back to their apartment before finally slipping out the front door. You stood in the center of the room, leaning your back against one of the cushioned booth seats as you watched the door. You could see cement seeping through the crack under the door – or… probably cement. For all you knew, it was some weird silly putty that was ten years old and hardened at the first gasp of air it got. Whatever made the door seal up, you thought, tapping your dress shoe against the floor.

You waited patiently (you’d waited so, so long for this) until the light streaming through the sliver between the door and the doorframe was cut off. The restaurant was nearly pitch black. All you had was the dim lights from the Prize Corner that hadn’t been cut off with the rest of the electricity to guide you. Quietly, you stepped away from them. No lives had to be risked but your own, and everyone would be saved except you. A win-win, in your book.

Bourbon had a potent smell that seared the back of your throat even without you downing shots of it. If you were going to die, you decided to kill everything else relating to you in the showdown, so you’d taken out all the alcohol smuggled under the security desk and poured it around the restaurant with the gasoline. Allegedly, bourbon was supposed to be flammable, but you didn’t really care about the truth behind that. As long as it meant nobody remembered you, especially as you were now. A filthy drunk.

Maybe Henry was right about that much.

Before you could contemplate that and probably end up lighting a cigarette to take the edge off, the sound of metal footsteps hit the tile floor. You had no more memories to fall back on, nothing left to reminisce upon. You were stuck in your own restaurant by your own series of choices. You were finally going to do something right. The fact you couldn’t smile at that was just a testament to why you needed to end this, once and for all.

You turned around, just like you did in the old Utah location months ago. That was something you could promise. You’d do anything for Dave, after all.

The sight of him how he was now – Davetrap more than he was Dave, though you figured they weren’t all too different at the end of the day – would never make you feel any less awful, still. That Spring Bonnie suit he had called a prison (or a gift, flesh merged with steel, steel merged with –) was rotted away, faux fur and plaster torn and decayed to show off the metal endoskeleton that once held the suit together when a performer wasn’t inside. It probably was doing a better job of staying together than Dave himself, to give it some credit. Flashes of purple skin peeked through the mossy green of the suit – mold, plant life, rot, or something else, you wondered – reminding you exactly who was inside. You met his eyes for only a second and regretted it right after.

He was angry, that much was clear. You would have guessed that without making eye contact. But there was something else, something in his face that somehow could still emote so fluidly behind the Spring Bonnie mask. Remorse.

Christ, Dave could feel remorse more than you could. When was the last time you’d felt guilty? Never. You were here, after all, about to burn everything to the ground and die like a coward would. You weren’t guilty. You weren’t thinking of Dave because you weren’t guilty.

“Why, hello there, old sport!” Familiar. You liked familiar. If you steeped in your old memories of familiar things, you could pretend that this was another memory from another world. Not because you were guilty (you didn’t feel guilty, you didn’t, not enough), but because it made things easier. This hurt him more than you. Or you more than him? Could either of you feel pain, or was that ache in your chest just a figment of your imagination? He was still talking, glowing eyes flickering around as he ranted on and on about everything that had happened – most of it your fault, as it usually was – even after you’d tuned him out and his voice became a drone in your skull. You usually loved to hear his voice, and you didn’t care how strong of a word love was, because it was true. Today, though? You just wanted things to be quiet for once.

Fires were loud. Maybe you should’ve picked an easier way to put yourself down. There was no time to contemplate that, though, so instead, you focused on his hands. Or, rather, what was in them.

He’d brought the box. That fucking box. Why the hell had he brought the box? You had nothing to give him besides your organs, and your blood would get all his trinkets gross and sticky. That was all you ever did – ruin things. Which was why you’d made sure there was nothing left of you to ruin the new world. You were going to make things better, and the first step would be the demise of Fazbender’s and the last man who could bring it back. You’d free everyone and finish your one purpose. Even if he did kill you – he had, once, and you repressed that thought before your cut-off confession and the horror on his face could come back to mind – you’d come back, because the only legacy you had on this world was the fact your flesh wouldn’t stay down. Not until now.

The other animatronics approached from the shadows, pouring out of the halls, the backstage, the closets. Where the fuck had he been keeping them all? There weren’t even any scuttlers clinging to them, so it couldn’t have been the walls, the vents, the floor… most spots in your restaurant. Did it matter?

You knew the answer to that question. No point in dwelling on a conclusion that was formed a long time ago.

When he stopped, your voice started up, though you weren’t paying much mind to your own words. Not in the way you lost control of your voice when Henry wormed his way into your skull, scratching at your brain and telling you what would be perfect to say. No, this was different. You meant your words, and they were all yours as far as they could be, but you weren’t in your head. Your head was far, far more focused on Dave and his hands and his twitching ears and everything that he could’ve been.

There was a world where Dave got to be a mechanic. He’d make Fredbear’s on his own without Henry’s help and frame his college degree on the wall to show off to anyone entering his office. Maybe the animatronics would be the same. You were pretty sure he’d keep Spring Bonnie, at least. Springlocks wouldn’t have come to be, saving everyone the horror and tragedy that had befallen so many victims of those suits. Fredbear’s would be mentioned in every newspaper far and wide. It’d take over the west coast – maybe even the east, if Candy’s didn’t get up. Fredbear’s and its founder would be loved by kids across the country. William Afton would be a star.

There was a world where Dave got to be a magician. He wouldn’t have to rely on Henry’s circus, doing tricks on the street and finding a good use for what once was a way for him to do crime. He’d wear a fancy velvet tophat and pull rabbits and flowers out of it for passersby, and eventually, he’d get his own gig in an auditorium or a library or some other place that let him in. The purple would look good on him. Give him branding. He wouldn’t be a monster, he’d just be unique. One day, he would be on posters in the street and videos on the news. That aubergine-themed magician would be loved worldwide. William Afton would be a star.

There was a world where Dave got to be a musician. Maybe he’d stick with the trombone, playing for money on the street until someone told him (as he deserved) that he had talent. That he could be somebody, if he really wanted to. With that, he’d perform for bigger audiences, inside of cafes and rec rooms and wherever he could get business. Or maybe, in that world, he’d get to go to school. He’d have parents who ruffled his hair in the morning and shooed him off to the bus, and he’d eat lunch and throw crumpled paper at the heads of kids who bothered him. A few kids would start a band with him, and they’d go far, becoming a hit with rock fans worldwide. The crowds would love him wherever he went. William Afton would be a star. 

There was a world where Dave got to be a dancer. That was often tied to that world in which he got to be a kid, and his parents would take him to dancing lessons because they respected their boy’s hobbies. He’d be the most theatrical guy there, and eventually he’d be a background dancer in musicals, or he’d show up on those fancy ice skating performances you used to see on television, always wearing a giant smile that fit his face just right. People would commend his talent, his stand out attitude, and he’d never be called a freak. He would be an inspiration. The people would love him at every one of his shows. William Afton would be a star.

There was a world in which you loved him, too. It was the world in which you burned this whole place down.

“Goodbye, William.” You took a bow, the metal lighter carefully held in the hand raised above your head, and set it alight. Dave didn’t move from where he stood, this time. You almost thanked him.

You didn’t want to give him another reason to feel guilty, though. At least he could. So instead, you threw the lighter behind you and felt the heat as the fire started. You hoped, for Dave’s sake, that the burning in your eyes was from the smoke and not something else. Judging by the way the anger in his clenched jaw faded into sympathy, you doubted it.

Nothing mattered.

Today, you didn’t wake up on a Monday. You weren’t all too sure what day it was that you woke up in the Flipside on, or if the day existed at all. There was one thing you were certain of, though, as you got to your feet and looked at the expression on Dave’s face.

Dave would’ve been the best partner you could ask for, if you weren’t yourself.

Dave always thought you were a good person.

It was obvious from the start, no matter how well you tried to dodge around every compliment and convince yourself it was a poor lie on his part. At first, you’d nodded and hoped he’d cool his jets, but it never stopped. The fact you heard the same exact things over and over by nature of this fucking time loop didn’t help your case, either. He cared so much and you wished you cared way little, but his pushing and your pulling only left him tethered to you and you begging him to push you off a cliff. Metaphorically. You kept all your self-harming tendencies to your own head and hands, thanks.

Even though he’d picked you out to take Henry’s place (what else would it be?), you’d realized at some point between Vegas memories and recalling his terror when your voice wasn’t your own that he didn’t want Henry. You thought he’d be happier when you realized you weren’t yourself, but the sound of his voice shaking as you stood over the body of the Real Fredbear would never leave your head. Then again, most things to do with Dave didn’t. He was stuck in your mind. You wished you could believe you were hardly a thought in his. The way he was looking at you now made that really fucking difficult.

Henry had gone down through a series of spite-killing moves – you had Dave to thank for the brunt of the damage. He deserved that catharsis. He’d said a few final words and then gone down easily enough. Supposedly, he was destroyed on some kind of atomic level, though you could still feel the Void ebbing and throbbing with his impulse. You felt watched. Nobody else said a thing on the matter. Maybe you were paranoid. Anyone would be, in your shoes! You’d spent so long crawling to this point with bleeding nails and calloused hands, so of course the idea of this all being just for another flip of the switch was terrifying. Mortifying. You didn’t know how many times you could swallow your own name before throwing it back up.

Annoying. Irritating. Embarrassing. God, you were just like Dave in all the worst ways, and you didn’t even have the potential to be anything else. Since the day you got up, you were doomed to be a rotten corpse. Dave had a chance that you never got and wouldn’t have took.

So why was he so devastated?

Everyone had left without dwelling on you much. Their praises were nice, sure, but everything you had done was just part of the deal. You’d be even worse of a hollowed-out vessel if you left them hanging, after all, and nobody deserved to rot in a self-made purgatory except for you. If you even counted as somebody. Dave had chosen to go last, fittingly, and the bile that crept up your throat singing the song of I’m sorry had finally broken the seal of your lips. It turned out that you could very much feel guilty, if the new form of sickness that settled in your gut was any indicator. And, again, Dave’s teary eyes and shaking hands weren’t doing you any favors.

He didn’t want to leave. You were trying so, so hard to get him to move on, because that was what you’d been trying to do for decades. There was no other option. Not that you would say it, but you were sure the only reason Dave was so hung up on you was because he had nothing else to make him happy. Vegas was fun, wasn’t it? His Happiest Day would be a giant Vegas, full of slot machines and drinks and scratch-off cards you could score from gas stations. There would be cheap hookers that you wouldn’t be around to get jealous of. There would be dance floors for him to go on anytime without your clumsy feet screwing it up. There would be a bed just for him that you couldn’t take up room on anymore. That was good for him, wasn’t it?

Mere reassurances didn’t work, so you eventually passed off something else – ownership of Blackjack. Your soul. That had to do it, right? Blackjack was more you than… well, you. He was the soul, after all. He had all the parts that made someone human. All the guilt and remorse and family bonds. Your chest was hollow, devoid of the true love and the feelings that made people so remarkable. If Dave tried to drag you anywhere, he’d be met with an awfully light corpse to carry. Blackjack had weight. Merit. So if Dave took him up to his Happiest Day and spent time with him instead, Jack would be forgotten easily. A foolproof plan for a foolish aubergine. 

Dave was always too smart for his own good. Blackjack wasn’t enough because he wasn’t Jack, and you found yourself stammering over a way to explain that he was the most you that anyone could be. Nothing was comprehensible to Dave with him in the state he was, and eventually you grew blunt.

“It doesn’t matter what happens, Dave. I can’t come with you. There’s nothing I can do about that.” Staring at his hands only made it worse this time. You focused on the floor – or, at least, whatever part of the Void that you two were standing on. It rippled in shades of red and black like an ocean under glass long since tainted with blood. Fitting, for Henry’s realm. But, with your gaze firmly downturned, you didn’t realize Dave was reaching out for your wrist until thin fingers you’d done so good avoiding wrapped around your skin.

Fuck. You didn’t even have the control to move away anymore. Did you ever have control, you wondered? 

“If it doesn’t matter, can –” Dave choked up and coughed into his hand, pawing at the corners of his wet eyes with the back of his wrist. The charm on Blackjack’s collar rattled a bit, the only noise besides Dave’s voice in the endless abyss. “Can I jus’... stay here with ya? Only for a bit. I dunno where yer goin’, but…” He searched around, white pupils looking for something besides your face to land on. Nothing was there. You wished he’d kept his eyes away, but he met yours and you tried not to look like you were about to cry. He had been the cause of too many of your tears already, between the springlock suits, the alcohol, the cocaine, and the terrible promise-breaking thoughts that seeped into the wrinkles of your brain. “I won’t take too much of yer time. I can’t say goodbye. Barely gotten any time to think about how…”

Your head said no. You must’ve had a heart, though, because the words that came out were, “Sure, William.” He grinned like you imagined he would in the worlds where you didn’t exist and hugged you tight, bony fingers digging into the fabric of your suit jacket. You sighed and blamed it on your unbeating heart again when your own hands wrapped around his shoulders. 

“I knew ya wouldn’t lemme leave ya that quick, sportsy!” You didn’t bother to correct him on the fact that it was most definitely you leaving him. If he didn’t want to blame you? He could live with that (very, very incorrect) choice. With a skip back in his step and his smile only barely faltering when he saw your grim expression, he pulled away, falling back so he could sit on the maybe-floor maybe-endless-void. Who was to say? Hiding your reluctance well enough for Dave not to tell, which wasn’t saying very much, you sat across from him and leaned back on your palms.

Oddly, he didn’t speak. You had anticipated he’d start rambling again – hoped, even. That would take your mind off the inevitability of everything and how wrong this situation was going. All that greeted you in return was pure and utter silence, spare for the dull hum that reverberated from somewhere and yet nowhere in the dark expanse. Unnerving. You shifted uncomfortably and Dave finally picked up on your behavior, chuckling awkwardly.

“Sorry, I jus’... didn’t expect ya to say yes, honestly?” He paused, then backtracked while waving his hands in front of himself, palms visible. “Not, like – I’m not sayin’ I think ya’d just up ‘n ditch me without another thought! Yeah, ya left Davetrap, but he’s…” His voice died out for a second, and you knew you’d have to do the most horrifying task of all – acknowledging your wrongdoings head on. You shifted and Dave perked up, fingers crumpling against his palms.

“Look, Da – William,” you corrected yourself, but Dave shook his head.

“Nah, you can keep callin’ me Dave. William’s a whole lotta syllables, ain’t it? Th’ kinda name you’d see on fuckin’ business papers or somethin’. Stupid shit.” Waving a hand in circles dismissively, he continued, “I’ll figure out a new name for ya ta call me soon enough – ah. Wait. Shit.”

“Everyone else can call you that name, then.” You did your best to move on. Clearly, Dave wasn’t taking all too kindly to the idea of you leaving again, if he hadn’t made it obvious already. Who would’ve thunk? Not you. Apparently. Christ, you felt like a fucking moron. “What I was going to say is – look. I get the whole… my soul isn’t me thing probably better than anyone you’re going to meet.” You gestured broadly to Blackjack, who had curled up some distance away and was watching with an unreadable gaze. Creepy fucker. “But it still is. Even when it splits, it just kind of… festers. That doesn’t make it less you, just less… the you that you still are.” A pause. You groaned. “If you don’t get what I’m saying, I am not helping with that. That’s barely cutting skin deep.”

“Nah, nah. ‘s fine. I know some shit about souls already, really, so it ain’t new. Jus’... different. ‘N hard to get yer brain around. ‘Specially when ya don’t have one to use!” Dave knocked on the side of his head, snickering. You tried your best not to think of wringing Henry’s neck again. “I know, he’s kinda me, he kinda isn’t, whatever. Ya ditched him, sure, I hear ya on that, but – c’mon! Ya did all that just to try savin’ him! Me! Both of us! It takes a whole fuckin’ lotta strength and a real strong bullshit meter ta go through all the motions of helpin’ a full-time kiddie strangler! An’ ya did it anyway, jus’ cause…”

Shit. No. Don’t say it.

“...Hey. That promise ya made – ya told me a bit about it, you ‘n Dee. Somethin’ about savin’ the kiddins, right?” The hand he’d been gesturing with fell into his lamp with a soft thump, his stare trained on you and searching your face. You felt ill. You knew what he was going to say, and you knew even better that it was right. It wouldn’t help. It would make this so, so much worse. Maybe you could make him leave now? Or you could squirm into the Void and let it wrap around you, the familiar coldness of something Henry had once touched consuming your flesh. You always did like familiar things. It was fitting. This was the perfect tomb. If you were a weaker man, you’d blame Dave, but you were strong enough to know you’d been the one to ruin him enough to make him think about you at all.

Your fault. It always was. “Yeah. I made it with the Real Fredbear, and he brought me back from the dead. I had an incident with the springlocks. Those things happen, sometimes.” You shrugged indifferently as though you hadn’t just killed the man who made things happen. It didn’t even feel very triumphant, on your part. Just depressing. Numb. An end to a story. Dave was the hero of this, even if hero was a bit of a strong word. “Why?”

“Nothin’, nothin’, jus’...” Dave brought his hand back up to rub along his chin thoughtfully. You wondered if he was remembering where Henry hit. You wondered if he feared you’d hit him the same way. You deserved that. “Yeah, ya did save those kids better than anyone could. Most folks don’t jus’ walk into every Fazbender standin’ and manage ta bring peace ta all them restless souls. I was kinda busy in my own head, then, but… man, ya did good work, old sport!” You wanted him to shut up or get to the point that would make the bile in your stomach churn. “But, those kiddos… it’s my fault they died, y’know? I don’t think they or their childhoods would want me havin’ any sorta Happiest Day, or wherever th’ hell we go past here. Henry never found that one out.” Say it, you thought. Physically, you only nodded. “So, I guess what I’m askin’ is… why’d ya save me?”

There it was. You knew the answer, because of course you did. Knowledge was the death of you every time, and here and now, it was going to doom everyone’s Happiest Day. You shouldn’t have told Dave. You should’ve just let him think you’d come home like the husband in a soap opera one day, no matter how much it hurt you and how badly he’d ache every time you didn’t appear. It wouldn’t be your problem, and he’d forget about you quickly. You could’ve told yourself that. Why couldn’t you have? If you’d spent so long believing it, why did it only now feel like such a bold-faced lie?

You tried not to look. Your gaze wouldn’t budge. Dave tilted his head a little and you broke.

“I love you, Dave.”

You wished he killed you like he did last time those words left you. All of your muscles instinctively braced for the feeling of his hands around your throat, and you yearned for it worse than you’d ever yearned for him to be around before. Get it over with, you wanted to spit while you bit your own tongue until you tasted blood so words like that could never again leave your mouth. It wasn’t because you thought he didn’t feel the same way. That was childish, and frankly, it was the one scenario you wanted most next to just getting killed all over again. You never got what you wanted, did you? No. He did. With those four words, you’d sealed your fate somehow. You could only hope to a benevolent god that it made him angry instead of happy. Funny. You were always trying to hurt him, weren’t you?

His hands reached in and held your face instead of your neck. You thought about biting him, but all your mouth did was part slightly in surprise, and you mentally cursed your own inability to be vicious. Why now? Why him? 

“Sportsy, why didn’t ya – I – ya had every chance ta –” 

“ Please,” you mumbled in tandem with a shaky breath. At this point, you weren’t sure what you were begging for anymore. Reprieve? Death? Rejection? Peace? You were certain a couple of those went hand in hand. You turned your head, almost trying to make his hands move down to your throat, but all he did was pull your chin closer.

Silence. Deafening fucking silence. Maybe, if you thought hard enough, you could hear the restaurant burning and pretend you were dying all over again. A stupid thing to hope. Dave’s voice cut the silence far too well.

“Sportsy, I love y –”

– you woke up on a Monday. It was too early for birds to be chirping outside, but not early enough to stop rays of light from streaming through your window, making you wince as you opened your eyes. There were a few seconds where you could still feel the thin fingers of a mechanic, a magician, a musician, a dancer, your partner, on your face.

It faded. All your memories did, inevitably, and then you were back to square one. Groggily, you sat up in bed and let your hands fall into your lap. Your clock read 6:30 AM. If you could afford to be lazy, you would’ve laid back down and let yourself rot a little longer. But you’d be rotting anyway, and you’d already done your fair share of slacking. Back to work with you.

You could’ve been a great person if it weren’t for Dave.