#fazbear-security

The lioness animatronic is in a horrendous state, worse than the dreaded fox animatronic in the pizzeria. She's sitting on the floor in the parts and service room, leaning back against the wall. Her head is cocked to one side, seemingly lifeless, a metal husk.

Answered the phone for (Mike) : @fazbear-security

☀️ The ginger was rubbing her eyes at this late at night. Today was really rough in the Daycare but there was so much to take care of in the Plex. Sure, they had security but they were only one person and there wasn't much one person could do.

Seeing the light of a flashlight her eyes brightened. "VANESSA~!" She called her shoes slapping over marble floors before stopping. "Wait......you're not Vanessa....." . Who was this? From his nametag, it read, Mike?

Steve exhales heavily in relief, sitting back on his heels to give the poor guy some space.

"Uh... I think you had a run-in with the band."

Steven had known something like this would happen. He had tried to be helpful in the training tapes, but after what had happened to Fitzgerald at the last location... he just hadn't been able to turn his back on the new hire and hope everything worked out for the best.

Thank god he had listened to his conscience.

"Oh! It's just me." Wait, had he ever actually introduced himself in those phonecalls? "Steven Bell? The last guard? ...uh, the guy on all those pre-recorded messages...?"

That's probably not important right now.

"Just sit tight, I have a first-aid kit here. I'll have you fixed up in a jiffy! I just need to--I'm going to put my hands here to see if I can... stop some of the bleeding."

The new guard looks like he needs a hospital more than a few bandages, but Steven hasn't had a chance to call for help yet; it had seemed more important to at least try to stabilize this man first.

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"My whole purpose in life is to… make… people… laugh!"

He yelled out, voice clear as day throught the entire daycare center, and perhaps beyond it.

Geez, that comment that kid's mom made was really getting to him. Sunnydrop sulked. He was devestated.

Hello! Not really, the only rules I have are no NSFW unless you're above 18. (I prefer to do NSFW privately so just ask if that's something you're interested in.) And no excessive gore/descriptions of death. Keep that stuff light please!

“Stop fidgeting.”

“Sorry…”

The hospital bed creaked as Ash helped him out of what was left of his work shirt. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d dealt with a stubborn patient—and it took no small effort to coax him through those doors in the first place—but after the first ten times Schmidt insisted that a bandage slapped on at home would be more than enough, he was starting to wonder whether he wanted to be here at all.

Not that it made any difference, since he was doing all the first aid anyway—where the hell were the nurses?

“No,” he said, avoiding his eyes, “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“It’s not your fault. You know that,” the officer grunted, too quiet to have any bark to it. His fingers dug into the mattress until his knuckles pressed white against the skin. Even the light here was sick, picking out the sweat on his forehead, running down the lines of his face. The crevasses filled in black under his eyes.

“I know I cast a long shadow, Mr. Schmidt.”

And the people he cared about were always caught in it, sooner or later.

“And I know I told you to knock that off. Last names are for people who don’t let hostages stay at their house.”

Okay—Ash let him have that one, and a thin smile to go with it. “Yessir.”

Ugly bruises, black and blue and purple, mottled Schmidt—Michael’s ribcage where the fabric peeled away. He couldn’t ignore the hiss of breath through the injured man’s teeth. And there, like forgotten words carved under the bloom of spreading ink, the criss-cross of gleaming scars. Too many to count, too fine to be battle marks. Precise in their pain and their ruin.

Someone placed them there deliberately. Someone cut him.

“Who did this to you?” They were rough under his fingers, a raised alphabet that spelled out their stories to him. A racing heartbeat as he was pressed onto steel by hard, gloved hands. Whimpers of fear and ecstasy alike, pain and pleasure, ruthlessly stolen from him. Screams as the scalpel pricked lower and lower—

He snatched back his fingers, heart pounding in his throat. Hot, angry bile rose to join it, scorching his lips even as he bit it down. Still the images remained, burned into his vision. “Michael, who is this man?

“It’s-it’s nothing,” he said, too quickly, too brightly, as he pulled out of his reach. A poor lie; Ash could see the clench of his jaw beneath salt and pepper stubble. He could smell the fear, like the antiseptic that burned in the air.

‘Nothing’ came with the click and creak of a door, the swoosh of a coat as shoes tapped on the linoleum. ‘Nothing’ wore a predatory smile that didn’t warm the steel of his eyes. Just like him. “Ah, Michael, more fighting? Tsk, tsk.” The voice was cold, smooth, a blade fresh from the freezer. False charm dripped from his lips like anaesthesia for the ears. “You should know better by now.”

The officer stiffened at Ash’s side, a lab rat in a cage. He didn’t move, didn’t breathe, as smiling dread reached out for him with gloved hands and softly crooned words. He couldn’t escape his shadow.

“Nothing to say to explain yourself? How strange, you always were one to talk when you—”

“Stop.”

Ash blinked and the doctor’s chest blocked his field of vision, far, far too close for comfort. He didn’t remember standing. He didn’t remember moving to block his way, pushing him back with a hand that looked so small against his ugly sweater. His name badge glinted as the light began to hum and flicker—Chad.

“You,” he growled, his words smoke and embers, hatred the flint on which they struck, “you did this.”

“Really, Michael? Another urchin?” The doctor—could he really be called that?—looked at him as though he were something disgusting that crawled in on the heel of his shoe, but his words were syrupy sweet and spoken down to him. “No, dear, of course not. I’m a doctor, I help people.” The curl of his lips said otherwise, amused by their own game.

But this time he would lose. Ash had seen that same glittering smile in the face of another, seen those eyes. He knew his kind—they were all the same. They all fed their bloated egos on the pain and misery of others, so assured of their victory that they couldn’t possibly imagine that their arrogance would be their downfall.

His hand went to the phone in his pocket. He had to record this. And Tara, she’d be able to help, do something. “You’re a liar.”

The man surveyed him with those empty eyes, glinting from hard, cruel lines. Mechanical pieces clicked and turned behind his gaze. Ash didn’t want to know what awful thoughts he assembled there. “These injuries have to be treated,” he said at last, pursing his lips as he tapped impatiently at his clipboard with a pen. He wanted him gone. He wanted Michael all to himself. “That’s why he’s here. Do you want him to suffer for your own petty grievances? How selfish.”

Selfish? Was it selfish to be made this way? To see the scars on others and know by whose hand they were made? The man was a monster, but it took one to know one. A warm hand touched his elbow as his lips drew back into a grimace.

“Ash, don’t.”

The words were only tinder for the fire. It raged within and roared out for more, more, setting the blood alight in his veins, sparking at his fingertips. And it called out to him, called for him to let it consume him—to become the fuel for its inferno. He fought, but its voice was soothing, and his anger hot and fierce.

You are his arbiter, and you have already judged him guilty.

The shadows it cast painted the walls black. Above, the fluorescent tubes crackled and whined as the light, the life, was strangled from them. If Chad noticed, he didn’t acknowledge it. His smile broadened, taking his silence for defeat. Another imagined victory chalked up on the board. “That’s right,” he crooned, “I know what’s best for him. Now I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave, I can’t treat him with you clinging on like some bedraggled orphan.” And he pushed him aside with a slap of the clipboard—on his rear.

But that wasn’t what struck the match. No, it was seeing Michael jerk reflexively away from him, seeing those gloved hands seize him and pull him back, probing at wounds under the pretence of examining them, but only to cause pain. The smile as he pressed in close, too close, to breathe in the sweat and fear. In that moment, Ash hated him. Hated him more than anything else.

In that moment… he burned.

The windows, the lights, the tiles beneath his feet—shattered glass flashed like a storm of knives. He didn’t remember picking up the nightstand either, weightless in his hands, but it didn’t matter any more. He knew what he had to do.

“I. Said. STOP.”

“Shit! SHIT!” Michael leapt out of the way, but the doctor wasn’t so lucky.

One of the legs caught him by the shoulder and dragged him down in a heap of metal, plastic and squirming limbs. His hands cut on broken tiles as he struggled to free himself, and he raised one in an appeasing gesture at Aschere’s approach, as if his blood alone was enough to douse him.

“W-wait, I—agh!”

It would never be enough.

The doctor’s clothes smoked where he lifted him with one hand from the floor. He, too, weighed nothing, and he would look him in the eye and know. Know that Aschere was the end. The end of him, of all things.

“Ash!”

He blinked. Did someone call out to him—was that even his name? Where… was he? Frightened eyes stared back at him, and there he saw the answer.

The hospital. The doctor. He stared down at his trembling hands and saw it, his skin, fused into glass and cracking away. As he watched, a shard broke loose and shattered on the floor, revealing a flash of metal underneath. His stomach heaved. No, no no, oh god—

He let him go, let him slump to the floor, gasping for air, and backed away, back into something warm.

“Ashley?”

He promised that he would never become this monster again. Hot, guilty tears welled up, hissing on his cheeks, quenching the last of the flames. The warmth went to wrap an arm around him and he jerked away. “I’m… I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.” The voice took shape, into one he knew, and he came to recognise the strength of the arms that pulled him away. “It’s okay, Ash. Just… stop. Please.”

Michael. Looking up at him, he couldn’t ignore the way he flinched, the way he shied away from his gaze, even as he went to hold him close. Sobbing, Ash pushed him away and fled, flashing through the wall and out into the night.

“Ash, wait!”

As the officer snatched up his jacket and rushed from the room on unsteady feet, there was no one left to notice the figure uncurling from his defensive ball amid the ash and the rubble. No one left to notice him reach with trembling fingers for the photo, fallen from a coat or wallet, in the blackened circle left behind.

A youthful man with a cheeky smile, the one who stole away Chad’s favourite plaything, and a small, bubbly boy held proudly in his arms. Both pairs of eyes looking back at him from the paper were startling white-blue.

Ash’s eyes lingered on the Puppet. A moment of silence, then he tore them away—he didn’t want to see anything else his visions had to show him.

“That... it’s—” He felt the bile rising in his throat. Monstrous. Something that should never have been allowed to happen—something that needed justice. There wasn’t a word that fit, so he settled for the one as far from what he wanted to say as possible. “That’s awful.”

It sounded as empty as he felt.

Even the things he faced in Holyhead... they were human, once, and had... some sort of reason for what they did, however twisted. But this? It was senseless. No one human, no one born with anything resembling a soul, could kill a child. Right?

His arms wound around his knees, hugging them to his chest. Right?

“I—I’m so sorry. I should have done something—anything.”

He had the power to protect them all... and he didn’t. He thought that the right thing to do was to lock it all away, never use that power, any of it, for good or ill again. Was he wrong?