#artnerd1123

1994, Hegemone was mostly designed by Lester, and 1995, Asteria was designed by Harvey and Marc.

By 1996, every crew member was working full-time on the project, dedicating heart and soul to ensuring the project would be successful. Mitchell, Holly, and Jamie spent a lot of time together. The last animatronic to be designed was Mellia (Melpomene & Thalia) (by Harvey and Lester), who filled the gap in entertainment, being intended to deliver stories from ancient Greek mythology.

The same year, as the restaurant was on the tail end of opening, the crew recorded the tracks that would be used for the first shows, including covers of popular songs at the time (at least some they could license with their limited funds. And some they didn't license at all). Harvey voiced Apollo, Anne voiced Gaia and Mellia, Lester voiced Hegemone, Dominique voiced Eris and Deimos, and finally Marc voiced Hermes and Asteria.

May 1997, grand opening of Mythos' Diner, which quickly found relative success in the crew's hometown of Riverside, VT. The crew was present almost 24/7, hiring only a few extra employees to round out the staff. Mitchell, Holly, and Jamie were present as often as their parents, often spending the end of the weekdays and entire weekends at the restaurant, mostly because their parents didn't want them alone at home.

Later in the year, an electrical fire, started from Mellia's stage, caused the accidental death of Jamie (7), stuck in a maintance backstage room. Mitchell blamed himself for it. He had grown annoyed with his brother, had pulled a practical joke on him, had forgotten about him when the fire started, was supposed to look over him. Lester blamed Mitchell. He was supposed to look over Jamie, protect him. Lester started resenting his older son, even more than he already had been (your oldest seems disinterested in school, your youngest a perfect image of his mother, and he dies because of the oldest's "negligence"? Of course he resents him). Thus started Mitchell's further retreat into a solitary world.

Lester buried himself in his work, rebuilding the restaurant, tightening safety regulations, redesigning what was less of a success in the first year, keeping what was successful. Harvey tried as best as he could to comfort both him and Anne, as well as providing Mitchell a fatherly support he was starting to lack.

When the restaurant opened again (1998), everything was back on track. Well...

Not quite.

Lester was constantly reminded of Jamie. He forced Mitchell to take a job at the restaurant, and Holly was still hanging around the restaurant, following her father whenever he worked. Lester grew... resentful? Jealous? Of the attention she was still getting. He had just lost a child, his best friend should be paying attention to him, shouldn't he? He saw Holly (13, at the time) as a threat. He retreated away from Harvey. He constantly thought of ways he could... "mend" their relationship.

He did. She died in the ambulance, unable to speak a word. Harvey was, rightfully, devastated. Losing his child in such a way, his friends losing their own child only 2 years before? His grief painted his entire life. He fell back on his friends for comfort. Especially Lester.

Shortly after (2000), Melpomene and Thalia started... exhibiting strange behaviors. Unprogrammed. Voice lines that hadn't been recorded, at least not that anyone could remember, stares. It started small. Attributed to the bug of Y2K.

Though, this is also the year the restaurant became franchised. Harvey had done much like Lester previously, and poured himself entirely in his work, and it had paid off. The restaurant was a commercial success.

Mitchell started... really deteriorating. Mentally. Still blaming himself for the death of his brother, and now, his childhood friend dying, someone he considered his sister. He found comfort in music, and movies, and games, anything that would disconnect him from the real world, that would keep him away from his father's judgement and his mother's sad eyes.

Started hearing the voices of Jamie and Holly. At first, he thought he was losing his mind, undiagnosed mental illness that went unnoticed by his parents. Maybe it was, but the voices were impossible to ignore. They tormented him, losing hours of sleep.

In 2003, he couldn't bear it any longer. Jamie and Holly wanted him to check on the restaurant's basement. He would do so.

His father found him, rambling, confused, but starting to understand what had happened to Holly. Lester got scared.

Mitchell was deemed missing. A note left on his bed, saying he couldn't bear staying in this town, apologizing for "killing" his brother.

Anne believed she, her family, her friends, were cursed. The restaurant was cursed. The project was cursed. She stopped working entirely. Lester seemed mostly... unbothered. Disconnected. Anne couldn't understand it, but he made it seem so easy.

Everything came crumbling down during those years. Marc came out as trans (changed her name to Marie. Good for her!), and quit. In charge of finances, and now without her brain for numbers, it was a major blow to the machinations of the restaurant. Mellia was taken off-stage, exhibiting too many strange behaviors, now attributed to hardware degradation, to be kept in the show rotation. A beloved attraction, their removal affected the customer base. Hoping to repair them properly someday, Harvey kept them.

Mellia's behavior got stranger when away from the restaurant. Moving on their own, speaking when no audio track was loaded.

Around this time, Lester tries to rekindle... this "thing" he had with Harvey. A decision they had taken 15 years ago, drunk, and independently chosen never to discuss. Something that Lester thought would've ruined his life, his "picture perfect" married life, if he'd ever entertained the idea, yet was obsessed with, for years. Something Harvey never once entertained after that one night.

It deteriorated their relationship further. Though Harvey didn't know yet the extent of Lester's "dedication", he refused to work at the same time as him afterwards, telling him outright to "Figure your shit out."

2006.

Harvey hears something from Mellia. "Lester, the psychopomp to his own underworld." He drives to the restaurant, when Lester is working, and asks him. Asks him about what happened that day, to Holly. Lester, reluctant, answers. Finally tells the truth.

Harvey tells Anne everything. The one-night stand, the feelings Lester had been harboring, what it made him believe was the right thing to do. What he did. Anne tells him to leave. She leaves town, stays with Marie, doesn't tell Lester.

Lester comes home. Alone. His wife refusing to speak to him, his best friend refusing to even see him, his restaurant failing.

The next year (2007), the restaurant files for bankruptcy. Lester considers selling the animatronics, but Harvey, hearing the news, takes them into storage. Though not solely his project, and now tainted by multiple tragedies, he can't bring himself to get rid of something that brought a lot of joy in people's lives.

When the restaurant is finally closed down, for good, Lester goes for a final round of checks, seeing nothing is missing. The basement door, which had been locked since 2003, inaccessible due to "safety risks", now opened.

Mitchell was... miraculously, impossibly, still alive. Their father almost decapitating them 4 years ago hadn't killed them, or... maybe it had. 4 years, they'd been alone, or... not quite alone, voices and children's hands offering comfort in the dark of the basement. Kept them alive, revenge and rage justifying every minute past their expected death.

And now their father was back. Alone.

He hadn't atoned at all, hadn't paid for his crimes, the pain he put his family through, just for a relationship he was too cowardly to pursue?

Lester was never seen or heard from again.

Mitchell showed up to Harvey's house. Harvey called Anne, let her know her child was back, though... in a concerning condition. Anne showed up. It made no difference to her. They were still alive. They were okay. They were back.

The restaurant is closed.

----------

Ok, so... maybe you can still see that this used to be a FNAF rewrite. However, it... turned into a lot more. It's become a really big pet project of mine, that I want to turn into a multimedia project someday.

I have a lot more story elements, symbolism, and whatnot I can add, that isn't stated in much of the writing above.

The Drakos family is associated with the color teal, while Lobos are red, which you can see in the character designs and associated characters. (Hegemone is based very strongly on Lester, while Aperes is modelled closer to Harvey)

Additionally, Jamie is associated with Tragedy - Melpomene, while Holly is with Comedy - Thalia. It reflects the circumstances of their deaths, that Jamie's death could have been prevented with proper safety measures and a prank played at the wrong time, while Holly's is caused by a man's inflated sense of ego, believing a child is a threat to him and his relationship? It's a little funny. It's tragic, but absurd. It colors their ghostly appearances, too. Jamie is a lot more reserved, and quiet in death, while Holly usually takes the forefront, cracking jokes, no matter how... inappropriate they may be for the time.

Dominique is very... absent, from this story, if you've noticed? She's a major crew member, and is a family friend, but she keeps her work life and personal life very separate. She is there to offer comfort, but her personal issues and life events don't get in the way of her work. And as everything happens at the restaurant...

In a similar vein, Marie figured out she was trans because she worked on this project. She had always had something at the back of her mind, but voicing Asteria, a character originally written to be female, needing a higher-pitched voice, really opened up something in Marie's mind.

This relationship chart.

Ummm yeah ^_^

There's a website (which is a very big work in progress!) and a long playlist that goes through the years in which the story takes place in.

Ok thank you for reading all that if you did