#oops? lmao

A fresh burst of panic caused their circuits to pulse with newfound energy, forcing the figure to surge forwards. They forged a clumsy path around plummeting pillars and fire-warped mounds of plastic, sparking eyes focused on the haze of lights that blinked in and out of existence. The lights marked the twists and turns of each hallway, guiding them through the inferno.

The tannoy followed them through each room. Its tinny words were slowly warping from the heat, voice fading in and out as it looped the emergency announcement.

“An announcement for all esteemed guests at the Pizzaplex. For your safety, please make your way to the marked emergency exits. Our friendly staff will be there to personally escort you. Fazbear accepts no responsibility for any trampling, severe burns, smoke inhalation, or death that may be sustained during your evacuation attempt. Hope to see you again soon, and have a Faztastic day!”

Fallen pillars/planks of wood stand between them and the door, making a frantic hiss of static burst from their faceplate. Hands grasp at the material, fingers digging and cracking the cement and steel, as two other arms keep the fading form cradled close to their chest. A desperate wrench and twist of muscles. A slow, almost-wet rip and crack from the pillar. It split messily down the middle and was tossed aside by restless arms.

They step inside. 

The sealed halls of parts & service are refreshingly clear of the hazy smoke that rolls through the pizzaplex, but the doors are already beginning to breach up ahead, flashes of molten orange and red shimmering through the weakening seals. The figure pauses for only a moment to take in the destruction before they press forward, unoccupied arms grasping fitfully at the crevices of the walls, hauling themselves onwards with ardent desperation. 

Anxious fingers can’t keep themselves from tracing over ash-dyed hair, from flitting across glistening, weeping burn wounds. Like a moth drawn to a dying flame, they keep searching for that sweet, slowing pulse. Every time they find it, it’s a little slower and softer. The fear of that alone is enough to keep them going. 

A final barrier, the door to the inner chambers of parts & services open with minimum resistance. The figure spills inside, almost dropping their precious cargo on the floor. Limbs fumble and a voicebox hisses as they right themselves, clenching tight enough around soft, smarting flesh to earn an agonised whine.

Their core lurches.

“Sorry- So sorry, starlight-”

“It will be alright. They’ll be safe, soon.”

There is no resistance as the body is placed on the leather chair, straps hissing softly as they’re tugged and tightened into place. 

There’s plenty to work with, here. More than they could have hoped.

But even with nothing, they’ll save you. 

They’ll save you.

—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A gasp wrenches itself from your lips as you wake with a start, bolting upright.

Agony is the first sense to seize you, crawling in lava-hot pinpricks up raw, tender nerves. You feel like you’re locked in a horrible vice, your entire body shoved into a suit ten sizes too small, biting and nipping at your body.  It’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. Every pulse of pain that courses through your veins is somehow more brutal than the last. 

Blue and orange sparks of light arc across your vision as you wrench your eyes open, left unable to speak from the pain that rips every last breath from your lungs. You try to fling yourself off of the chair, animal instincts screaming at you to run from the source.

A twitching hand holds you fast. Their touch barely breaches the numb wall erected around your nerves, and it takes being brought to a sudden stop to realize it’s even there. You cry out, fighting against it until someone hisses your name in a burst of static.

You freeze. Your eyes shift to the source of the sound.

A trembling, shock-numbed mouth fumbles around the words “Sun..? Moon-?”

The animatronic that hunches over your form, keeping your hand clutched tightly between their own, is a sight to behold. A roughshod amalgamation of parts, each twitching joint and creaking bolt seemingly at odds with itself. A half-singed nightcap swings from sparking sunrays. Oil drips from the spiderweb of cracks and fissures all over their chassis, wires exposed, dragging and pulsing and visceral, steaming guts in technicolor. 

They hang over you, poised and purposeful. As if you were a precious thing, fragile and liable to fall apart the second their watchful gaze falters. The coiling stretch of their smile brims with a raw, earnest kind of relief, and you find your own lips twitching in response. Their delight at seeing you alive and whole is palpable. Despite the pain, despite the horror of seeing them like this, as gnarled and twisted as you feel on the inside, you feel slightly more at ease. 

“I…” A wave of brain fog rolls over you, the relentless press of light boring right into your eyes. You screw up your face against it, gathering the strength to continue. “Where are we? What- What happened, here?”

A jagged purr, servos clicking as they lean closer to respond. The sound that seeps out from them coats your ears in inky black, sickly and stifling. Twin voices wind and twist around one another, churning and choking each other out in turn, distinct and distorted all at once. 

“Nothing to worry about, Sunshine-”

“Worry not, Starlight-”

“You’re safe now”

“With us-

“With us-”

“Nothing can hurt you-

“There is nothing that can hurt you-”

“Not while we’re here.”

“Here with you.”

But something is hurting you. Your shock-addled brain is sending insistent pulses through your body with every heartbeat. Slowly, despite your brain trailing a stream of protests, you look down.

Tears fill your eyes.

You work your lips soundlessly, unable to vocalise the mounting horror that digs with ice-cold fingers into your chest.

The rusting metal encases your limbs like a beetle’s carapace, embedded deep and greedy in your skin like swollen, skittering parasites.  

“What did you do?” The words tumble from your lips in a clumsy avalanche, your untouched left hand tracing a trembling path over the metal coating of the right, trying to feel something- Anything- Any kind of sensation that wasn’t dulled and inhuman. The roiling panic in your gut swiftly heats into anger, overflowing your chest until it explodes outward into a roar 

“What did you do?” 

You look down at yourself, abject horror already beginning to seize your gut. The creeping path of metal is an invasion, claiming quarter over the soft flesh that was once healthy and whole but is now marred with scars and discoloration from the burns.

It is devouring its way up your arms, and your legs - it has even completely replaced your right hand. You have been invaded by silicon and steel, and your body no longer feels as it once did. You are not wholly robotic like the watchful presence beside you, but even worse - you are no longer human.

You are adrift between two natures. Lost in a sea of ambiguity and violations of the natural order.

And the pain…

Oh, the pain.

You could not find the words to describe it.

It is beyond sense. Beyond measure. It is so abject it pushes through the limitations of sensation itself, crossing the borderline between pleasure and pain until it becomes almost a relief, a reprieve from its own agony. It coalesces and coils on itself like ouroboros, devouring and being devoured in measure. it is transcendent.

It leaves you screaming in a thin, reedy wail, lungs still feeling the impact of smoke inhalation. It is too much for you to bear, and four metallic hands hold you in a loose vice of a hug as you rock back and forth against your bindings, wailing piteously, begging for a relief that simply refuses to come.

"It hurts", you moan.

"We know," they reply. "We are sorry. We are sorry it hurts."

"It hurts," you cry again, their very touch burning your skin even more than the flames did.  Terse static fills the air around you, almost seeming to dig into your nerves like burrowing beetles in carrion.

"Star-"

"Sunlight-"

"You have to understand", they purr in unison, voices laden with regret. With an agonized sorrow that should be unnatural for them. For those two voices. "It was the only way to save you, to keep you from harm-"

"Save me?" You howl, “Save me?” 

"You call this saving-? Look at me." A shaky hand gestures over you, fingers coiled, stiff, and gnarled like dead leaves. Your other fist clenches, heavy and useless as a stone in your lap. 

"Look at me." You say it again, raising your eyes, still swimming with that blue and orange light as you glower at them once more. Their hands clench uselessly in their lap, unsure of whether to touch you or to retreat. You grit it out for a third time, each syllable laced with a desperate, distraught venom.

"Look at me. I'm a monster. I'm- I don't even know whose body this is. Did you scavenge this? Is this- Some other bot? Am I wearing someone's corpse, right now? Is that what this is?"

"No, no-!" they both rush to say it, voices rolling and running over one another as they fight to be the first to speak out. "Not at all, star- You're no monster. You're still- You, still our dear friend, so kind and good-"

You can only coil away from them, your body rigid and set. Stiff.

"Get away from me."

The sound of frantic clicking, like someone trying to clear a clenching throat.

"Friend, please, we-" 

Their head twitches to the left, torn nightcap danging pathetically from fragmented sun rays. "No.” This voice is softer, speaking in a rustling, silvery sigh. “They’re right, Sun. Look. We’re hurting them.”  

The fractured faceplate shifts from one side to the other, rocking in an invisible tide. The light in their eyes has dimmed, gaze distant, looking at something just out of your field of view. Fingertips tap together nervously, jerking once or twice as if wrestling with the urge to pull you close again, to soothe you where words could not.  

The weight of an entire world rests in your lungs. Your chest rises against it, fighting to draw breath. Through the persistent chittering scratch of raw nerves, you can feel something else. A thin, faint thrumming. The whisper-song of servos, coursing through the alien parts of you. Searching for a nervous system made of wires and code, instead of veins and grey matter.

Your next words come out far more raggedly than you would like.

"It hurts so much. Why-? Why would you do this to me?” 

A keening, frayed whine is their only response. Your head slumps back against the unfeeling leather of the operating chair, sending another pulse of pain through your patchwork body.

“I just want…. I just want it to stop. Please.”

Your searching eyes fall on them, on the way they lurch to their feet, a hand reaching out to you in abrupt panic before remembering itself. You ignore the stammering buzz of protest, the warning growl, as you spare another glance down at the mess they’ve made of you.

A body that is not yours stares back, each bolt and seam of silver and steel hissing that this is wrong. It should never have been yours. Flesh and aloy were not made to meet, not like this, crossing boundaries with a kind of brutality that makes you feel sick down to your bones.

A tear slips down your cheek, wet and warm, cresting over the plate of metal grafted clumsily over your jaw. You swallow. It echoes through your skull. Your voice comes out in a hoarse whisper.

“Please, make it stop.”  

The pain in their eyes almost seems to match your own.

Their next words take a moment to register, vibrations trying to push through the pain that buzzes through your entire nervous system.

"No, little star. We can't do that. We're sorry."

Your next breath freezes in your lungs.

"What-? What do you mean, no? You can't leave me like this." You thrash against your bindings once more, shackles jingling like the chain on a trapped dog. "You can't do this to me! Please, please- Don't leave me like this!" Your voice is the hysterical trill of a bird with a broken wing, dragging itself fitfully on the ground as it thrashes in fresh throes of agony.

They speak over your ragged sobs, as your head slumps over your chest. A shaky, sparking hand reaches out to tilt your face upward, stroking away the tears that continue to fall.

"We won't lose you, Starlight. Not like this."

"We can't let you go. Not while you're still breathing. Still so bright, so full of life-"

You spit out your words in a broken hiss, each syllable sizzling hot and sour.

"You don't understand- You can’t understand how much this hurts. The kind of hell I'm living in. You can't do this to me. It isn't living, it's- It's-”

The words are slipping from your tongue, slipping from your mind. Sparks and static fill the empty space, crushing any semblance of self under each rolling wave of pressure. 

Sun- Moon’s- Both of their fingers tip-tap together again, punctuating the brief, frantic ticking of their servos as they struggle to assemble some desperate, miraculous reassurance that will save your mind from spiraling. 

"We would do anything to keep you with us, little star.”

The guilt-laced words ring through your head like a klaxon, almost drowning out the growled promise that follows. 

“Anything.”

Torn asunder in the burning wreckage, you weep. You can’t even feel their warmth on your cheeks anymore. 

Ripped apart and cobbled together again, lost in the bowels of a destroyed empire, you mourn yourself. The life you once had, that you’ll never see again. And through it all, those arms hold you.