She Remembers
It's Mike's birthday. Faith and Gregory meet.
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It was something of a yearly tradition, bittersweet but warm. Faith and ‘Digo would pick up a simple cake at Dapper Goods bakery, meet with Jeremy at his workshop to pick him up and his photo of Mike, and then drive together to Circus Baby’s Pizza and Parties. Mike’s birthday was one of celebration and remembrance, a cozy event for family and colleagues, friends made by their shared opposition to the Aftons and Fazbear Entertainment.
Meera would have the pizzeria closed for the day, eating the cost of skipping a business day in favor of having a private setting for them all. When she first offered her restaurant as a place to host the birthday parties, it had been out of guilt for calling Mike out of retirement to help her foil Elizabeth Afton’s plan to use replicas of the animatronics to harvest Remnant for William Afton. She had explained that if she hadn’t done so, maybe it wouldn’t have caused Mike to realize how dangerously close he was to being like William, already possessing the power to surpass death but not yet losing his connection to his own humanity.
After all, it wasn’t long after they’d foiled the facility’s labyrinth that Mike gave up Six to normalize his lifespan, and then he passed away with Faith’s mom within the year. There had been the hope that perhaps he’d come back to them as a reincarnation, like Faith and ‘Digo and the other Reborn Children and the two senior Guards had done. But year after year passed and there was no sign of him. Faith had to content herself with the idea that her father had gotten his wish of moving on while Jeremy continued holding out hope that Mike would come back in some way.
The guilt Meera felt soothed over time as she got to know Mike’s family and realized they didn’t hold anything against her. Mike was as stubborn as they got, once he made up his mind about something he held to it come hell or high water. He would’ve gotten the idea of what long life would do to him eventually but the risk would’ve been higher that he wouldn’t have caught on until after his Doll passed and he was left still enduring time. No one wanted to think about what that would have done to his mental state.
They arrived at the pizzeria and smiled in greeting at Meera as she waved and opened the door for them. “Everyone else is already inside, so decorations are up and good to go,” she told them, holding open the door so there was clearance for Faith’s cane to pass through, “Would you like me to get one of our wheelchairs for you? Lucian cleaned them this morning so they’re sanitized still.”
“That’d be lovely, thank you. You’d think being the spirit that helped Dad power through injuries would let me get over a silly knee surgery faster but noooo,” Faith trilled with a roll of her eyes while her wife snickered behind her hand.
“I told her to bring the one I bought her but she insisted she was fine,” Jeremy sighed, “Got that stubbornness from Dad.” He folded his jacket over his arm, shaking his shoulders to loosen them up. “So the gang’s all here?”
“Yeah, Alex and Sydney are in the back of house to help with making dinner,” Meera added and gave them a small, strained smile, “Alex still doesn’t want to intrude on the party so he said he’s fine with eating in the break room, and Sydney still doesn’t remember that Mr. Schmidt was the person his past self had targeted before his death but he doesn’t want to leave Alex alone so he’s also staying in the break room.”
Jeremy’s expression scrunched up like he’d bitten into a grapefruit while Faith just tutted at him, flapping her hand at his arm. “At least they’re giving us space,” he acknowledged.
“Also, just to warn you guys, Sydney asked if Vanessa and Gregory could help with preparations so they might be out and about to keep Gregory distracted,” Meera added as Circus Baby arrived with a wheelchair, holding it in place for Faith to ease herself into with a relieved sigh.
“Who’re they?” ‘Digo asked in mild interest, holding the cake in her arms and nodding at Jeremy’s offer to push the wheelchair in her place. The group headed into the pizzeria together, walking under colorful banners and the sound of Mike’s favorite playlist streaming songs through the dining room.
“Remember when a bunch of robbers broke into Freddy’s and hijacked the Fazband?” Faith asked casually and ‘Digo huffed, expression growing annoyed.
“Oh yeah. The lil punk that took control of Foxy from the Fourth Child and the big meathead that kept shooting at every damn thing?” she retorted and one of her eyes twitched, “Don’t tell me they reincarnated too! I thought they were trapped at Freddy’s while the rest of us got reborn!”
“Well, they’re my cousins, and they’re trying not to step on any toes so please no fighting in my pizzeria?” Meera told her with a nervous laugh, “And as for Vanessa and Gregory, they’re both Aftons but they have the name because they had their identities stolen and remade by the Afton Family. Their memories and Remnant were affected so Vincent’s been helping them recover what they can.”
“More families destroyed by that madman’s ambitions and that horrible company,” Faith muttered with a shake of her head, “Still, it’s Dad’s birthday so let’s focus on the party and memorium.”
The table for the party was nicely decorated, Mike’s picture set up at the head with flowers and tea candles placed around it. The cake was set nearby and everyone chatted in lively tones, catching up on each other’s lives over slices of pizza, salads, and lasagna. Not all of the Reborn Children could make it, travelling abroad in their work, but the ones that did shared stories of their past childhoods with Mike while Faith chimed in with stories of him growing up.
They danced and laughed to the more energetic songs in Mike’s playlist, sang Happy Birthday over the cake, then divvied it up for everyone to have a piece as the party began winding down. Circus Baby came out often over the course of the party, refilling drinks, deftly clearing away dirty dishes and replacing them with clean ones, and escorting a blonde woman and a small brown-haired boy to the game corner. As people began saying their goodbyes with hugs and small sniffles, dispersing to return to their own lives, Faith found her attention wandering over to the two strangers playing in the game corner. Circus Baby watched over them, leaning against a pillar in a deceptively casual pose, while the boy stood on a stepping stool to play one of the arcade games, the woman cheering him on.
Those two had to be the Aftons Meera spoke about. With how young they looked Faith wondered if Elizabeth Afton had targeted them for her plans when her attempt at harvesting Guard Remnant failed. She felt a bit bad at the thought; Mike’s success at keeping the Strength to Survive and Jeremy’s Warmth of Life out of Mrs. Afton’s clutches meant other innocent lives were ruined in their place. Maybe the younger Guards would finally be able to put an end to the cycle once they got back inside that dreadful Pizzaplex to find out how deep the rabbit hole went.
“I’m gonna visit the little pirate’s room before we head home,” ‘Digo sighed, stretching her arms over her head, “Jeremy’s already warming up the car for us, so I’ll be back in a flash. You good?”
“Sure, I’ll pack up Dad’s photo and the flowers. We can keep them fresh in the cooler at home and then place them on his and Mom’s gravestone tomorrow,” Faith replied with a smile, “I always come into these birthday parties thinking I’ll just be moping and sad, but they’ve been nice to just catch up with everyone and have a little fun celebrating Dad’s birthday.”
‘Digo hummed, a complicated expression on her face that leaned on the side of rueful as her eyes sought out the photo of the man at the head of the table. “Sometimes I wonder if I should’ve just sucked it up and said sorry to the old man when he helped bail us out of Fazbear’s Fright,” she finally said in a quiet voice, “But I’m not the one that bit him. I’m not Violet. I have her memories, but this life is mine. I was living it without those memories and I’m still living it after they got unburied. Just sucks we never got that sorted out.”
“Small regrets,” Faith mused with a nod, “I don’t think he’d hold it against you, you know? Dad was gruff and could be a jerk, but when it really came down to it, he couldn’t blame you guys for everything. Not once he learned why you guys were so angry and who killed us all.” She huffed then and waved her wife off, “Go pee so we can go; I just want to relax in bed and sleep after all this. Couldn’t even dance because of my damned knee!”
‘Digo smirked at her before pressing a kiss to her temple and then walking off to find the bathrooms. Faith watched her go, then turned her attention back to the Aftons.
The boy had won his game, folding his tickets into a neat stack with a smile while his mother clapped encouragingly. ‘Huh, didn’t think anyone else folded tickets like that,’ Faith mused with a nostalgic smile. Mike did that as a kid to make sure he could keep a tight grip on all his tickets without leaving any loose to get snatched by anyone looking to get some easy tickets. Most of the other kids didn’t really think like that, just gripped them and let them trail like ribbons.
What were their names again? Vanessa and Gregory; Faith watched them have a conversation and then Gregory was walking away to the prize corner while Vanessa pulled her phone out to type on it, probably messaging someone. As the boy approached the counter where the security puppet would pop up to do the prize exchange, Faith narrowed her eyes as a faint suspicion began rearing its head. If the best part about a pizzeria was trading the tickets for prizes, why did Gregory look so annoyed by it?
The puppet rose out of the prize box and leaned over the counter to look at Gregory while the boy glared up at it like he had some personal vendetta against it. Despite herself, Faith giggled a little behind one hand. It was like old times, with the Marionette being a nuisance to Mike and Mike snarking and cracking puns at it to irritate it back. Her smile shrank a little as she considered the scene before her.
Could it..? ..No, it was just a coincidence. Gregory was a victim of Elizabeth Afton and her experiments at the Pizzaplex so it’s no surprise that he wouldn’t like animatronics. Right? Faith scolded herself for thinking otherwise.
The puppet made no motion to collect the tickets Gregory held out, which made Faith tilt her head in confusion. Was it broken? Meera hadn’t made any mention of the puppet having technical issues. How was Gregory going to select his prize then?
Gregory waited a moment before realizing the puppet wasn’t working and scowled in such a way that Faith’s heart twisted painfully. She remembered a glare like that during Mikey’s recovering some months after the Bite, when he couldn’t remember what he liked to do for his birthday and his emotions were a storm as he scowled at his cake, whatever excitement and joy he should have felt swallowed by a haze of pain and frustration and fear of something he couldn’t remember. She blinked rapidly to dismiss the memory and hold back tears, it had been too long since her Dad’s birthday last made her so emotional. Was she starting to see pieces of him in everything and everyone now?
Gregory huffed after a bit and dug into his pocket, bringing something out in his clenched hand, small and shiny. But before he did anything with it, he stiffened and Faith blinked again when his head swiveled over to have him stare at her directly with alarmed eyes. She offered a politely neutral smile to try and reassure him that she meant no harm, noting how quickly he shoved his hand back into his pocket as his gaze flicked up to over her head. Probably noticed the curl of her hair that arced over her head in her signature hook. Faith was always amused by the surprise she elicited from people over it.
He seemed uncertain, glancing over at his mother a few times before taking a few steps in her direction. Faith kept her expression friendly though she couldn’t help but be curious. He didn’t seem very bold, but maybe that was just because she was a stranger to him. He certainly seemed very boisterous when playing those games in the arcade.
“Hello there,” she greeted warmly once he was near, “You look like you took those games to the cleaners!” Gregory huffed a short laugh, mouth twitching into a quick smile before it fell back into that semi-confused scowl that Faith knew so well it was frightening.
“Yeah, I had a lot of practice with those games,” he replied and shrugged, “My name’s Gregory. Is it your birthday today?” His nose wrinkled as he asked that, a dubious tone in his voice.
“Well, Gregory, I’m Faith and today was my Dad’s birthday,” Faith told him, patting the framed photo gently. Gregory leaned over to look and blinked, his eyes going wide.
“Oh, that’s the guy on Mr. Fitzgerald’s desk! His dad, Mr. Schmidt.. he’s your dad too?” he exclaimed in surprise. Faith nodded.
“Jeremy’s my older brother. Dad kind of adopted him and it took a while for our parents to figure out how to make it official,” she replied with a fond sigh, sitting back in her chair as Gregory chewed on that with that same semi-confused scowl.
“But he looks younger than you,” he finally said, squinting at her sharp laugh. Brutally honest and confused by the reaction to it; he really was so much like Mikey had been... No, he couldn’t be him. Gregory had fallen victim to Elizabeth Afton and Mike had evaded them via raw strength. Surely if he reincarnated he wouldn’t have fallen for any trap, right?
“Jeremy’s got a knack for looking young,” she finally said and pointed at the cake, “Would you like a slice? There’s not much left.”
Gregory’s eyes went wide, an obvious want on his face that he then reluctantly tamped down, mouth thinning into a flat line. “I’d better not,” he replied, brows furrowing slightly, “Cake.. cake’s not good today.”
Faith stiffened slightly, a faint chill passing over her. “Oh?” she heard herself say distantly, “Why not today?”
Gregory drummed his fingertips against the tabletop, scowling in frustration at the cake offered to him. “Lines,” he finally replied, struggling to get his thoughts out and Faith could see a different boy standing there at the table, fighting to speak what was on his mind, struggling against memories lost and suppressed because of a bite and her own attempts to keep him alive. “I dunno, I just don’t wanna cross any lines,” Gregory sighed in aggravation, rolling his eyes as he pushed lightly against the table and used the momentum to put distance between himself and Faith, “Cake’s not good today. Sorry, ma’am.”
“No, it’s okay,” Faith murmured shakily, tears welling in her eyes as she looked at the boy with new hope and new anxiety, “I understand. I understand.” Gregory looked up at her sharply and she smiled tremulously; maybe he was in there, maybe she was just reaching, desperate to believe her father’s ghost was back, yet desperate to believe it wasn’t. Because if she was right, then Mike didn’t escape Freddy’s after all. If she was right, Afton hurt her old friend to the point of forgetting himself. “A line you weren’t supposed to cross, but you did and it didn’t go well, so now you know that today you shouldn’t cross lines, and should probably avoid cake.”
“Hey, no making fun, I have amnesia so go easy on me!” Gregory protested, folding his arms over his chest and sulking. Faith laughed again, wet chuckles as she carefully dabbed at her eyes with one of the paper napkins. “Ah, geeze, I’m sorry if I made ya cry, lady!” Gregory exclaimed, alarm on his face as he waved his hands in front of himself, “Can I make it up? Vanessa’s gonna ground me forever if she catches me making old ladies cry!” His eyes widened and his hand dove back into his pocket. “Ah, here! Look, this belonged to your dad, right?” Gregory asked as he pulled out the object he’d hidden from her earlier. His shoulders hiked up in a hunch, his hand slowly opening in that way a kid would when they really didn’t want to share. “You.. you can have it back.. if that’ll make you happy?”
Faith blinked, hand rising shakily to her mouth as she gazed down at Mike’s name tag. That silly cheap plate Byron had provided to him to wear that he had carried for years, until that fateful night it had been ripped off in the frenzy of trying to keep him alive after a second bite from Foxy. She thought it had been well and truly lost, or at least ruined by the passage of time. Yet aside from the pin being bent out of shape and then back into it, it looked as shiny as that final night.
“I cleaned it up some and tried to fix the pin, but it wasn’t too bad when I found it,” Gregory explained nervously, “Guess somebody put it back in his locker for safe keeping? The latch on it, ah, didn’t hold up against time, I guess.”
She just nodded slightly, reaching down to gently pass her fingertip over the name tag as she picked it up. There was a faintly cool feeling radiating from it, her soul shivering in recognition. A small amount of Mike’s Remnant -emotions of determination, frustration, irritation, and grief- was layered onto the metal, soaked from years of exposure. It flickered an outside connection, likely from Six pulling at any item Mike once possessed that now carried Remnant from him to use as a source of strength. He could have just found it. It didn’t have to mean anything. It didn’t prove anything. How would she be able to confirm something no one else had caught any inklings of?
Something that was core to her and her father as Faith and Mike, something so deeply ingrained in them that they’d recognize it on instinct, or close enough.
Faith began humming, a melody she heard so often on the night shift with Mike, when the power went out and time was cutting it close and Freddy stood at the doorway with his internal music box playing the seconds down, a gamble on every failure of whether Mike would escape or not. A melody that had been lost since then, replaced by other music boxes and sounds over the years in many iterations of the pizzeria.
“Hm hm hm-hm hm, hm hm-hm hm hmmmm,” she hummed out and watched as Gregory stiffened, eyes going wide and wild as they darted around in search of something, a faint panicked expression growing on his face. “Do you recognize it?” Faith murmured, settling in as her suspicions were confirmed just with that, a tiny and sad smile on her face.
“Wh-what was that?!” the boy hissed out, shaking himself off once he recognized there were no threats in this pizzeria.
“Afton stole your memories, didn’t she?” Faith asked quietly, “Stole them or destroyed them. They couldn’t fight you, couldn’t win against you, back then, so they came for you when you were like this. How cruel, but unsurprising.” She smiled again, rueful and nostalgic, “But you’ll find some way to win again. You always do. That’s the trick behind your curse.”
Gregory just wrinkled his nose, tilting his head as he looked up at her in confusion, “Huh?” She just laughed and took his hand, opening it to place the name tag back on his palm and then closing his fingers over it.
“Keep it. Belonged to you anyway,” Faith told him, “I think you’ll be needing it more than me.” She tapped her nose, then his, a mischievous smirk on her face. “Bit of advice. Don’t linger on the same camera too long, do a walk around before the time starts if you can manage it so you can have a baseline of rooms to compare with on cameras, sometimes holding still will save you when running doesn’t, and most importantly of all...”
“Gotta conserve power,” Gregory recited in the same breath as her wording. He blinked and Faith grinned.
“Yeah, you got this. I have faith in you,” she said with a giggle, “Beat the Afton Family again, okay? I hope you get your memories back, but if you don’t just know that me and Jeremy will be all right. We’ve had good lives. We’ve had happy times. Don’t worry about us.”
“Ooo-kay?” Gregory replied in a questioning tone and gave her a crooked smile out of nervousness that she immediately clocked as Mike’s grin, the kind he put on when cornered by a situation he couldn’t curse and punch his way out of easily.
“I think your mother’s looking for you. Why don’t you go on and find her?” Faith told him, giving him an out that he eagerly took with a quick expression of relief. She waved as he ran off for the arcade again, straight for the young woman watching them cautiously.
While those two talked, probably to discuss Gregory’s conversation with her, ‘Digo reappeared at Faith’s side to collect the flowers and place them in her lap with Mike’s photo. They left the table together to head to the entrance and get to the car.
“So.. what was that all about?” ‘Digo asked in mild interest, “Anything interesting the Afton kid had to say?”
“Nah, just passing on some advice I learned from Mike about the night shift,” Faith replied, sitting back in the chair with a content sigh, “Thought the kid could use it someday.”
“I suppose since it kept the old fart alive against a bunch of pissed off ghost kids it’s gotta be good for something,” ‘Digo snarked, grinning at Faith erupting into laughter as Jeremy hurried over to open the doors for them at the entrance and then at the car. “Think it’ll do for a kid without a ghost of his own? Those Aftons are messing with Remnant and souls. How’s one punk supposed to deal with that?”
“I don’t think we’ve seen his full potential yet. He’s just a kid still, ‘Digo, give him time to grow into himself,” Faith said and sighed in contentment.
Her father and old friend was there, his memories lost by what Afton had done, but still surviving somehow, still holding on through Gregory. If he surrounds himself with enough of the Remnant Mike left behind on his possessions, and Six realizes his identity too, maybe a miracle could happen? It was a nice idea.
“Good luck, Gregory,” she murmured, “Give ‘em hell for us.”
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