sam

michael goes searching for him the next day. heads to the career centre (where nobody knows who he is, william hadn’t mentioned any son to his coworkers), then to william’s workshop, then to junior’s. i think he saves freddy’s for last, perhaps out of some part of him that Knows or some part of him that’s still a bit afraid of it. a monument to his trauma just the same as the home he shares with his father is. but michael goes and searches. finds the destruction in the abandoned restaurant, wandering alone in the darkness.

and, finally, he finds the suit. the mess of dried blood, the smell. he absolutely does not process it. stumbles forwards, dazed, tries to pull the suit away to see his father beneath it — he can’t really be in there, he’s fine, he can’t be dead, denial denial denial — but the spring locks are tangled into william’s body and no part of the suit will come away. and it all suddenly hits michael at once and he wrenches away, sobbing. throws up. he’s a terrified child, younger than he’s ever felt. wants to plead “dad, wake up”. wants to sit there until william does.

he considers it. considers curling at his father’s side and dying there too, like an animal. but something, either his father’s teachings drilled into him or outright hallucination — william’s voice in his ears, all around him — prompts him to recall his purpose. the opportunity here, the space to finally make william proud where he’d only had space to obey before. and, sure, maybe it’s his mind trying desperately to dissociate further from the reality of the situation, but it gets him out of the building. stops him from immediately grabbing a knife from the kitchen at freddy’s or finding somewhere high to step off from. finding some pills to take.

his ensuing focus, dissociative as it is, is singleminded. it’s denial and anger and depression and bargaining. michael has never been good at taking care of himself, but without william to provide any sort of routine, he stops eating near completely. stops sleeping. his life is a Mess for that year. he falls apart completely, loses himself to c-ptsd and self-destruction, any forced mask of normalcy that william kept in place over his son’s face disappearing in favour of survival. he lives off of the occasional greasy burger when the hunger begins to hurt too badly or makes him pass out while he’s working. he drinks way too much coffee in desperate attempts to keep himself conscious. he works indoors or sleeps all day, goes out to work at freddy’s at night, doesn’t talk to anyone, losing his already tenuous grip on reality in isolation.

he thinks about vanessa a lot. he searches for her desperately, going through whatever files he can get his hands on, stalking people that might help lead him to her. he works on the animatronics near constantly, restoring them, making them better than even his father had, working even while his fingers bleed. he spends a lot of time in the abandoned freddy’s restaurants, just to get himself out of the agonisingly silent house. he lays in his father’s bed. he finds out about mike schmidt. he reads books about ghosts. he stalks henry emily, can’t stomach getting closer.

it’s only towards the end of that year between movies that things start to come together, in a way. he thinks of fazfest and begins to fan the flames. he closes in on vanessa. he gets in contact with those stupid ghost hunters. he thinks about charlotte and her music box, the things his father had told him about her. it’s not so much a plan as…things happening in succession, nothing like his father’s plans. he doesn’t know what he’s doing, he doesn’t care about anything enough to hurt people like his father had, no clean ideas and intention and cold calculation. he’s just angry and hurt himself, wants others to hurt too. wants his big sister. wants his father. wants someone to look at him, and he’s learnt in this year of insanity that fear is the only way anyone looks at him anymore.

it’s fine. it’ll all be fine once he finds vanessa and she comes home. they can wait for father together then, and everything will be fine. that’s all he needs, the big glowing centre of his plan. he’ll get his sister back. people will die. the depression and anger will leave him and he’ll be fine.