Work Text:
It starts with the sound. That’s how Vanessa thinks about it, at least. Breaks it down into manageable little chunks: here’s when my father became a serial killer, here’s when I joined him. But that comes after .
It’s metal against bone. The sound of a skull breaking apart. His cries, those desperate, animal, wails.
In the hospital, they’d said the chance of recovery was minimal. She’d thought: I saw his brains on the linoleum tile.
And the funny thing about it all is that it was her fault.
⚙
Bodies, she’s learnt with an intimate familiarity, have a habit of not doing what you want them to. Vanessa knows that the animatronics are want to do what they will but it would be nice if they could save the manslaughter for her off days. The clock reads, in neon lights, 3 AM.
She can feel the blood caking under her fingernails.
Bonnie looks on, unrepentant. If Vanessa had a therapist, this is when she’d have to explain why she’s comfortable with about six foot two of animatronic musculature standing at her shoulder. She doesn’t have one though. Small mercies; her psyche can remain as tangled as it likes.
The hacksaw remains off to the side, she’s gotten victim no. lost-fucking-count largely down into small enough chunks to dissolve aside from what remains of his left leg. Bits of it, she thinks, are probably still stuck in Bonnie's teeth.
Still, she soldiers on. Once more unto the breach. As valiant as one can be when covering up a murder. Watches, barely present, as the blade glides through the meat of his thigh.
Dad taught her that. How to get rid of them. She can still feel his hands guiding her when she does it; this is how you cut through cold flesh.
In the corner, Bonnie twitches.
She’s twenty-three; this is going to be the rest of her life.
⚙
She dreams of it, at night. She always does. The sound. The crunch.
She dreams of the old house, too. The things that used to live in the dark. Sharp teeth, sharper claws. The wails and the cries and that quiet constant hum of metallic movement.
It’s penance. It’s retribution. An eye for an eye.
⚙
He calls her at least once a week, has done so ever since she moved out. They don’t talk, really. He just- he says-
Whatever they are, the phone calls, they’re not conversations. It's an obligation from him, it’s self-flagellation from her.
She’d asked him, once:
“Why did you do it?”
There’d been a burst of static on the line, harsh enough she’d pulled the phone away from her ear.
And then she’d heard his laugh, ghostly, from the yellow, plastic, casing of the phone.
She’d called in sick for work the day after. Sat, numbly, on the floor of the bathroom and watched the way the light filtered in through the window at the top of the wall.
He’s her father; he’s a killer.
It should be easy to leave him. It should be easy to do the right thing.
But she picks up the phone every time.
⚙
When she meets him for the first time, she thinks he’s high. Mike. It sounds like a junkie name. She’s not exactly wrong on that count, he’s dosed up on sleep meds. It’s unnerving.
He looks haunted. There’s a tremble in his hands.
She does the whole spiel. Enters from stage left as the concerned neighbourhood cop. Gives him a warning, something just about vague enough. Wonders whether she’ll find him slumped over in the storage closet or the office. Wonders how long it will take to get his blood out of the grouting.
Judging by the fact he seems to have the self-preservation instincts of a blind bat - because who doesn’t notice that they’re injured enough to need stitches -, she’ll be running clean-up in the next day or so.
They don’t last long. It’s a game, for Dad, more so than anything else.
There’s a sick feeling she pushes aside when she shows him the gang. Freddy and all his fucking pals. They stand there, on the stage, shining. Judge, jury, and executioner.
It isn’t- she’d told him to quit. She tells all of them. They just never fucking listen.
She doesn’t think about the bags under his eyes, the way he stumbles as he moves, the scarring on his knuckles.
She doesn’t think about Mike at all. It’s not her job to.
⚙
There had been a girl before. When Vanessa was freshly nineteen, couch-surfing at a friend of a friend of a friends. Lara.
And Vanessa had friends , sure. But Lara had been something . They’d fucked a few times, called each other up intermittently. It had been a quiet sort of thing.
It had snuck up on her, brutal and swift, in the end. She’d said:
“I love you.”
And felt the words wrap around her throat, chokingly. Saw the way Lara froze, just for a moment, half-shadowed under the streetlight. Hands dug into her pockets. Breath condensing in the winter chill.
Because Vanessa didn’t know anybody else, because Lara was the only person she’d seen since it happened. Because Lara had let Vanessa into her apartment at three in the morning when she was ghost-pale and shaking after another body, another bit of blood washed out, and hadn’t asked any questions.
Lara had replied, eventually, with all the care in the world:
“Honey- I don’t think you know what that means.”
And kissed her softly on the cheek. It had felt like a cut. It had felt like a branding.
⚙
They kill four people. Vanessa takes the day off work to deal with it. Christ- she knows that they’re kids. She knows that with an intimate, aching, familiarity. But there’s half a fucking person in front of her. Half a person.
There are sinews in Freddy's teeth, his muzzle a rustier brown.
And fucking Mike with his stupid goddamn sleeping pills and not locking up and managing to bring people around here when they haven’t had a fucking spree like this since Dad, since-
Freddy moves. Vanessa suppresses a flinch.
“It would be really great if you could all try to do this on the weekends .”
He doesn’t reply. Obviously.
When she looks at him, sometimes, she can only see what she saw as a kid. What she saw in the shadows at the old house. Rows of teeth, torn fur.
He walks away.
It would have hurt. He must still hurt. She’s seen the bodies inside of them, rotted and withered.
⚙
The police academy is hard to remember. The same goes for much of her early twenties. She had been on uppers and downers and everything in between. Late-stage teenage rebellion, maybe. A shot in the morning to get the day going, pills in the lining of her jacket.
It had helped. That’s what made it so difficult. It had fucking helped , got rid of the guilt, the shadows in the corner of her vision. All those remnants. All those reminders.
And she could sleep without hearing it, for once. Could sleep without the sound ringing in her ears and the sight of him, ghastly and real, before her.
Dad had shown up eventually, as he’s inclined to do. She was- what? Twenty-four? Fourteen? Thirty-one?
“Vanessa.”
He always said her name like he was trying to own it, cut his tongue as he curled it around the fricative.
And he’d looked around the apartment. Empty bottles, discarded prescriptions. His lip had curled.
“Clean it up .”
She did. Couldn’t have disobeyed him if she wanted to, took his words as holy commandment.
Threw out the stray bags, carried clinking rubbish down the stairs. Thought about whether he’d like her more now, freshly sober. Knew it wouldn’t make a difference.
⚙
She goes to Mike, in the end, another act in a string of self-sabotages that have come to define most of her twenties and, now, thirties too.
He has a sister. He has a younger sister. Something very small, and very precious, in Vanessa's chest shatters at the sight of her. Abby. She seems like a good kid.
Mike looks, as always, like he just got caught in the middle of a murder. Fiddles with his hands. The bags under his eyes are deeper, sit on his skin like pools of tar.
And when he explains, leads her down to the riverbank, it feels like the ground has been pulled out from under her feet.
Because she knows what happened to his brother. Because she knows who did it.
And when he talks about his family, his parents , his hands stop shaking. That quiet, constant, haunting, grief that sits on his shoulders seems to lift for just a moment. It’s a type of love she doesn’t know, it’s a type of experience she’s never going to have.
She throws his pills in the river.
It means:
I had a brother. I killed him.
It means:
I didn’t look for him.
It means:
I’ve never stopped hurting people the way my father hurt me.
⚙
He never stopped crying. That was always the fucking problem. He was too- too soft . She was always meant to look after him, make herself palatable to his moods and his wants. She fucking raised him, she made him breakfast in the morning, she packed his school bag, she helped with his homework.
And so she got mean. And so she pushed, and poked, and prodded at him and scared him with the stupid fucking masks and the games. Made him weaker.
Made him feel just a little bit like she did. That quiet weight on her chest, that fear of something too big to name.
She took him to the fucking pizzeria. She laughed at him, shaking and sobbing. All teenage rage, all misplaced anger.
And she put his head in Freddy's mouth.
Metal against bone.
⚙
Mike brings Abby. The animatronics are- they seem happy with her which is an odd concept in and of itself considering Vanessa has only really seen them either static or post-homicide.
There’s a quiet, frantic, feeling as she watches Abby with them though. A desire to keep her just a little bit further away.
It’s Mike's call, at the end of the day, not hers. It was his choice to bring her here.
But. But. She stays just in arms reach of Abby. Keeps a hand rested, idly, on her holster. Can’t teach an old dog new tricks and all. Can’t stop an old dog from looking at Freddy and hearing the crunch and crying .
She’s thirty-one and fourteen at once. She’s here and she’s not.
She’s seeing ghosts.
Mike brought her here. Mike did it. If anything happens it’s not- she can’t stop him. She can’t stop any of this. She just has to watch it happen, time and time again.
Because the guilt of it, the shame, is one thing. Her father is another entirely.
Abby gets hurt in the end. It’s unsurprising.
But that thing , that Afton fucking family magic spark in her, sets her every nerve alight. Leaves her fists clenched. Body trembling.
She wants to hit someone. She wants to change the past. She wants to give up this whole farce and never see the goddamn face of another animatronic for as long as she lives.
And Mike says, his sister in the car:
“What are you so afraid of?”
Metal on bone. Fragments of his skull on the floor. Blood under her nails. The things that lived in her closet, under her floorboards.
She tells him if he brings Abby back, she’ll shoot him. She means it. She means it with every fucking fibre of her being.
⚙
He only hit her once. That’s the thing. He only hit her once. A clean right hook that sent her down to the floor, nose bloodied and cheek bruised.
He’d knelt until he was level with her. Voice calm and lilting.
“You ruined this, you know. You killed him.”
He’d said it like he was remarking on the weather. He’d said it like it didn’t even matter.
“And you’re going to help me fix it. Do you understand?”
“Dad-”
“No. Vanessa. Listen to me . You are going to fix this.”
“I didn’t-”
“I can make you whole again. I just need you to listen- I can make you good. I can make you better.”
From the floor, he stood taller than a god.
“I- I can be good, dad-”
“Say you’re going to fix it.”
“Please -”
“Say it.”
“I’m going to fix it.”
She had still been in her clothes from the funeral. Starched black shirt.
⚙
Foxy gets Mike, in the end. It shouldn’t hurt her. She shouldn’t care but, implausibly, she does. Implausibly, she doesn’t leave him there like the rest of them. She takes him and she fixes him. Stitches up what there is stitch, bandages the rest of it.
His hair is plastered against his forehead, limp with sweat.
And she thinks about Abby.
Foxy hadn’t liked her taking him away. Had stood like a guard by that back exit door, hook still half-raised, half-bloodied.
Mike mumbles while he’s unconscious.
Repeats, over and over and over again, like a rite:
“Garrett?”
She ties the bandages a little tighter than they need to be. He has fucking Abby .
Abby who, she realises with a dim horror, is still inside with them . Abby who her dad is going to be more than delighted to get. Abby whose body she’ll have to deal with come the morning.
She throws up, swiftly, in a trashcan.
Mike wakes up.
She tells him the nice, censored, redacted little version of events. She tells him about Dad. He looks at her- just stares .
It strips her of her armour, just for a moment, leaves her scarred and scared and exposed. Fucking Mike, the junkie come hero. Fucking her , the Afton.
⚙
He’d made her put one of them down. Had guided her hand, shaking, until the gun was pointed square at his head.
He was still breathing. Sprawled outside. Pools of his blood mixed with the gravel.
If she had called an ambulance, at that moment, she could have saved him.
“He’s broken, you know that?”
Dad had prodded at the stump of his arm. Clinically detached.
“You should have made sure he stayed inside.”
“I can’t control them-”
“Listen to me. You can, you just need more- more time. They’re fragile things. The mind is easily changed, easily influenced.”
He had taught her everything, in the end. The father has a formative influence on the child's life. The father fixes her, the father points her at his targets.
They stand, in that moment, like a diptych. She’d advise you not to open it.
“Deal with him.”
Cold metal against the palm of her hand. His hand, colder, against the small of her back.
“Vanessa.”
His blood got on her shoes. Little splatters of it. A Kandinsky in red.
“Good girl.”
It’s praise and damnation in one. Vanessa had delighted in it and hated herself for doing so. Felt it run, searing, down to her core.
⚙
She’d spent the rest of high school, after it , in and out of disciplinary offices. Not enough to get anything on her record permanently , because Dad would need her in the future, but just enough that nobody thought to question split knuckles, stray bandages, and bruises. The wonders of the education system.
Dad was at his worst then. It makes things easier to deal with, sometimes, knowing that he doesn’t hurt her now the way he used to. She likes to think it’s because she’s gotten better.
But she used to finish her homework and drive down to pick him up from the bar nearly every fucking night. Find him slumped and half-conscious.
“I never wanted you , I wanted him . He was good, he was perfect. You were a mistake from the moment we had you.”
“I know, Dad.”
“You killed him. You killed all of them.”
And she’d fall silent. Listen to him tear her down into pieces from the backseat. The part that hurt the most, though, wasn’t that he said it. Wasn’t that he delivered it, slurred, with nothing but vitriol and conviction. It was that he was right.
⚙
She doesn’t know why she goes. Dad is going and Dad is going to kill them. They’re already corpses.
But she goes. Awfully, she goes.
Maybe it’s just an attempt to soothe her conscience. She went! She tried! Maybe it’s because Abby is too young. Maybe it’s because Mike is all too much like her.
Abby wears the same shoes as he used to. It’s a funny little detail, small world and all. The same beat-up sneakers. The ones that had dangled a couple of feet in the air.
She never really knew him. She hopes that, if she did, he would’ve been like Abby.
⚙
Vanessa draws. She goes out for drinks with the rest of her colleagues. Writes up her paperwork and leaves her uniform folded by her bed.
She leads a life, a real one, outside of it all.
Lara still emails her, sometimes. It’s off and on again. A message here, a photo of a dog she saw, a story from the office. Vanessa replies. It’s an easy sort of friendship.
She feeds her cat too much, knows that he’s getting a little pudgy but loves him for it nonetheless. She’d found him in the alley outside her apartment, half his ear bitten off. Loved him as much as she could. He’s called Parrot.
And Sam stops by now and again. He’s normally her partner when they run beats. Easy to get along with, keeps his right ear pierced. Parrot hates him with a passion, but Sam remains utterly dissuaded in the face of it. Picks him up and ignores the scratches he gets as penance.
He finds the decor in her apartment to be “utterly, astoundingly, tasteless”. It’s covered with pictures of beaches. Tacky, awful, pictures. The sand too white, the waves too blue. People sunbathing, smiles too wide, faces nearly edited into oblivion. She always laughs him off.
Doesn’t say that she wants to go on holiday, one day, to see the ocean. Hear the waves crashing down on the shore. The ocean is untameable. It’s cool.
⚙
Dad looks different in the suit. All manic anger.
She tells him to stop it. For once. Just this once, he can let them go.
It all moves too fast, her gun in her hand, the safety flicked off. The sound of a bullet in a quiet room.
And he lifts her off the ground, hand around her throat. It’s not unexpected, it’s not unfamiliar. She knows what he’s capable of; she’s felt his fury before.
But it’s just different this time. Different when she can see Mike slumped on the ground and Abby screaming, hand gripping his.
It's her teenage rebellion, nearly two decades too late.
He gives her a chance. That’s the thing, he gives her a chance when he drops her, wheezing, to the ground.
But she doesn’t listen. Because she’s a bad kid, has been from the start. Because he’s trained her like a dog all these years and here she is now, snapping and snarling. Bearing her teeth, all bark no bite.
She can feel when the knife goes in. It makes a wet sort of popping sound.
She wants to apologise. She wants to say that she only wanted to help, only wanted to be good. She wants to take it all back.
Let him have Abby, have Mike, let him have whoever he wants if it means he’ll fix her. Make her whole again.
What she says, in the end, is simple, monosyllabic:
“Dad?”
And he just looks .
⚙
She’d visited his grave once. It’s small. Out at the very back, a worn granite tombstone: here lies a beloved son and brother, taken too soon. Left a bouquet of white lilies propped up against it and knelt, hands clasped. Repeated in her mind, over and over and over again:
“I’m sorry.”
In reply, the leaves rustled. They had sounded like metal. They had sounded like bone.