Chapter Text
Impact
Michael felt the blood hit his face before anything else.
The first thing he'd thought was that someone nearby had tripped and spilled a drink on him. The second thing he’d noticed was that the liquid was warm. He saw red beginning to trickle from Fredbear’s mouth, faster and more abundant than any superficial cut could ever be. Prior to this moment, Michael had had no idea that a human even could bleed that much. He stood frozen, his mind trying to catch up with what he was seeing, before he began to register the screams around him.
Someone grabbed him, pulling him away from the stage as his father and a nearby employee ran to it and began attempting to unlock Fredbear's jaw. Michael's legs suddenly began to feel like jelly, and bile began to rise in his throat as the full weight of what he'd just done came crashing down on top of him. His knees hit the tile floor with a painful thud, unable to tear his eyes away from the terrible scene unfolding in front of him. He felt as if he were on a runaway train that he couldn't stop. Parents were yelling for someone to call 911, children were crying, and by now, Michael's friends were scattered all around the building. Jeremy was standing behind Michael, looking just as shell-shocked as he was, Alex, green in the face, had run off into the bathroom, and Marcus had collapsed in tears near the back of the room.
His father finally released the mechanism tightening Fredbear's jaw, sending his little brother into the arms of the poor employee who had been trying to help. At the sight, Michael suddenly couldn’t hold back the nausea roiling in his stomach. His throat burned for only a split second before vomit splattered on the floor in front of him.
Fifteen minutes
Michael was sobbing. He'd managed to run back into the employees only section of the pizzeria and lock himself in the building’s only private bathroom, pressing himself into the cold concrete wall. He felt like screaming, bashing his head against the floor, hugging his dying brother, and vomiting his guts out all at the same time.
His shirt and mask were covered in blood. Dave's blood. With a shriek, he yanked off his Foxy mask, throwing it across the room. It skittered to a stop by the door, its empty, blank eyes staring at him accusingly.
Murderer.
Look at me.
Look at what you did.
You're a fucking monster.
He couldn't get the image of his brother's crushed skull out of his mind; indented and mangled in a way that no bone should be. He wasn't moving. Michael could hear the wails of the ambulance outside, but knew deep down it would do no good.
Dave was dead.
Dave was dead, and Michael killed him.
If he hadn't already thrown up everything down to bile, he'd be over the toilet again in an instant. His stomach and throat ached from how hard he was crying, the wish that he would collapse in on himself and disappear repeating over and over again in his mind. It should have been him. He was a fuck-up and he knew it; thirteen years old and already wasting his time cutting class, smoking, and hanging around the kids everyone knew would turn out to be delinquents. Dave's only crime had been being a crybaby. He hadn't even had the chance to develop any sort of rebellious spark. He was just a kid– fuck, he was just a kid. Michael screamed– in anger, anguish, or guilt, he didn't know– slamming his fists down against the floor.
The sound of rattling keys brought him back to reality, snapping his attention towards the door. In an instant, the sobbing stopped. All the breath felt as if it'd been punched out of him, leaving him frozen and defenseless on the ground. He could do nothing but stare as the door opened and he met his father's cold eyes.
The two stared at each other for a moment; one like a rabbit caught in a trap, and the other with barely veiled fury behind his eyes.
“Get up,” His father said, icily. “We're going to the hospital. They're trying to save him.” It went unspoken, but understood, that they couldn't.
Three hours
It was official.
Dave was dead.
There was nothing they could do, the doctors had told them. Braindead. Too much cranial trauma. Kept alive by machines just long enough for the family to say their goodbyes. Michael sat, frozen, just as he had done for the past few hours as his father got to his feet and was led off into Dave's room. He didn't attempt to follow. He didn't deserve to say goodbye. He still had his brother’s blood splattered all over him for God's sake, he probably looked like a fucking psychopath.
His mind remained a constant broadcast of white noise, intermingled with the sobs and screams that he didn’t think he’d ever be able to forget. With his father not here to tell him off for it, Michael pulled his feet onto the stiff plastic chair, hugging his knees to his chest. If God, or whoever was up there, was any kind of good, He’d strike Michael down right here. Just stop his heart from beating before anyone knew what happened. Or maybe some maniac would come running down the hallway with a weapon and murder him. Maybe a car would smash through the wall and crush his head under the wheels, the same way Dave died.
No, that wouldn’t be fair. Dave died sobbing and terrified. Michael would be gone before he knew what hit him.
“Michael.”
Michael flinched backwards, looking up to see his father standing next to a nurse. To his surprise, his father’s typically cold stare was all but nonexistent, looking down at his son with red and watery eyes, his mouth pressed into a thin line. He wasn’t sure why the concept of his father being upset by the death of his youngest son came as such a shock to him.
“Get up. Go say goodbye.” His father gestured at the nurse beside him, who was looking at them both sympathetically. It bordered too closely with pity for Michael’s liking, a brief flash of anger washing over him. He needed no one’s sympathy. If she knew the reality of the situation, she’d be calling for him to be drawn and quartered. He shouldn’t even be here right now, he should be in prison, or juvie, or wherever else they sent kids who accidentally murdered their brothers.
Despite the irritation clawing at him, Michael stood awkwardly, getting to his feet like a puppet on strings. The nurse waved for him to follow her down a hall, and by some miracle, his legs cooperated long enough to follow. She stopped outside of a glass-walled room, curtains drawn from the inside.
“I’ll give you some privacy,” She said sadly, giving him that sickening look of pity again. Michael wondered just how much of the story she knew. He was tempted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, scream that he was a murderer and if she knew what was good for her, she’d kill him herself. Any potential screams died in his throat though, and with shaking hands, he grabbed the door handle and swung it open.
Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw lying in that hospital bed. He failed to even recognize it as his brother at first– a mass of bandages lay on the pillow, a thick tube stuck through the center, almost too misshapen to even consider it the boy who just a few hours ago had been playing with a stuffed bear at his birthday party. All the air immediately left Michael’s lungs, and he stumbled back, catching himself against the push bar on the door. It suddenly made sense; both why his father had been crying and why he had allowed him to say goodbye. It wasn’t a mercy. It was a silent way to say “look what you’ve done”.
It hadn’t been enough that Michael had killed Dave. He hadn’t given him a bloodless death, like letting him drown in the bathtub or choke on a bite of food. Michael had mauled him. The image of Dave’s disfigured skull, both his head and Fredbear’s mouth dripping blood and God knows what else onto the stage, flashed through his mind and he felt the overwhelming urge to vomit again. In that moment, he didn’t want to say goodbye. He didn’t want to do anything but run out of the hospital and into the traffic outside of it. He felt his strength draining, his brain going fuzzy as he slowly sank to the floor, eyes unblinking.
He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, just staring at Dave’s body. No one came to get him– whether out of respect or lack of care, he didn’t know. It felt as if he was watching his body from the outside at points, something he found some comfort in. He couldn’t hurt or hurt anyone else from here. Everything felt numb and lukewarm, a combination he’d typically find uncomfortable, but it was better than the TV static-like burning he knew his body was experiencing at the moment. If he concentrated, he could feel a fraction of the buzzing underneath his skin, like a hive of bees had made his body their new home. His chest rattled with every breath, sounding pained even from here. It seemed as if every exhale was scraping his lungs clean of whatever lived inside of them.
Dave probably felt like this before he died.
Michael closed his eyes, trying not to think about how hard Dave had been crying before that awful crunch of bone. In the attempt, his mind wandered to what his brother must be feeling now. Was a coma just like being asleep? Was he off in some other plane of existence, waiting for the last connection to his body to be severed before he could move on to heaven? Or was he somehow just paralyzed in that bed, capable of hearing and feeling everything, the way he’d once seen on a TV show? Michael hoped it wasn’t that one. Dave deserved for his last moments of awareness to be without pain or fear.
On the off chance that Dave was still somewhat conscious though, it clicked in Michael’s mind that this was his only opportunity to apologize to his brother. They would be pulling the plug after this, and then it really would be too late. Maybe, somewhere, somehow, Dave could hear his pleas for forgiveness, and would pass on knowing that Michael didn’t hate him and had never meant for this to happen. He dreaded the thought of feeling the weight of his body again, but he knew he had to do it.
The nausea and burning in his chest hit Michael like a ton of bricks. Involuntarily, his lungs opened, gulping in a massive gasp of air that just made the pain worse. Still, Michael noticed the inhale had cleared up his vision. He focused on his fingers, drumming them against the floor, then his hands, then his arms. It was a slow process, but with every muscle he moved, the buzzing slowly calmed down. He doubted his legs were strong enough to carry him yet, so after his lower body proved responsive to his mind, he turned around to face the door, using his shoes to propel him tiny distances until he felt his back hit the hospital bed. Propping his elbows against it, he pulled himself to his knees, facing his baby brother.
“Can you hear me?” He managed to whisper, immediately realizing how stupid of a question that was to ask out loud. Even if Dave could somehow hear him from heaven, or whatever lay beyond the grave, Michael would get no answer. He swallowed hard, trying to keep it together for just a few moments longer. “I– I don’t know if you can hear me.”
As predicted, Dave did not respond. No movement, no indication that he was aware of anything at all. The unshed tears in Michael’s eyes began to fall fast and hot, staining the white hospital blanket with small dark spots.
“I’m sorry,” He choked out, the words emerging from his lips as more of a sob than a sentence. He tried to form the words again, tried to say the only thing that felt real, but nothing but stuttered cries allowed themselves to form in his throat. The rest of what he wanted to say abandoned, Michael pressed his face against the sheets and clutched his brother’s hand so tightly his knuckles burned.
For what felt like a decade, he lay against the bed and wept.