This isn't exactly what you requested, but I thought the idea was a bit overdone and my brain decided to take your idea and expand on it.
Also, this gives me an excuse to show a bit of my version of Vanny, cause even though my main AU ends at the events of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator (so she only exists as an unimportant side character to make the world feel a little more full), I do have a continuation of my AU that is non-canon to it that include the games after FFPS.
Hope y'all enjoy.
Non-canon to my The Show Must Go On AU, HOWEVER does contain canon information.
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Heyyyyy Ness. Was wondering if you'd be free to go out for coffee again some time? ;)
As Vanny stared down at her phone, re-reading the message her co-worker had sent her for the fifth time, she could hear a snicker over her shoulder.
"Insistent, isn't he?"
Vanny rolled her eyes. "I could say the same about you. What do you want?"
"Hmm... Well I'm bored."
Vanny sighed. She'd been hoping that today would be one of the calmer days where William - the English, furry ghost-guy who had gained partial control of her body due to an unfortunate work-related incident - wouldn't be an annoyance today and make her do weird shit today. From the looks of it though, it wouldn't be one of those days where he, for the most part, left her alone.
"Fine. We can watch some YouTube." Vanny replied, not giving the man the chance to make his usual suggestion for what would be considered "fun" to him, which was really horrible stuff, Vanny came to find out. She found that, usually, if she was able to give William something they could both do together, he'd be distracted, at least for a short while. His curiosity and the fact he wasn't too hard to amuse became something she became quite grateful for rather quickly. Especially since it meant she could "talk" him out of making her do things she didn't want to...
She got up off her bed and walked over to her desk, then sat down in her chair and turned on her laptop.
"I still find it funny how much the internet has changed over the years." William remarked, watching over Vanny's shoulder as she pulled up YouTube on her browser. "Used to be so slow and annoying."
"I'm surprised you even used the internet..." Vanny said. William scoffed in an amused sort of way.
"I'm not that old. I was only born in the seventies, you know."
Vanny didn't even bother to point out how old that would make him now. She'd learned a while back about how freaked out he was by the whole "growing older" thing. And dying.
How ironic, she thought to herself. That the ghost of a serial killer would be freaked out by the idea of death.
"I meant it doesn't seem like you'd be the sort of person who'd use the internet." Vanny said, scrolling through her YouTube recommendations. Nothing so far that caught her eye, save for something about a leak involving upcoming Nintendo games, but that could wait til later, since she knew William wouldn't find any sort of interest in those.
"You're right. I don't. I did have a friend, however, who was a massive nerd." William replied. "Used to use internet forums to talk about shit like... Star Wars. Sometimes I'd watch him, especially when I had nothing else to-"
William stopped talking for a moment and squinted at Vanny's computer screen. "What the hell is a podcast?"
"Hm? Oh uh... Something you probably wouldn't like."
"Yes, but what is it?" William asked again.
"It's just audio of people talking about stuff, I think? I don't watch podcasts." Vanny replied with a shrug. "I need visuals to watch... well, in that case listen to people talk about stuff."
For some reason William snickered at this, then replied with "So is that why you watch men with dyed hair play video games?"
"They're funny."
"This younger generation is strange." William said, propping his chin in his hand.
Yeah, funny hearing that from you of all people, Vanny thought to herself.
She scrolled for a few more seconds though, and then felt her hand freeze up in a painful sort of way.
"Augh! Hey! Stop that! That causes me pain, you know-" Vanny said, looking over at William in a semi-angry sort of way. William's eyes were fixated on the screen and there was a strange little smile starting to creep across his face... The unsettling kind.
Oh god, what is he looking at...?
Vanny turned and looked at her screen yet again and pretty much instantly saw the title of the video he was looking at. Or at least part of it, anyways. Enough to tell what the video was about.
Strange True Crime: The Unsolved Murders of Freddy Faz...
Before she could even attempt to scroll downward to pretend she couldn't see what William was looking at, William began to speak.
"That one. Let's watch that one." He said, with a twinge of barely-hidden excitement.
Vanny sighed, realizing she'd have no choice but to suck it up and listen to this. She just hoped he wouldn't gloat about this, given he was the one who had killed those people. She clicked the video and let the ads play, for once savoring them.
If he starts bragging and going into detail again, I think I'm going to vomit.
The video started and pretty much instantly, William had some things to say as he listened to the channel do their intro.
"Oh my god, is it just a group of guys who sit around the table and talk about murder?" William asked, seeming amused.
"There's uh... a few channels like this..." Vanny replied. "They're known as the true crime community. And yeah, they talk about... crime..."
"Incredible! You know it used to be that you had to work for the news to capitalize off of terrible tragedies." William joked. She covered her mouth. Vanny hated to admit, she did sometimes find him funny.
"Christ, his goatee is ugly." William muttered. "What is it with these... YouTube men and facial hair?"
Vanny shrugged and fixated her eyes on the guy with the clearly - and poorly - bleached hair, who had started talking about the history of Freddy's, when it had been founded and all that jazz, and even showed the faces of the founders. Vanny immediately recognized William. How could she not? She was too familiar with his face at that point, though she had to confess it was a bit odd to see him a little more clearly thanks to the photo. The one she hadn't recognized, and was quite surprised by, was the other guy, Henry Emily. He appeared to be rather young, college-aged, and had long, messy brown hair, striking green eyes and a smile that Vanny couldn't tell if it held childish mischief, or if it had simply belonged to a man who was putting on a mask of joy.
"William Afton and Henry Emily had previously founded another restaurant called Fredbear's Family Diner, but they ended up closing the place down due to unknown reasons." One of the men said.
Something leads me to believe the reasons aren't exactly unknown to Will...
"It's funny. They speak as if I had killed anyone at that point and that's why we'd chosen to leave," William mumbled. "We just wanted to get out of New Harmony. Business was... Decent... But Hurricane offered more for us. Not to mention, moving business is what Henry had wanted. He desired to expand. I desired the same, for his sake."
"I can understand the skepticism." Vanny mumbled. William ignored her and focused his attention on the people on screen as they continued to discuss more information about the opening of Freddy Fazbear's, even showing pictures of inside the place.
"Did you know Henry let his children help design the place?" William asked her. "All of Freddy's was designed by Henry and his children."
"... Really?" Vanny asked.
"Yes. Henry had asked his children what they wanted Freddy's to be like. He eventually built the damn place for them." William replied, letting out an amused little chuckle. "The stuff that wasn't the idea of Sammy or Charlie was his... Including those drawings on the wall... well... most of them, anyways."
"He had his kids do drawings for the decorations? That's cute." Vanny said, watching as the picture of Henry and William standing next to each other popped up on the screen. She could tell it was scanned from an older news paper.
"Oh even better. He and his kids all sat around their kitchen table, busted out the crayons and got to drawing. My daughter even helped out with a few. So some of those "children's drawings" that hung up in there were actually drawn by a grown man." William laughed.
"... You had a daughter?"
"I had a son too. Believe it or not, I've stuck my genitals in a woman before! ... regretful idea. Funnily enough, people thought I had a third child? I don't know how so many people could think that.. I guess they thought Charlie was one of my own."
Good thing she wasn't, Vanny thought to herself, trying to keep herself from suffering as she suddenly remembered who Charlie was.
William's first victim.
Well, she never really got a confirmation, but deep down, she had a feeling. The only reason she knew about Charlie was, some time after William had attached himself to her, she had decided to do a bit of digging to see what she could find about him. After a bit of digging, she found a news story about a girl named Charlotte Layla Emily, who had been found dead outside her father's place of work. According to William, Vanny's discovery had warranted him breaking Vanny's pinky finger and threatening her. He'd demanded that she close the article. Afraid and startled, she'd complied. After the incident, there'd been no further mention of it.
Thank fucking god.
"Though... I guess that wasn't far from the truth..." William said, making Vanny snap back to the current moment.
"Huh? Uh... what wasn't far from the truth?" She asked.
"... In a way, Charlie was one of my own." William replied, drumming his ghostly fingers against her computer desk. "Ever since she came into the world, I viewed Charlie as if she was my own... As I did with her brother."
Vanny was doubtful of the genuineness in this, but dared not to say it. William chuckled, in an oddly sorrowful way.
"... Perhaps I wished I was her father."
The air was filled with awkward silence for a few moments, giving Vanny some time to wonder what the hell he could possibly mean by that. Of course, it wouldn't be long before William would answer her thoughts, as if he could read them.
Which he could, but she'd rather forget about that.
"Forget the 'perhaps'... I did wish I could have been her father." William groaned, seeming somewhat irritated with himself. "I still do... Despite what I-"
His voice trailed off before he could finish, but Vanny knew what he'd be saying anyways.
They both focused back on the video they'd been watching. Vanny had to admit, there was a surprising amount of information available about Henry and William and Fazbear Entertainment, which she found odd, given how she'd heard before that so little was known about the murders that the company had tried to burry. How funny... she'd assumed it all to be nothing more than ghost stories and fucked up rumors back then, meant to scare kids off from breaking into any of the locations after hours or to scare the shit out of each other at slumber parties. Funny how the ghost stories were not only real, but were literally ghost stories. Had she known what the hell they were being asked to do, Vanny definitely would have reconsidered the project, and that was only touching on the idea of Fazbear Entertainment asking them to make a game to make light of "rumors" about the company.
Yeah. Rumors my ass...
And if that weren't fucked up enough, they'd even brought a serial killer back from the dead and it had not only possessed one of her co-workers, but he was now inside herself.
Just my luck, huh? I finally had things going well for me, and now look what happened, Vanny thought to herself, rather disappointedly.
Just thinking about her current predicament made Vanny feel depressed.
"That's incredible they even managed to find some of those photos." William said, cutting into Vanny's thoughts. She looked up at him, not moving her head, and gave a little hum, asking him to repeat what he'd just said.
"Those photos... It's incredible they even managed to get their hands on them." William repeated. "Those were rather personal to us, you know? It's oddly... violating in a way..."
"I take it you don't watch much true crime."
"A bit hard to when you're dead, sweetheart." William replied, the sarcasm dripping from his voice. "Besides, true crime has never really been my thing, and yes, I'm aware it's ironic coming from me of all people." He added with an eye roll.
Vanny focused her eyes back on the screen, feeling a bit awkward now.
The two of them sat in silence, just watching the group of YouTubers continue to discuss William and Henry and Freddy's.
"Their good fortune wouldn't last long, however," the man with the goatee said. "Later that year, the first of many murders would take place at that location. On October 31st, one of the founder's daughters, Charlotte, was found dead in the alley out back by her own father."
Vanny couldn't help but cringe.
The article made no mention of that... poor guy...
"According to the police report, they'd found him cradling and singing to his daughter's corpse. Upon having his daughter removed from him, he begged the officers who had shown up to the scene of the crime to shoot him. When they'd refused, he had tried to assault one of the officers to put them in a situation where they'd have to defend themselves."
"Oh my god-" Vanny whispered below her breath, covering her mouth with her hand.
"The only good thing Clay ever did was made sure they didn't shoot him." William said, an oddly bitter tone to his voice. "I'm at least thankful for that."
"He was taken into police custody afterwards, then released the next morning, though the whole ordeal had its own consequences. Rumors had started that Henry had murdered his own daughter." The man with the bleached hair said. "Kinda easy to see why, and as time went on, the rumors continued to grow."
William scowled. "Fucking imbeciles. They never really bothered to understand and know him the way I did. If they did, they'd have understood what an idiotic idea thinking he could have possibly done it was." He said. "He was always so sweet and caring. Never had a bone in his body capable of hurting another person. But did they ever understand that? No. They did not. People had always been so judgemental of the man because he'd been born different. They just saw this as a 'justified' reason to openly treat the poor man even worse-"
Vanny was a bit surprised to hear what sounded like genuine anger coming from William. Sure, she had heard him genuinely angry before, but it had been about other things, like Vanny snooping too much where he didn't want her to, stuff like that, but here he was, being upset over something so odd (at least for him) as an innocent man being accused of a crime she was sure he hadn't committed. Vanny almost wondered if maybe William felt bad for his old business partner.
For fucks sake, Ness, remember who you're thinking about here. He probably is irritated he's not getting the credit, she thought to herself.
"... I should break your bloody fingers again..." William sneered, giving her a glare.
Oh right. He can read my thoughts.
"A bit hard not to when they're so bloody loud." William said, rolling his eyes. "And contrary to what you possibly believe, this was before I started to-"
William paused suddenly, as if to think about his next words. Vanny wasn't surprised. She was used to this, though it was usually during his calmer moods where he tended to think about what he was saying. What did surprise Vanny, however, was what William said next.
"Charlie may have been the first, but she was not someone I intended to hurt."
Vanny looked at William again, only to see him rubbing the bridge of his nose and looking both irritated and upset.
"Fucking hell, turn that off. I can't stand it anymore." He grumbled. Vanny obliged, pausing the YouTube video, feeling low-key thankful for the request to do so.
"One of my life's biggest wishes was to go back and undo what had happened that night." William groaned. "Do you know how utterly fucked the feeling of waking up to your best friend sobbing in your arms over his dead daughter is? And realizing it was you who'd done it? But you didn't realize it until that very fucking moment because you were so unbelievably drunk off your arse like the worthless piece of shit you-"
William's words briefly trailed off, lost and becoming the sounds of muffled nonsense into his own hands. Vanny wasn't sure how that worked at all, given he was a ghost. After a few moments, William pulled his hands away from his mouth, in favor of running them through his own hair.
"Watching him break down like that was one of the worst things I'd ever experienced. And it was worse knowing I was the one who caused it." He continued. "I loved that man, and what did I do to show it? Murdered his bloody fucking daughter."
William tugged at his translucent locks of hair, seeming genuinely anguished, which surprised Vanny even further.
"Never would have guessed he was like a brother to you." Vanny said awkwardly, unsure of what to say, but having the feeling she shouldn't just remain there, sitting in silence.
"... I loved him in a way no brother ever could." William replied. "I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, but that was frowned upon at the time, you know? Besides, he was so happy to have his little family with Lucille, he couldn't even see she was just using him. But it made him happy. How the bloody hell was I ever supposed to compete with a pretty face who was able to give him the family he'd dreamed of?!" William asked, looking at Vanny quite exasperated. "I couldn't offer him anything like that. All I could offer him was companionship and apparently a knife in his fucking back. God, he never deserved that..."
Vanny was unable to respond, feeling rather stunned by what she was hearing coming from William. Sure, he liked to talk a lot, but it was never about anything like expressing remorse. She'd been so sure that he didn't even have a remorseful bone in his body, yet here he was, spilling his heart out to her about having a crush on the father of his first victim.
There's no way he's being serious? This has got to be him attempting to manipulate my emotions again, Vanny thought to herself. It didn't make sense to her otherwise. How the hell could someone who had hurt and destroyed the lives of so many people even have the slightest hint of feeling?
However, William's rapidly deteriorating mood seemed to indicate he was feeling something.
"All I could ever do for him after that was just watch as he just... broke down. He actually built a robot of his own dead daughter, you know? Fucking hell, he had nightmares because of me." William continued to pull at his hair, letting out a strained and anxious laugh. "He tried to bloody-"
William cut himself off, right there, not that Vanny needed to guess what he was going to say next. She knew that Henry was dead, and the most likely thing, given what she'd just learned about him, was suicide.
William took a deep breath and lowered his hands to his sides. "... I'm done for the day... I just... Want to rest."
Vanny didn't even try to say anything. She just nodded and watched as William vanished from her sight. She sat there for a few moments in silence, just thinking to herself, then she turned to look at her computer again. Leaning forward, she reached her hands out to her keyboard and pulled up the Google search engine, then begin to type.
Henry Emily Fazbear Entertainment case |
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Wow, took me long enough to finish this lol. Sorry about that been unbelievably busy lately. Btw, I started on this before the release of Security Breach, cause I'm a fucking procrastinating idiot. I'm so sorry lol.
Also, sorry if this reads a bit awkward, I have the bad habit of normally working on fanfics when I cannot sleep or am about to go to sleep. Hopefully I'll be putting out more shit soon, at least in the FNaF x reader oneshot book, because I've been feeling in a Michael mood oddly enough, probably because I redesigned my version of him rather recently lol.
Anyways, until next time.
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PS: y'all have no idea how many times I head to rewrite this end note because I kept accidentally copy pasting this entire fanfic while trying to fix the italics lol. I fucking hate using the mobile app sometimes, though it's my fault making it more difficult on myself by writing the fanfics in Google docs lol.