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The factory's atmosphere was quiet. Not the normal tense quiet it typically was, the brief moment of silence before a gutting scream of terror. Just quiet. That was a poor way of framing it, but when the usual status was 'complete and utter horror', anything was an improvement. And the reason? You, but not how you had intended nor how the other toys wanted.
Which, coincidentally, was why you were out skulking around in the dark like a hungry rat. But your quest was far less primal in that sense. No, you were looking for the one creature that everyone else avoided. It was in your own best interest, you had assured yourself. He had the tendency to cause far less mayhem when he had something more interesting to pin his attention to.
Your intimate involvement with Him hadn't been planned, but it ultimately worked in your favor. Stall Him, keep Him occupied, keep Him distracted while you figured out how to get the living toys back to the surface and let them live some kind of real life. But to say that was your only purpose would be to lie to yourself, and you'd grown weary of that a long time ago.
Poppy and the others would never forgive you once they figured out that you had no intention of leaving Him down in the waste and the rubble or simply killing Him.
But that was a problem for another day. The others didn't have much of a choice either way and if any of them wanted even a chance of getting out, you were their only option. Even now, without knowing the true scope of your behavior, you'd been dubbed 'traitor' by many. Giblet called you 'The Butcher' with far less fondness these days. A brief puff of a laugh escaped you before you managed to snuff it out with your own disgust, imagining the look on Giblet's face if he walked in on you and Him being 'alone together' and learned the true depth of your 'relationship', if you could even call it that.
You shook the rambling thoughts from your fogged mind, fending off the sleep deprivation and hunger, before continuing. If the small craters in the tile at your feet and the scratches on the walls were any indication, he had at least been there before. Just before you decided to swing over an area of collapsed flooring, you stopped. The silence dragged on for a minute before it happened again. Just barely audible, down a more dilapidated hallway. Still frozen midstep, you heard it again almost immediately after the previous sound had died off.
Was it one of the smaller toys? Were they hurt?
Who were you kidding? Everyone was banged up beyond measure. Still, if this one wasn't aggressive, you were sure Giblet would be happy to accept one more into the little clan he'd been building since the factory had fallen into an uneasy stalemate. No aggression. No peace. Just lots of you placating all remaining major players in the conflict and arguing with Sawyer to figure out if there was any way to at least make the toys less obvious to the outside world. Especially for...
But Sawyer didn't need to know that yet. Neither did Poppy. Again, you'd burn that bridge once you got there.
You shot out Grabpack's right hand and swung over to the hallway, careful to mind your feet as you released and moved forward.
The sound was louder now, clearer too. Not the sound of sobbing or groans of pain. Not the growls of a feral or snarls of an aggressive toy either.
It was a voice.
You slowed your approach, not recognizing the voice at this distance. Was it more than one person? No, the tone was the same each time, no variation. It sounded like someone repeating the same thing. Short, gentle... fond?
Ever closer you crept, doing your best to remain silent as you struggled through a small gap in the wall.
Louder here.
As you approached an abandoned office space — one where rubble had long since blocked the door — you heard it in its entirety, muffled by the broken concrete and fractured walls. It wasn't just a voice.
It was yours.
And now you could make out exactly what 'you' were saying.
"Darling~"
It was enough to make your entire body flinch back in shock. That kind of language just didn't get used down here. It never had. There wasn't any reason. Except for—
"Darling~"
You had said that. You hadn't meant to. He wasn't supposed to hear that. It just came out in the middle of...
"Darling~"
And you'd said it to the one creature who you just didn't say anything vulnerable to. You'd seen Him do it to Poppy so many times that you should have known better. You'd essentially given a perfect blade to a creature that had already impaled you through the chest once. You'd be dead if not for the poppy gel. Stupid, stupid—
"Darling~"
What was he doing? What was he planning? Hearing your voice calling out to Him like that, knowing that He'd eventually turn that back around on you. Was He practicing what he planned on saying to you when he tired of your attempts to clean up the mess Playtime had left behind?
"Darling~"
You were just tired. You hadn't had sound sleep in days, maybe weeks for all you knew. And maybe you were just hearing things. The stress was getting to you. Yes, that was the obvious—
A content sigh came from the room. Your sigh. And then...
"I love you."
It was only then that you finally approached the large hole in the wall and peered around the corner.
You'd expected to see Him hunched over a notebook, brainstorming his plots and new 'surgeries'. But no — the room was dark and devoid of everything but refuse and... Him. Curled up in a corner and resting against the wall, His form limp. And there was your sigh again.
"I love you."
You didn't breathe, didn't move, just watched him, and only then could you hear the rest of him. The metal joints in his body chattered against one another like teeth while the bells on his motley jingled just loud enough to be heard.
"I løvə ƴºų."
The shaking was impossible to ignore now, his body trembling in the dark, one lonely fluorescent bulb illuminating his shadow once every few minutes. Hearing your own voice warp and glitch like that, twisted with something foreign and broken... it hurt.
"Î łövē ŷ0ü."
You watched as He curled His massive body into itself more, the jingling and metallic chattering becoming just a decibel louder.
I̸̲͎͇̥̙͐̽̋̅ ̷̢͉̜̜̖͐̾̋l̶͚̅͛͘o̴͖̳̜͔̯̒͋̃̍̇v̷̧͔̤͔́͆e̶͈̺̻̋̈́͋̒ ̸̜̙̞̳̜̂̅̅̕y̷̝̦͆̎́ͅo̸̞͉̓̃͒ȗ̷̱̂̈̚͠.̷̢̞͈̝́̿̚
The sound was sharp, accented by Him bringing one great skeletal, needle-like hand up and dragging it across the stiff, old carpet, the thin appendages piercing through to scrape at the concrete beneath. It was only then that you stepped away, your mind racing while your footsteps followed suit as fast as you could without drawing attention to yourself, leaving Him to his... musings.
There was no point in bothering Him in that state. He could be ill, though you weren't sure that was even a possibility. You grimaced, remembering how he had walked away from a literal train accident with little more than scorch marks and shredded nerves, His patience worn thin and ready to make everyone suffer for it.
...
You'd never heard or seen Him like that. Maybe Poppy— no. She'd hope he was sick or dying. Any concern about his wellbeing was yours alone.
Moving back the way you came, you made a point to go in the exact opposite direction, off to pick Sawyer's memory again in hopes of discovering something.
The Prototype would come find you when He was good and ready.
He always did.
---♥---
With a frustrated breath, you shoved another box of archival papers to the side — the sixth of the evening. Whose idea was it to print out and store every email between the executives planning golf trips and martini lunches?
Just before you could give into the temptation to knock the nearest stack of boxes over in a fit of childish frustration, you heard it.
Click, clack.
Click, clack.
Scrape.
Half of your body screamed and clawed at you, pleading to run, to panic. The other half, however...
You turned around with a gentle smile, still slightly disarmed by how close he was able to get to you before you noticed. You were getting better, though.
"There you are," your voice left you as tender as you dared as you turned and approached the behemoth toy with a steady gait, "I've been looking all over for you. I missed you!"
You looked up at his static face — the same stunned look that you'd seen flash through his body when he'd cracked Poppy's face. Lifting your arms up, you beckoned Him closer and he obeyed. One needle-like hand wrapped around your waist, as delicate as he was capable of being, before lifting you up off the ground and pulling you against his chest.
"You are a strange one."
His voice was as discordant as always, the very tip of a finger tracing across your cheek.
"If I was any less strange, you wouldn't be able to tolerate me."
He tilted his head with a jingle before replying, bringing the tip of his finger over your brow. "You presume much, saying I tolerate you."
You took a stuttered breath before responding.
"You're right," your tone carrying just a touch of playfulness, "You love me~"
"Don't push it," he said, his fingers drawing closer until the sharp point hovered an inch from your eye.
"Careful," you replied, "I kind of need that eye, though I suppose we'd match then." You didn't miss the pleased noise that left Him, his one eye brightening. "But then I'd match Giblet too." His shoulders dropped with a deep vibrating grunt before he allowed the needle tip of his finger to continue ghosting over your torn, dirty clothing and bruised skin.
"So what have you been up to today?" You reached up and traced your own fingertip across the small cracks dancing across his face. "Have any luck finding information for your secret project?"
The great yellow eye rotated with several clicks, turning in its socket and freezing you under his gaze. His fingers halted and drummed against your cheek once before he went back to his exploration.
"No," the sound was grating and ended with something akin to a growl, "They destroyed everything I'm looking for. And no, the information I'm looking for won't be in the archives."
You nodded along to his words and breathed an internal sigh of relief.
"Yeah, I haven't had much progress either — just lots of embezzlement and money laundering evidence," you muttered, "I'll never understand how Playtime didn't collapse just from being so irresponsible with money." That earned you a wicked cackle and his razor-thin fingers combing through your hair, bringing the tips down, teasing the base of your neck the way he always did, sending a full shudder through your body.
"One of many reasons they were so eager to get rid of you."
You made no effort to stop the gentle smile that crept up across your face.
---♥---
It was some days later when you encountered another 'incident'. Today your mission was simple — you'd come across a mini critter, this one a small Picky Piggy, though she preferred to go by Charlie. Poor thing was missing her left eye and left arm but she'd been holding her own after escaping what was left of Safe Haven. It hadn't taken you long to convince her to come with you, especially after you told her that the group Giblet had been putting together had another Safe Haven survivor healing up there as well. You weren't sure who Franklin was, but you hoped for Charlie's sake that he was the mini critter she had been missing and mourning so badly.
The path was familiar by now as you swung from platform to pipe, careful to keep Charlie close so you didn't send her tumbling down to the hard, broken concrete floor below. You were just about to bypass the same collapsed hallway you'd found Him in previously when you heard something again.
That same voice — louder and clearer this time. Charlie looked up from her place against your chest as you stopped. Just as she moved to speak, you hushed her with a finger against her mouth and remained still. Waiting. Listening. Charlie let out a near-imperceptible whimper, clinging to you, terrified of what you were listening for.
And she should be.
"I missed you!"
Your breath hitched in tandem with Charlie's little gasp.
"What was that?" she whispered, her tiny form shaking against yours, "T-that doesn't sound n-normal. But w-what if they need h-help?"
Before you could respond, it came again, just as warm as it was the first time... and when you'd said it yourself.
"I missed you!"
Charlie startled harder this time.
"W-wait, that sounds like you. Why does it—"
You hushed her again, muttering, "It kind of does, but it's probably just a broken voice box. Let's get out of here just in case. Okay?"
The little toy looked up at you with a firm crease in her brow before nodding. You shot out Grabpack's right hand and swung to the next platform, clutching a now-shaking Charlie to your chest. You couldn't afford to linger. Not now.
As you swung away, something bitter and salty clung to the back of your throat, the sound fading as you moved.
"Ī mị§ṣ̌ɛđ ƴøŭ¡"