"Just what do you think you're doing?!" Erica shouted as she stormed into the playplace, jolting the Toy animatronics and guards to attention at the thunder of her voice. The only two unshaken by the sound were Mangle and the Puppet, both simply turning their heads to her as she marched her way to the slides the Puppet stood upon. The Puppet crossed their arms and straightened their posture, keeping hold of their ground as she approached as if the plastic castle was really their kingdom to defend.
"Oh, I know that tone well," Mangle mumbled to Mike, "usually someone gets fired after it."
"Told you you should've stepped in," Jenny added.
"Come on, what is she really going to do to them?" Mike asked. They both eyed him and he felt a guilt wash over himself. At the last restaurant, he had been able to hold his own and step in much faster to keep the animatronics from getting into nonsense like this. He should've known better.
Balloon Boy wound his way around the Puppet and slid down the slide furthest away from Erica towards the shallow side of the ball pit, stumbling his way out to run over and hide behind Jenny as Erica reached it. The Toys, meanwhile, cowered together at the edge of the ball pit, taking slow steps in unison backwards to give her space as she kept her anger on the Puppet who had not backed down.
"Good evening, Erica," the Puppet began, "I have demands."
Erica stared at them, blinking, hands on her hips, frustrations not dissipating.
"No you don't," Erica replied.
"Yes I do," the Puppet said, plucking Balloon Boy's discarded notebook from the rubber mat floor of the playplace and holding it up, "quite a few actually—so pay attention."
"You haven't wanted anything for years—"
"You don't know that—"
"If you actually wanted something, you'd actually leave your box and ask for it. Or maybe, if you really wanted it, tried to find a way to achieve what you wanted."
The Puppet stared at her for a moment, making all the occupants acutely aware of the silence that was only interrupted by the whirring of animatronic bodies (though the Toys had tried desperately to stay still in that silence to not bring attention to themselves lest it grow even more awkward.)
However, it seemed the Puppet wasn't affected, and instead turned again to the notebook and began: "First item—"
"No," Erica interrupted.
"Don't interrupt me."
"I'm not giving into your demands."
"First item," the Puppet insisted, glaring at Erica who crossed her arms and huffed, "let Toytronica be a real band."
Erica's jaw dropped. "Are you kidding?"
"No."
She turned her scowl to the Toys who averted their gazes, terrified to meet hers as they fidgeted with their hands. "First off—all of your main inspirations are 90s garage rock bands and 2000s punk, but you have no bass guitar which is essential to those genres. Secondly, you have a logo that evokes the 80s neon aesthetics which is all you play here because, thirdly, you all have never made an original song in your lives so I don't know where you think you can get away with thinking you can be a 'real' band if all you can do is covers!"
The Toys stood still in stunned silence briefly; though, if a robot's lip could quiver, theirs' each would have. Then, almost unanimously, the three began to wail like so many children that had come through the restaurant before them.
"She's right!" Toy Bonnie cried. "Our branding is inconsistent!"
"It's true! We're musically confused!" Toy Chica said.
"We'll never make it as a band!" Toy Freddy sobbed.
"Wow, and I thought I was mean," the Puppet mused. Erica rolled her eyes. "You could have just asked them who'd perform for the kids when they were gone on tour."
Toy Chica fell to her knees and clasped her head. "We didn't even think about the kids!"
Toy Bonnie collapsed onto her. "We're so selfish!"
Toy Freddy fell to the floor with them. "We don't deserve to be musicians!"
"I should have designed them to be less emotional," Erica mumbled to herself.
"It's just your nature, Erica: you can't help but hurt people's feelings everywhere you go," the Puppet said.
"I'm being realistic. I'm not out here to set them up to fail," Erica replied.
The Puppet sneered. "Right, of course. You don't want us to fail because you don't want us to do anything at all. You want us to be obedient and stay here forever."
"That's not what I want—"
"That's what it sure feels like," the Puppet interrupted, "you've especially trapped me in one after another after another without ever asking what I wanted, so you can say all you want how that's not what you want but here I am still: proof that that's what you're doing. So I don't know if you just enjoy being a hypocrite or what it is but it's still what's going on."
"I wasn't—"
"Like, I don't know what your angle is with all that because it's basically torture for me because I hate it here. You'll take Fredbear out everyday and have for well over a decade but I guess I don't count even though you've known I've been in the same situation as him for the same amount of time, but I guess that doesn't mean anything to you."
Erica had stopped arguing, keeping her mouth shut in a frown that had begun turning from anger to hints of guilt, but the Puppet didn't stop.
"And the wild thing is that the person who could take me out of here—who frankly should have this whole time—won't even talk to me!" they continued, "And I don't know how to get him to! I guess my dad just doesn't love me anymore which—okay! Sure! Guess that was bound to happen—!"
Erica shook her head. "Henry still loves you—"
"You don't know that. He doesn't talk to me anymore—"
"Because you refused to talk him for five years first!"
"Because he tried to get me incinerated!" the Puppet shouted, the sound echoing like none other around the cavernous walls and ceilings surrounding the playplace. The visceral anger paired with the break of pain in their voice took everyone aback, as if they were all spectators at an aquarium and were watching cracks in the glass appear on its shark tank in real time.
Erica was breathless. "What?"
"I found the paperwork," the Puppet continued, voice trying to stay strong with their rage but wavering as the kept on, "he had everything done but to sign it. He was...he was so ready to burn me and get rid of me. He was done with me." They looked away from Erica, trying to collect themself. "I just- I just wanted to be with my dad like Evan gets to be with you, but he doesn't and I...I'm stuck here. I've been stuck here in these stupid restaurants for over 20 years and I can't leave because nobody asks me what I want."
The fire had been snuffed out of Erica. Her shoulders dropped and all she was left with was shame and pity as she stared up at the Puppet, stood all alone at the top of the slides in the playplace, surrounded only by shadows and barely taller than the kids that clambored through it everyday. The cape swallowed them up like a sick child in a blanket, the crown slightly askew on their head from all their animated yelling.
It broke Erica's heart, because she could still see Charlotte clear as day through the Puppet every time she looked at them. There was never a day she didn't. And even though, after all these years she knew that Charlotte would've been an adult, she still wanted to scoop them up and tell them everything would be okay like she did back when they were a seven year old kid and her daughter's best friend that came over everyday.
"Oh," Erica breathed, "Charlie..."
The Puppet's head snapped back up to Erica and the despondence disappeared from their eyes, replaced with the refueled rage that had started to simmer. Erica felt herself tense, not knowing what exactly she did wrong in the moment until they spoke.
"You don't get to call me Charlie," they growled, the sound slurred through barely contained tears, "you don't get to call me that. You don't ever get to call me that because you don't care and you've never cared."
They stepped out from the playplace, foot catching on the slide and making them lose their balance. They stumbled slightly, but caught themself enough to slide into the pit below and stay standing, kicking the balls this way and that out of it as they marched forth towards Erica from it. They leapt from it up to her feet, fury radiating from their body.
"You don't get to call me Charlie," they said, "no one does."
Erica gave no response; she knew nothing would help in the moment. The Puppet, so infuriated their body was shaking, stood there for only a few moments more before storming off to the Prize Corner and disappearing from sight. Everyone left behind lingered in the tense silence, as if disturbing the air with any movements would set the Puppet off again even if they weren't in the room anymore.
Eventually, they all did begin to move, mostly to check on each other (though everyone gave space to Erica, perhaps too afraid to talk to her.) The exception was Fredbear, who approached her. Her eyes had not left the Prize Corner, which Fredbear noticed.
"You need to give them space, mom," Fredbear said.
Erica shook her head, then began to head towards it. "No, I messed this up. I'm fixing it."
"Mom—"
"They're not going to deal with it later if we don't talk about it now."
Fredbear watched her leave and sighed.
Erica entered the Prize Corner, noticing first the discarded crown crumpled on the floor before having to step over the cape not long after. She reached the tiers of plushie prizes where the Puppet's box was nestled on the lowest tier. The lid was shut tight, but the sound of their muffled crying wasn't hidden. Erica pulled herself up onto the tier to sit besides the box, quiet for a moment as she tried to decide how to start, then her eye caught a glimpse of the still ballerina in the music box between the plushies near her. She watched it for a bit before gently picking it up and winding it, the ballerina spinning to the music twinkling delicately out through the stillness of the Prize Corner. The Puppet's sobbing began to soothe into shaking hiccups, but they didn't say anything either.
"I should never have made you stay at all the restaurants corporate kept jumping you between before this one, or me sticking you at this one permanently," Erica started, "it wasn't fair. I was convinced you'd get sick of it and tell everyone that you were murdered and possessing the Puppet and it'd all come out like that because I couldn't do it because all of the NDA's I'm stuck under—but that wasn't fair to expect you to do and I'm coward for trying that. It's not your responsibility to expose what the company's been hiding...and it was my responsibility to ask you what you wanted."
Erica ran her finger along the enamel roses on the edge of the music box.
"You're family, you always were, even though I didn't treat you like that." She laughed. "But, if you ask Michael, maybe that's how I treat my family."
There was the slightest of chuckles from inside the prize box. Erica smiled.
"If you want—especially because I know I'm probably the last person you'd want to leave with—I'll take you out of here with Evan and Cassidy when we go," she continued, "you don't have to stay here anymore if you don't want to, higher ups be damned."
She waited for a reply, but none came. Erica nodded and set a hand on the box.
"Just let me know when you make you decision. It'll always be open for you. I won't take it back. Like I said—you were always family," she said. She put the music box down again, then got up and began to leave.
As Erica crossed the threshold of the Prize Corner, the Puppet lifted up the lid of the prize box ever so slightly and watched her as she walked away.
———————————
The three Toy animatronics had sequestered themselves backstage, trying to hide from Erica to not hear more about how bad of a band they were nor to think more about how badly their plan to get the Puppet to talk to her on their behalf had played out. The former was working out well, but the latter was not. In fact, it was all the three of them could think about as they sat at their dressing tables in shameful contemplation, not looking at each other or their own reflections as they sat in silent, self imposed time-outs.
Every once in a while, one would open their mouth to speak, but then shut it again. What was there to say? They messed up. Erica was right—they weren't cohesive as a band, they didn't have original material, they weren't ready and it wasn't going to work. And everything that happened with the Puppet was a bad idea that was entirely their faults. They were the ones that set up the whole royal fiasco, so it was their faults it went so sideways.
Toy Freddy was the one to finally speak.
"We should at least do something to make them feel better," he said. Toy Bonnie nodded as Toy Chica stared ahead at her station in thought before her eye caught on the drawings from kids taped up on the mirror in front of her. Thoughts lit up in her head like the bulbs above them on the wall.
"Well," she started, "what's the best way we know how to make someone happy?"
Toy Freddy and Toy Bonnie considered it for a moment, then Toy Bonnie's ears perked up.
"Birthday parties?" he asked. Toy Chica smiled at him as he kept thinking. "And I don't think we've ever thrown one for them!"
"But..." Toy Freddy shook his head, "...everyone deserves a birthday party."
"Then that settles it, boys." Toy Chica stood up from her dressing table. "Let's throw a birthday party!"
———————————
The Puppet was curled up in their prize box, knees tucked to their chest in the darkness as they listened to the quiet twinkling notes of the music box outside trickle in. They were still considering Erica's offer, wishing it could've been offered by anyone else—or at least, by the one person they wanted it to be from.
But still, the fact it was finally offered at all...
As they tightened their hug on their legs, the lid of the box was slowly pushed back. They glanced up, brow furrowed.
"What?" they whispered. Erica would not have been dumb enough to poke the bear again and Balloon Boy was too short to get up onto any of the prize tiers to open the prize box to try and check on them. The only reasonable guess would have been Fredbear, but even then he would have knocked or said something first before opening it up.
The Puppet lifted themselves up and poked their head out of the box. "Who are you and what do you...?"
They weren't in the Prize Corner anymore, but instead the Birthday Room, walls all warm reds and covered in patterns of the muted versions of the colors of the Toy animatronics. Streamers hung from the ceiling and balloons bobbed between them amidst the dim lighting.
The Puppet stood up taller, taking it in with a bemused smile. Apparently they had grown so used to being transported in their box from the Prize Corner to the Birthday Room for parties they hadn't noticed the shift happening, and the fact the music box was brought along with them made the trip even less obvious.
Suddenly, but gently, a new crown was set on the Puppet's head by Toy Bonnie that they, at first, tried to shrink away from. But, when they noticed Toy Freddy laying their cloak across their shoulders, pinning it under their chin with the star side up just like the Puppet did for all the birthday kids, they stopped fighting it, instead stood in a moment of stunned quiet.
Then a shimmer caught the Puppet's attention as Toy Chica approached, carrying in both hands as careful as she could a well meaning but hastily made birthday cake. The frosting was uneven, the decorations lopsided, the sprinkles overused in some parts and sparse in others, even the candles were crooked—only the lettering was legible (clearly that and the base cake were the parts done by Toy Chica herself, if the Puppet had to guess; the boys did the rest.) Still, she approached with as much earnestness as she ever would with any kid at the restaurant, warm smiles and all. Besides her, Toy Bonnie and Toy Freddy had gathered, and alongside them, the Puppet now saw Mangle, Balloon Boy, and Fredbear all join, wearing party hats like the rest of them before the group began to sing 'Happy Birthday.'
"You guys didn't have to do this," the Puppet said, then shook their head, "it's not even my actual birthday."
"Who cares? Let's let it be today," Mangle said. The Puppet laughed.
"You gotta make a wish, Charlie," Fredbear said, "can't have cake if you don't."
The Puppet considered it for a moment, then took a deep breath and blew out the candles. Everyone cheered, and the Puppet's smile grew wider.
———————————
Erica listened to the phone ring as she held the receiver tight to her ear. She rubbed her forehead as her heel bounced against her office floor as she sat hunched over at her desk.
"Come on," she grumbled as the call continued to not connect, "I know you're still awake."
"You know exactly who you reached if you called this number—" the voicemail started, making Erica groan, "—and I didn't pick up for a reason. Don't leave a message, I won't listen to it."
"Henry you suck, call me back," Erica snapped before she slammed the phone down and fell back in her chair to stare up at the ceiling. She took a deep breath and shut her eyes, trying hard to resist the urge to throw something across the room even if it was the middle of the night and there was only a couple guards around. It wasn't a lot of people to look unprofessional around, but she didn't want to start getting back into the old habits she had had to break herself out of from back when she and William were still working together.
She dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. She should have left him long before she actually did. (Maybe one of her kids would have ended up normal at the least if she did. The only thing she could say for them now was that one of them was alive, and Michael challenged that everyday.)
There was a quiet knock at her door and she pulled her hands back from her eyes, glancing over to it, expecting to see Fredbear standing there to check on her like he tended to when he could tell she was upset (he had some kind of sense for it.) Yet, that's not who stood there.
"Hey," the Puppet said.
Erica blinked. "Hey."
The Puppet tugged their head down the hallway. "The Toys are throwing me a birthday party."
She paused, then nodded. "Oh, that's nice of them."
"You're not gonna come?"
Erica cocked her head. "You want me there?"
"I mean," the Puppet started, "everyone I care about is supposed to be there."
There was a moment of pause, then Erica smiled. "Okay."
The Puppet smiled back as she got up to walk with them back to the Birthday Room. "Cool."
