Chapter Text
Bonnie:
I’m in trouble.
Again.
I knew that much from just looking at the face the mechanic was pulling.
A spark lit from one of my optics, making my face plate glitch painfully. I sucked in a breath with a wince.
His black hair dye was fading, showing the bleached blonde underneath. His roots were also black, overgrown in a way that was definitely not on purpose. It was glaringly obvious that he made a mistake bleaching his hair and tried to cover it up.
Badly.
“Sooo, doc. How long is this gonna take?”
He paused in his typing, the clicks stopping abruptly.
“What?”
“Well, you’re kinda like a doctor… in a way, ha. But, how long is this gonna take? When can I get back out there? y’know? A day? Week?”
The mechanic looked at me with an expression I couldn’t quite decipher.
“Bonnie… you got absolutely totalled with a 25 pound bowling ball. I mean- Look at you! Your optic is completely missing, your processor is sparking like crazy, and your head looks like someone took a bite out of it! Even just the cosmetic repairs are going to take at least a week, not to mention the damage to your chips and programming. I have to do some more thorough work to see what the damage is in there .”
I took another glance over my reflection in the shiny acrylic of the protective cylinder.
Hmmm…
Okay, maybe I got a little more hurt than I thought I did.
My body convulsed with a sudden wave of unexpected electricity and my voice box involuntarily let out a piercing shriek. The shocks of electricity wormed into my joints, under my plates, and through my wiring like thousands of sharp fingers slicing me open from the inside.
Okay.
A lot more hurt.
The mechanic winced at my spasm and I made my best attempt at a smug smirk through the shattered face plate and pain.
“That bad, huh?”
A wire was stuck into my arm. My remaining eye followed it as the red cord snaked around on the floor a bit before finding where the other end was plugged into the parts and services computer.
“Yup. Might as well get comfy, you’re not going anywhere for a while.”
“ Fuuuuuuuuuuck .”
I droned out the word, my cracked voice box glitching a few times.
“Aaaand now I know your censor chip is broken too. Where the heck did you even learn that word? You’re an ultra advanced robo rabbit who plays electric bass for children .”
Another wire into my arm and I fought back a snicker.
“Yeah, and you built this ultra advanced robo rabbit who plays electric bass for children. What are you even doing with your life at this point?”
The mechanic stuck his tongue out at me quickly before getting serious again.
“Okay okay, let's just get back to work. I’m going to have to shut you off to do a full examination of your programming to see what’s salvageable because evidently some chips were damaged.”
He shot me a glare.
Hey! It’s not my fault that the teens that come into the plex use foul language… and that I station myself near them to specifically listen… and ask questions about how to use them…
I just tried to nonchalantly cross my arms, except uh- one of them was sort of… not there anymore , so it kind of just looked like I flopped an arm over my chest.
“Whatever. Go crazy, dude.”
With that, he clicked a button and my vision started to go dark.
I let go.
Being shut off is a strange thing. It’s like you let go of a highbar and plunged yourself into a pool of nothingness. You’re drowning, but letting yourself drown. Surrounded by nothing, you join it. Everything is stripped from you. You don’t look like anything, feel anything. One by one, your senses dissolve into the nothingness around you. Not that there's anything to sense anyways.
The more you struggle to kick back to the surface, the less you find yourself caring about getting back to the air. Your thoughts become less and less like yourself- that’s your personality draining away. Before long, your memories are gone and your mind is just… empty.
It’s relaxing for a while. I mean, hell yeah, a break from thinking and emotions? It sounds amazing . But, I think it would eventually get lonely, being shut off for a long time with only your thoughts for company. But at the same time, is there a point where your sense of loneliness gets stripped from you too? When you don’t even have your own thoughts for company anymore?
I never want to think about that.
And I never want to be gone for long enough to find out…
“Bonnie, are you alright?”
A voice cut through the nothing. A familiar voice, but I couldn’t quite hear it. It floated through the blackness, only small dribbles of sound leaking through.
Cold.
Metal.
My touch was back and I could feel pleasant electricity coursing through my wires. Now that the charge was going to the right places, the painful shocks were gone.
I tested out my fingers first, feeling them twitch as I tried to move them. After a few seconds, I was able to feel the space around my hands. Going under was always easier than crawling out of the inky blackness.
Hmm, there’s something else that’s metal on top of the workbench. I… I can’t remember, but it feels familiar in some way.
I ran my finger back and forth over the object, trying to sharpen my senses and remember.
A breath of fresh air.
Finally.
I sat up with a jolt, smashing through that invisible barrier and coming back to reality.
“Ughh…”
My optics quickly refocused on my surroundings, leaving me feeling slightly disoriented as I held on tighter to the thing next to me on the workbench.
Wait, what even is that thing on the workbench?
Seeing clearly now, I looked down to where my hands was and-
And-
Um…
There was an orange colored servo right under my purple one. Its nails were painted a sparkly blue and my eyes trailed it all the way up the strong arm it was attached to, the set of broad shoulders, and finally up to the face of its owner.
Freddy.
Freddy Fazbear.
Before I could panic and pull my hand away, he scooped me up into an endo-crushing hug.
“Bonnie! You are alright! I was so worried when Tae called me down for-”
I stopped paying attention at that moment because
Holy
Fuck
Freddy is hugging me. Like, I am full on in his arms right now.
I focused on stopping my fans from turning on- well, the fans that were still working anyways.
“Ah! I shouldn’t have done that.”
He jumped away, pulling his arms back.
Oh.
“You are hurt and I don't want to cause you any more pain.”
Oh!
“Aw, that’s sweet of you. But I promise, I’m fine, Freddy-y-y-y”
My voice box glitched with a set of sparks in my throat.
I flinched at the sound, looking to the mechanic who was furiously pacing the floor. What did Freddy call him again? Ted, was it? Whatever, that’s not important.
“You were out for five hours. Your systems weren’t responding to any of my commands. You might be more hurt than I initially thought and that’s saying something. ”
Freddy looked worryingly between me and the mechanic.
“But… you are able to repair him, right?”
The mechanic stopped pacing for a moment and reached over the workbench to the computer monitor, turning it to face us.
“Short answer: eventually . Long answer: Your casing should only take a few hours to fix, a day or two at most and thankfully your processor barely received any actual damage. But a lot of your coding was absolutely decimated.”
Coding? Like my mind and stuff?
Wait a second-
“You mean I’m brain damaged?!!”
My voice box sparked painfully again and I grabbed at my throat as the mechanic waved his arms out in front of him.
“No, no, no. Not not brain damage, more like… memory damage. Mostly to your musical programming, like your bass code and stuff.
I looked at the screen to see a bunch of letters and numbers that I didn’t understand along with…
Blanks.
A lot of blanks.
It looked like someone had taken scoops out of the rows of symbols in random places.
“I- Uh- Hold on, hold on-”
I sputtered out, leaning my head on my arm to ground myself.
“You’re saying I just forgot how to play bass? that’s some serious bullshit right there, I remember perfe-“
“Language.”
If Freddy wasn’t literally the personification of sunshine and everything that makes me happy in this life, I would’ve death-glared him so hard.
“It’s kinda tricky, I know. Your music theory and instructional chips are okay, but your performance chip-“
“I CAN’T PERFORM?!!”
I couldn’t believe this. My whole life’s purpose- I am nothing without my bass. I can’t just not perform!
“Calm down! You can’t perform for now . I’m able to fix it but…”
His eyes flicked over to Freddy for a split second.
“I want to do it over a long period of time. Don’t want another repeat of what just happened.”
A spark of annoyance flared up inside me.
“What? you can fix me but you want to drag it out? Why?”
He looked over at Freddy again who was giving me a concerned look.
“Bonnie… you were completely shut off for five hours… and I was trying to start you back up for four of them. You, you weren’t responding at all. I- we thought we lost you.”
I blinked in shock.
Five hours…
“Oh…”
I wish I could’ve said more, but the somber feeling in the room felt like someone was funneling me full of ice cold water.
I almost died.
“Yeah, so we’re gonna take this repair one step at a time.”
He plopped down in one of the office swivel chairs that he had in the protective cylinder and turned away to start typing a few things on the parts and services computer. Something important, probably.
“Step one: Fixing your casing.”
He kicked off the desk, swiveling in the chair to face me.
My… casing?
OH SHIT, MY CASING!!
I was dented and cracked all over, missing an eye and an ear, paint horrendously chipped, scuffed to high hell, and missing a whole damn arm .
and Freddy was here.
Was it too late to go back into shut down for another five hours? Maybe forever even?
“Oh! Oh god, I look awful. I completely forgot…”
I looked away, hiding my face in my hand as my fans turned on in a vain attempt to cool down my systems.
“Even like this, you’re still stunning…”
Freddy mumbled under his breath. I don’t think I was supposed to hear. My fans picked up a little bit more speed.
“What?”
“aH! Nothing! Ahem, nothing .”
He looked away and I felt that same warmth spreading through my endo as I always did when I was with Freddy.
Ugh, I’m so smitten, it’s actually pathetic.
“If you two are done with… Whatever that was,”
I shot a glare at the mechanic who didn’t seem bothered by it in the slightest.
“I have something to show you.”
He got up and I couldn’t help but notice the proud grin on his face as he exited the cylinder and made his way to a stack of crates in the corner of the room.
“While Bonnie is out of commission for performances, he’s going to need a substitute. And so, I present to you my newest creation!”
His voice was muffled through the thick acrylic, but excitement was clear. He pulled out a crowbar from… inside his work jacket? Does he just keep one in there at all times?
A few seconds of prying later, the front panel of one of the crates fell down with a loud whoosh as it stirred the dust on the floor.
Inside the crate was… an… alligator?
A seven foot tall animatronic alligator packed away standing in the crate with its arms folded on its chest like a mummy and its striped tail laying across its legs so it would fit perfectly into the box.
I got up from the workbench, broken parts be damned. Freddy slid an arm across my waist to steady me.
Normally, I would be freaking out over that, but my mind was currently preoccupied.
How the hell was a stupid, ugly alligator supposed to replace me?
The mechanic was still talking proudly about the bot, but I wasn’t listening to the muffled sounds coming from him as I put both my hands against the clear wall.
He reached behind and pushed a button to turn on the gator.
Its eyes immediately began to glow an unsettling shade of red, startling me so bad, I stumbled back away from the wall and into… Freddy who caught me perfectly with his stupid strong arms.
A hiss of brand-new machinery caught my attention.
My eyes darted back out of the clear plastic at the green gator who was now standing on the ground.
“Hey, y’all!”
He waved cheerfully with a bright smile that paired beautifully with the glow in his eyes.
Oh I did NOT like this new guy.