they say counting stars
you play the part of a soul missing home
were you counting stars?

Chance Peña
In My Room

Again it's not proofread teehee

TW: major gore cont, graphic content. It's a horror game angst fic u know what ur in for by now lmao

  My brain simultaneously halted and ran at light speed. I sat beside Gregory and his gory wrist, frozen with shock and too frozen to move.

  This couldn't be right. I must've been imagining things, or I was stuck in the VR world again, or maybe hallucinating, but his severed arm trembled before me and the jagged edge of the rod peeking out from beneath the swathes of blood was certainly not made of bone. The truth stared me right in the face, and yet I grasped for reason, for an explanation, for comfortable lies.

  Gregory was made of an endoskeleton. Gregory was a robot. But Gregory was also a kid - an amnesiac kid who slept and ate and bled. How was he bleeding? How was he hurt? How was he human and yet not?

  I really needed to lie down and digest this mountain-load of an existential crisis, but Gregory's renewed cry of pain shook life back into me. He clutched his handless arm to his chest and gritted his teeth through a whine. A crude mix of blood and salty tears pooled atop his sweatpants.

I inhaled too much air at once and tried fervently to control my panic. Everything in me screamed to shut down, to give in to the overload of logic-defying information and pass out. Every gland on my skin began to sweat. Every crevice of my stomach was consumed by nausea. Every part of me was numb.

"Hurts," Gregory whimpered. His foggy eyes fell to his wrist again and they darkened with delirious terror. "It's gone." His voice dropped to a haunted whisper. "So... so much blood."

  I forced feeling back into my fingers one twitch at a time. I snatched off my sweatshirt and, without letting myself hesitate - because that would surely lead to me being frozen again - I covered the bleeding stump. Gregory yelped and writhed. I held down as firmly as I dared.

  "It hurts!" he caterwauled. He dug his forehead against my shoulder and broke into tears.

My brain spun. I had to stop the bleeding, otherwise he was going to lose too much blood. Could he lose too much blood? What would happen? Would he die permanently or just shut down? I had to find the hand - and put it in ice? There was no ice down here. What if water damaged the electrical insides? The Glamrocks were waterproof but Gregory might not be.

"Why is there metal inside of me?" Gregory sobbed against my shirt, and another tonne of bricks squashed my brain into paste.

He didn't know about this? He thought he was made of bone? He lost his hand and found out his entire body was built around an endoskeleton by some mysterious mechanic, and he hadn't passed out? It was taking everything in me not to pass out. How was this kid still awake?

Gregory seemed to be growing more coherent about his situation, and with coherency comes clarification. His breaths began to grow short and hitch with panic.

"Why is that inside of me!" he shrieked. He gasped for breath, clawing for it through his terror. "Why is there metal in my arm!"

  "It's okay," I said, but my voice was far too shaky to invoke any semblance of reassurance. How was this okay? I blinked hard to see past the fogginess of my sight. "You're okay. You're okay."

  "I'm not okay!" Gregory sobbed. I forced myself to focus on his face, slick with cascading tears. "Why does it hurt so much if I'm not even meant to be real? I'm not even real!"

  My breath caught. "No, Gregory-" I swallowed sharply and used my free arm to pull him into me for a tight hug. "You're real." I kissed the top of his head and blinked away my own tears. "You're real, honey. You're real. Let's breathe together, in and out, real slow."

  Gregory struggled to match his breathing to my deliberate exhales. I couldn't tell how long we sat there together in the darkness, below the hills of trash, but he finally managed to calm down and rest his weight against me.

  We sat there for a little longer comprehending the situation, silence only broken by Gregory's occasional whimper. He dug his head into my shoulder while I stroked his dirty hair.

  "I don't hate you," he whispered.

  "I know," I soothed.

  "I'm sorry."

  "I know." I kissed his hair again. "I'm sorry for breaking my promise."

  He sniffled. "S'okay. Just... don't break it again, please."

  I hesitated. "Gregory, I... I can't promise I'm going to be okay. I shouldn't have said that before. Things might go badly."

  "I know that," he said wobbly. "Please just try."

  I smiled sadly, even though he couldn't see it. "I'll try my best. Do you think you can stand?"

  Gregory pulled his head away and frowned wearily. "Maybe..?"

  "Let's give it a shot, then." I carefully stood and helped him to his feet, placing my hands beneath his armpits since his only one was occupied holding down my sweatshirt against his wound. When Gregory swayed, I steadied him. He looked dizzy and nauseous for a second and when he nodded, I slowly let him go. "Okay?"

  Gregory, looking a little green, slowly nodded. "Let's get outta here."

  I smiled weakly. "Good idea, lil man."

  We slowly picked our way out of the trash room with Gregory occasionally leaning against me to regain his bearings. I didn't voice my worry when I noticed my sweatshirt had turned almost black in the dark lighting, heavy with Gregory's blood. We found Gregory's fazerblaster during our trek to the exit, but not his hand.

  I couldn't tell if I should feel relieved. I really didn't want to have to stick that thing in my pocket, robot hand or not.

  When we got within service, I asked Freddy to bring down a first-aid kit through Gregory's Faz-Watch. We traversed through the dark halls while I held both the flashlight (that we had also miraculously found) and the crowbar.

  "I didn't know I'm a robot," Gregory said quietly. "Honest."

  I sent the top of his head a small frown. "I didn't doubt you, buddy." Especially not with the way he reacted.

  Gregory winced and placed more pressure on his arm. I briefly wondered if his robot-ness gave him a high pain tolerance, because if it were me, I'd either be unconscious or screaming.

  "Why does it have to hurt so much if I'm not even a proper person?" Gregory muttered his complaint. "Can't we just flick off a pain switch or something?"

  "Gregory..."

  He chuckled dryly. "Bad joke, I know. Dunno how else to react."

  I exhaled through my nose and patted his hair. "You're more like me than you think."

  "Ugh. Gross."

  I sighed. And he's back to being a little shit. The thought warmed me, somewhat. If he was being a little shit then at least he was maybe feeling a bit better.

  "We should break the news to Michael carefully," I said. The dark halls stretched before us. I really hoped we were walking the right way. "He might... go all error mode about you not being exactly human."

"Imagine being human," Gregory said emotionlessly. "Lame."

I bit my lip uncomfortably. I really hoped that Michael would catch up with us soon, because I was quickly finding out that I was ill-equipped to deal with a child realising they're a robot alone.

A few minutes into our quiet companionship, I began to feel my mind grow foggy. I blinked hard and shook my head in an attempt to push it away, sure it was just the inevitable row of exhaustion, but the glitchy chuckle made me freeze.

Gregory kept walking ahead, clasping at his arm and wonky with pain. My body chilled with realisation.

We were alone. William knew we were alone.

"Greg-!" my shout cut off of its own volition, vocal chords deemed useless from an outside force. Gregory turned at my cry with a confused frown.

"What?" he asked.

Run. Run. Run right now, please, god, run. But I couldn't voice my warnings, mouth gaping uselessly around dead words. I felt as if I was in one of those nightmares where I couldn't speak, except this was far, far more frightening, because this was real.

Gregory's eyes widened as he realised what was going on. He took an unsure step back, hesitating, and I wanted to cry at his reluctance to leave. Just go! Run! Leave!

My fingers tightened over the crowbar, despite my desperate attempts to drop it. The flashlight fell to the floor with a heavy, metallic clang against concrete, and the light rolled over the dark hallway. Gregory squinted against it.

"You have to fight it," he said shakily. "Fight it, Y/n!"

I staggered into the wall as I tried fruitlessly to battle for control. The fog grew thicker, clouding my thoughts and beginning to lock them away. Terror twisted my stomach into knots, beaded sweat against my neck. Why wasn't he running? He needed to run!

"Freddy?" Gregory talk to his watch in a brittle voice. "Freddy? Where are you? Something's going wrong with Y/n!"

I didn't hear Michael's reply. I dropped to my knees, gasping for breath that wasn't even really being stolen from me. Panic crowned my senses. My sight began to fade.

"Y/n, please," Gregory whimpered. He took a tentative step towards me and I willed my body to recoil, but it didn't listen. Fresh tears began to roll down his cheeks. "Please. I need you!"

I felt myself slip away.

"-T GO! LET GO!"

The darkness felt like just a blink, just a fraction of a second. I slammed back into my body with a startled gasp and struggled to see past the fog.

Gregory was beneath me, scratching at the crowbar that was being pressed with my entire weight against his throat. His wide, frightened eyes held the terror of an animal as he watched me through his fat tears.

Just as I flinched away, large hands grabbed me around the waist and hauled me back so fast that my stomach got left behind. The crowbar clattered to the floor from my loose fingertips. I hit the wall with a thump that made me breathless and I slipped to the ground.

I coughed between gasping for breath and shook my head. My brain was still foggy, clung to by the stubborn darkness that had just pulled me under for an amount of time unknown to me. It could've been minutes or seconds.

But then everything returned with startling clarity when I noticed Freddy stood between Gregory and I, palm outstretched towards me in caution as if I were dangerous. Gregory hacked and wheezed behind him, struggling to lift himself up on his one good arm. His neck was bruised red.

My gaze shot between the two of them as a slow sense of horror overtook me. What had I done? What had William just made me do?

If it weren't for Freddy pulling me away, would I have... killed Gregory?

I stared at the young boy as nausea made me shiver. I couldn't even recall what happened, as if that slice of time had blipped from my memory, as if I was locked away somewhere else while my body was being used to hurt him. I lifted a shaking hand to cover my mouth.

"Y/n?" Michael asked slowly. He took a hesitant step towards me.

"Stop!" I yelped, cringing deeper into the wall and holding my hands out. He halted. "Don't- don't come near me."

Michael warily eyed the way I was trembling. Gregory stumbled to his feet and clasped Freddy's free hand, standing half-behind him. His scared, young eyes watched me fearfully.

"Y/n, that wasn't you," Michael said quietly. I flinched when he edged closer. "It wasn't you."

I feverishly shook my head. "That- that doesn't matter. Gregory- Gregory, I'm so sorry."

Gregory dropped his gaze. My heart shattered to tiny pieces and blew away in the wind, unable to be put back together.

"Here." Freddy said. He bent down and retrieved the crowbar and the flashlight. "I will hold these, okay? But we need to leave."

I shook my head. My vision was going again, but this time it was blurring from my tears.

"I'm not leaving you here," Michael said. He held out a hand for me.

"Michael," I whined.

"Y/n," he said firmly. "You are not going to be left. You will come with us."

I looked away, trying to find some way to convince him that I was too dangerous to keep around Gregory. But I couldn't. There was no conceivable way for me to change his mind.

Defeated, I placed my shaking hand in his.

"If I do something again-"

"I will incapacitate you," he said simply. Gregory peeked up at me unsurely and turned his head away when I caught his gaze. "We must forge on."

Freddy bent down to let Gregory clamber inside his chest cavity. He caught my gaze again just before it slammed shut. I felt myself grow sick.

Freddy placed a hand on the small of my back and began to walk. I was forced into step beside him. I held my arms and watched my shoes, mind racing. He was equally silent.

William's presence lingered like a mocking momento. I could feel his hysteric amusement circling in the back of my head. I stifled the urge to vomit.

"What if we can't get him out?" I whispered.

"We will," Michael reassured.

"But what if we can't?"

"I will not stop trying," he said solemnly. His blue gaze dropped to me, sincere in his determination. "Superstar, you have my word. As long as I remain on this plane of existence, and even those beyond, I will not stop trying to rid this vermin of you."

That reassured me only slightly. My eyes fell away.

"Gregory." Michael changed the subject. "... what happened to your hand?"

Gregory was silent for a short while. And then, "I misplaced it."

Freddy's face twisted with worry. "And yet you are calm?"

"Oh, no," Gregory laughed weakly, and it wobbled with despondency. "I'm freaking out, actually. Turns out I'm like you."

Freddy tilted his head. "How so?"

"I'm a robot."

Freddy stopped walking. I eyed his reaction and grimaced at the abrupt way Gregory dropped the bomb. "... come again?"

"I'm a robot, man," Gregory said shakily from within Freddy's chest. "Got an endoskeleton and everything. Funny, huh?"

Michael shot a shocked look my way. I meekly shrugged.

"That is... a lot to take in," he said haltingly and, admittedly, with a lot more composure than I was expecting. "How are you faring?"

"Still trying to wrap my head around it," Gregory admitted. "How are you not freaking out? I think Y/n mentally shut down when she did."

Freddy looked at the ground. He glanced at me briefly from the side of his eyes before they bounced away again, guilt written all across his face. I watched him in confusion.

"Mike?" I asked when his silence carried on too long.

He hunched his shoulders. "I... used to know someone quite like you. They, too, could pass as human."

"Really?!" Gregory asked.

"Who?" I stared at him in shock.

He avoided my insistent gaze. "... Charlie."

"Charlie?" I echoed emptily. "Like, Charlie-Charlie? Our Charlie? Charlie Emily?"

He slowly nodded. I leant my weight against the wall and blinked heavily. This was too much for one evening. I think I was finally going insane.

"Charlie's a robot," I murmured listlessly.

"I only found out after I..." Freddy winced, "... died. The first time."

"She's a robot," I whispered. "Gregory's a robot. Charlie's a robot. William's a robot. Mike's a robot. Am I the only one who isn't a robot?"

"Who built her?" Gregory pressed while I had my spiral session. "Maybe the same person built me?"

"She was built by her father, Henry," Michael answered. "But... I am not sure if he built you, too."

"Oh..." Gregory's disappointment was palpable. I was sure he was even more impatient for answers to his missing memories now.

"What a night this has been," I mumbled. Freddy stroked my hair in sympathy.

After a few minutes of walking in silence while we each digested this new information, we made it to Roxy Raceway. The boarded-off track was even more spooky in the dark. We stopped at the entrance and watched as the star animatronic herself prowled the area around the sinkhole.

Gregory peeked out from Freddy's chest. "So we all agree that we have to go down that super-scary sinkhole, right?"

Freddy and I nodded. Gregory sighed.

"We can't sneak past her," I said. "She can see through objects and walls at short-range. We won't be able to get past her."

"Stay here," Michael said reluctantly. He popped open his chest and helped Gregory out. "I will... deal with Roxy."

Deal with Roxy? More alarmingly, he was going to leave me here with Gregory? Wasn't it he who just hauled my ass out of almost murdering the kid?

He picked up on my apprehension and patted my shoulder. "You will be fine. This will not take long." Then, with a sad twist of his lips, he left to make Roxy a problem no longer. I turned away so I wouldn't have to watch.

Both Gregory and I shared an uncomfortable look. He took a seat a deliberate amount of space apart, still holding his bleeding arm, and purposefully looked away.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm really sorry, Gregory."

"I know it wasn't your fault," Gregory said, burning holes into the ground with his eyes. "It was William controlling you. I'm not angry at you."

I'm just afraid of you. It went unsaid, but I knew. I knew.

  The loud commotion of metal against metal and Roxy's shocked cries drew us silent. I clasped my hands over my ears. Gregory stared at his bloodied arm blankly.

Freddy returned a moment later, carrying even more weight on his shoulders and a heartbroken expression.

"The way is clear," he said forlornly.

  I swallowed thickly. He may as well have said 'I just finished maiming my sister.' I swept a look toward the sinkhole and closed my eyes in sorrow upon seeing the staggering form of a damaged wolf who'd lost her optics.

"Do you think we'll find Elizabeth down there?" I asked softly.

"I hope so," Michael murmured. "Our circumstances are deeply misfortunate, but... I look forward to seeing her again."

Gregory set his shoulders. "Then let's go."

The little boy led the way towards the sinkhole, carefully skirting Roxy's path. My gaze lingered mournfully on her crying figure as she stumbled around blindly with her arms outstretched, tripping over racing karts and wailing like a banshee.

The sinkhole was a deep cavern spanning multiple of the Pizzaplex's secret underground levels. I shivered at the depths, so far down that the bottom was indetectable. A vague sense of vertigo crawled up my neck and through my brain.

"How are we going to climb down?" I asked. "Can't we take the stairs I found last time?"

Freddy exhaled slowly. "This will let us avoid the endoskeletons William undoubtably has on guard." He sent a sorrowful look my way. "And we are running out of time."

Right. Because the longer we stalled, the more William had control over me. My bare arms prickled with goosebumps.

"You see that ledge there?" Freddy pointed at a strong slab of concrete that pierced into the sinkhole's circumstance. "We will aim for that first. I will go first and then catch you."

I nodded. Gregory clambered inside Freddy's chest again, still avoiding looking at me, and dropped to the ledge. It held fast beneath his weight, and I released a breath I wasn't aware I was holding.

Without thinking too hard about how much it would suck if I missed and fell right to the bottom of the pit, I jumped down into Freddy's outstretched hands. My ribs burnt with pain when he caught me around the waist, and my face held a grimace even after he placed me down. Oh, yeah. They were definitely broken.

We slowly clambered down the levels of the sinkhole. When we reached the bottom, my entire body felt wobbly and as though I were on fire. I had to stubbornly hold Freddy's outstretched arm just to keep myself upright. He watched on with a worried frown.

Gregory slid out of Freddy's chest. At some point during the descent, he'd cleverly tied my sweatshirt around his stump, leaving his other hand free. He grabbed the flashlight from Freddy and began to lead the way.

"I know where to go," he declared, so Freddy and I followed.

  My heart sat lodged in my throat as we traversed the dark, abandoned my halls. The last time I was down here, I'd almost died once. Now in the span of one night, I'd lost count how many times I'd almost been taken into Death's cold hands.

And yet these dusty halls still scared me.

At least, this time, Michael was with me the whole way.

We passed the room full of post-it notes, still covered in washes of grungy, neon colour in the shadows. Then Gregory took unfamiliar corners I didn't know were down here, descending even further, before stopping outside a door barely hanging onto its hinges.

Gregory stared at the door for a second before turning back to us. "This is where I met Elizabeth."

Michael and I shared a look. His face was twisted with nervous apprehension, as though struggling between bursting through the doors and shying away from them completely. I couldn't blame him - I was in the midst of my own battle. I wasn't sure how to feel about Elizabeth after learning what she did to Michael, mistake or not.

"She's nice," Gregory insisted to Freddy, before blushing. "But I guess you already know that, since she's your sister n' all."

My smile was weak. Michael's was even fainter.

  Gregory used his shoulder to open the door. The hinges creaked, stubbornly resistant, before the door hit the wall so hard that it cracked and revealed a new, dark expanse of the room beyond. Gregory turned to us with a huff.

  "Ready?"

I grabbed Michael's hand. He sent me a nervous look and I nodded my encouragement. Out of all of us, he was the only one who hadn't seen Elizabeth recently - but he was the one who deserved to most of all.

Michael closed his eyes and breathed very deliberately. Then, he nodded. "Ready," he said, so we ventured in.

The place was a deserted, ashy, crumbling mess. Rubble piled in small mountains and paint peeled from water damaged walls. It was a miracle they were still standing beneath the weight of the Pizzaplex above.

  Once again, I contemplated the stupidity of the building inspectors before they started on this place.

  Gregory led us around a corner and stopped abruptly, making us almost bump into him. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom I could just make out a small table. The longer I looked, however, the more became comprehensive. It was a scene of a family dinner with old staff bots as life-sized dolls; two parents and three kids.

  Three kids; one with his head bitten off, one a crumpled-limbed red-haired server from Bonnie Bowl, and the third... the third with his insides strewn on the floor.

  It was a decrepit recreation of the Aftons.

  I barely had time to be repulsed, however, as a spectral light seeped from the shadows. It built itself together into something a little more solid, until the visage of a young girl stood between us and the dinner scene. Her only colour was locked within her bright green eyes, gleaming in the darkness.

  Elizabeth regarded our small party quietly. Michael had gone still again, and Gregory was staring at her with a puzzled expression. I felt a little nauseous myself, teetering between shock and horror and a little bit of disbelief. I'd met her before, only as a voice in the darkness, and yet Michael spoke so often about her that it felt as though I knew everything there was to know.

  Her green eyes glided to me, then Gregory, then Freddy.

  "Well." A small smile pulled at Elizabeth's transparent lips. "It's about time you got here."