EVERYTHING IS ALL RIGHT: A Five Nights at Freddy's Fanfiction

PART TWO: MIKE SCHMIDT AND THE LONG NIGHT

By R. Lee Smith

Dedicated to Scott Cawthon with my sincerest gratitude (and apologies)

TRIGGER WARNING! This book contains strong adult themes, including adult language, drug and alcohol references, sexual themes, violence, and graphic depictions of child abduction, violence towards children and adults, graphic gore violence and explicit sexual content. I am not kidding. This book should probably not be read by anyone.

Five Nights At Freddy's is the creation of Scott Cawthon. The characters of Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, Mangle, Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie, Toy Chica, Mike Schmidt, Jeremy Fitzgerald, Fredbear, Springtrap, Plushtrap, the Puppet, Balloon Boy, and the Purple Guy, as well as Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, belong to him. Everything else is a product of my own imagination and no similarity to actual events, locations, or people is intended or should be inferred. Do not reproduce, repost or copy any part of this story without my permission.

As always, a sincere thank you to all those who took the time to rate and review if you liked it (or even if you didn't like it). If you are interested in my non-fanfiction work, feel free to check out my blog (the address keeps disappearing when I type it here. It's rleesmith dot wordpress dot com) or look me up on Amazon.

"Uh, hey, before I go, uh…I wanted to ease your mind about any rumors you might have heard lately. You know how these stories come and go and seldom mean anything. I can personally assure you that, whatever is going on out there, and however tragic it may be, it has nothing to do with our establishment. It's just all rumor and speculation…"

CHAPTER ONE

July 4th, 1987

The sheets were white. The walls were white. The floor was white and shiny, even at night, because it was never really dark. Although the lights in the ceiling were off, there was enough of a glow coming from all the machines beside the bed for the little girl lying in it to clearly see the letters on the whiteboard hanging on the wall, although she could only read a few of the words and most of those were just names. CARRIE, the name of the nurse on d-u-t-y; that meant the one that kept coming in and out. Dr. HANSON, the name of the a-t-t-e-n-d-i-n-g doctor; that meant the one who wouldn't let her go. STARK, Anastasia, the name of the p-a-t-i-e-n-t; that was her.

Outside the window that would not open, Ana could see stars and part of a moon and fireworks exploding over the park, because it was the Fourth of July. David and Aunt Easter had gone home a long time ago and although Ana had cried after they left, part of her hoped they had gone home and built the fire and had hotdogs outdoors and set off their own fireworks and made the same happy holiday for themselves that they were supposed to have, because otherwise, Ana had ruined it.

She had ruined it. It was all her fault. David tried to take the blame because it had been his idea, but Ana knew better. It was summertime and Ana was supposed to stay at Aunt Easter's. Mom didn't want her back yet. Just because Ana had forgot her swimsuit didn't give her the right to go home and get it. She deserved everything she got.

Her head hurt. Not her arm, which was funny because her arm was what broke. Her head was swollen up pretty bad—she still couldn't open her eye on that side—but it hadn't broke. Ana looked at the itchy, heavy cast that started growing just above her hand—still swollen, with her purple fingers sticking out of the end, two of them in little casts of their own—all the way up her arm until it joined up with the bigger cast wrapping the upper part of her chest. The doctors had cut pieces away over the places that had stitches, so Ana could see the black thread zig-zagging over the puffy red bulge that she guessed was her skin. That hurt, too, but not as much as her head.

There were big foam blocks with her in the bed to keep her from rolling over, but they weren't comfortable. Nothing Ana could do made her comfortable. She wiggled around for a while, but couldn't wiggle too much because the tube connecting the bag the nurse told her was her medicine to the needle in her arm wasn't very long. The needle had hurt when they first put it in, but now it didn't unless she touched it. Sometimes she forgot it was there and had to touch it to remind herself it was real.

Ana looked at the needle in her arm and the wires that seemed to be growing out of her and up to the funny TV full of colored lines and numbers that were always changing and letters that didn't spell words. The nurse had told her not to be scared of it; she wasn't. It was just a machine. It didn't want to scare or hurt her. It didn't even want to do the job it was doing. It could only do what it had been built to do, unaware of itself or of her, thinking nothing as it measured the pain in her body and printed it out in ways that could be read by nurses. Its wheezes, hums and tones were neither sympathetic nor hostile. It felt nothing for her at all and would not, not even if she were to die right now.

Ana found that comforting.

Another firework went off. She heard it before she saw it, filling up the sky with red and blue flowers. Ana watched them bloom and die through the rails of her bed, shivering now and then beneath the white sheet and the other white, slightly thicker sheet the nurse called a blanket. It was as thin as the one she had at home and maybe would have been enough if she'd actually been at home—it was a warm night—but not here. Here in the hospital, it was winter-cold. The nurse came in a lot to push buttons and do things to Ana's bandages and she always asked if Ana needed anything before she left again. Ana always said she was fine if she couldn't just pretend she was asleep, but she was cold and wished she had a real blanket, like the ones on her bed at Aunt Easter's house. Where she'd be right now, if she hadn't been bad, if she hadn't tried to go home and get her stupid swimsuit, which was too small now anyway.

Mom hadn't been home when she and David got to the apartment. Ana had made sure of it, looking all over the parking lot and not just in the space that was Mom's to park in. She knew she wasn't supposed to be there. She knew, but she went in anyway, using the key that hung around her neck on a string to unlock the door and go inside.

She was just going to grab her swimsuit and go. It should only have taken a minute, but she couldn't find it. She'd forgotten she'd taken it out of her trunk and put it in the closet last summer. By the time she remembered, it was too late. She could hear Mom outside, swearing as she tripped on the cracked walkway leading to their door, and then she heard David coughing and sputtering, "Gross!"

Ana left her room at a run, clutching her swimsuit in one fist, and to her horror, saw David in the kitchen with an open bottle in his hand.

"I thought it was root beer," he was saying, holding the dark bottle out like it was a bug, his face screwed up, still scrubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand, and now Mom was opening the door and she'd find them there. Not just find them, but find David stealing food, stealing beer!

Ana did not hesitate. She bolted forward, snatching the bottle from startled David's grasp, and took a big, long drink right as Mom came in. The sour taste filled her mouth, but she was too scared to swallow. She didn't have time anyway.

Even before David could cry out, Mom was on her, first grabbing the bottle—two chipped teeth, the first pain—then hitting her with it. Beer flew in frothy splashes all around the kitchen, hitting the walls and the fridge and David as he screamed. Ana screamed louder to cover the sound he made because she knew better, she knew even if he did not, and it was her fault because she hadn't even warned him. She screamed and her Mom's face twisted up as the bottle came at her, moaning its bottle-song, and there was a loud sound that seemed to come from everywhere, and then a ringing, then nothing for a while, and finally the noises came creeping back.

"Shut up!" Mom was shouting, but weirdly muffled, like Ana's head was wrapped in towels. The bottle also sounded as if it were wrapped in towels when it hit her, but there were other noises, little ones Ana never should have heard over her mother's shouts, like the cracking of an eggshell, soft but so clear in Ana's ears. "You shut up! Not a fucking word! You shut the fuck up right now! Right! Now!"

The bottle did not break until it was empty and by then, Ana was on the floor, unable to move or even to cover her head. She lay, staring dully at the seashell pattern dancing over her stupid too-small swimsuit, and heard the final crack without any sense of what was coming. The bottle hit her again, now shattering, and again, breaking away in pieces like a dried stick bashed against a tree, burning at her back and side where the edges cut her.

At last Ana was still enough, silent enough, to satisfy her mother, who straightened up, red-faced and out of breath, to stomp on Ana's outstretched hand several times in rapid succession, snarling, "Don't! You! Touch! My! Fucking! Food!" Then the neck of the bottle hit Ana in the back of the head and bounced away across the linoleum and it was over. Her mother walked away, muttering, "You better clean this shit up," as she headed for her room. A door slammed, echoing like thunder, and the sound of it broke the whole world open and suddenly she was not lying on the kitchen floor, but back in this white room, with fireworks outside her window.

She'd been sleeping again, she realized. She'd been sleeping all day, but it didn't seem to matter. Every time she closed her eyes, she lost time. The dreams were memories and the memories were dreams, sometimes twisted up with stuff that never happened or that had happened some other place or time, so that none of it seemed real anymore, not even the stuff she knew had happened. Not even this moment, right here and now, with her eyes open, was really real. She could think about the kitchen, remember it, fall back into that body and live in it, and still be safe.

So she tried, but now the kitchen wouldn't come back and all she could bring back clearly was the sound of David sobbing, ghostlike, unreal. He'd been trying to talk through his tears, screaming for his mother, and he must have been doing it into a phone because there was a short darkness and then Aunt Easter was there, and after her, the hospital and the doctors and the machines and the stitches and the needle in her arm and now this bed.

The doctors asked her what had happened, but Aunt Easter had already told her what to say, that she'd been roller-skating at the park and saw some big kids skate down the stairs, so she tried to do it too. The words got tangled up in Ana's head even before they put the needles in her, and afterwards, she was so confused, she thought she might have told them she fell off her bike, which was the lie her mom always told whenever someone asked how Ana got a bruise. But if she got her words mixed up, no one seemed to notice. The doctors just told her she shouldn't have been there at all and she should never ever do that again. They told her she could have gotten hurt even worse. They told her she could have been killed.

They told David the same thing, but only once because he started crying and couldn't stop. Aunt Easter had finally asked the doctors to leave so she could calm him down and then she'd immediately pulled out the mobile phone that practically no one else in town had but her and started pushing buttons. Ana had started crying too because she'd thought Aunt Easter was calling her mom. In that moment, confused, exhausted, she only knew she was in trouble and maybe she deserved to be, but she didn't want to be in trouble anymore. She was sorry and said so, again and again, as Aunt Easter tried to comfort her and David and dial the phone, all at the same time.

"Ana's in the hospital," she had said without even saying hello first. And then she'd laughed, Ana's mother's laugh, angry. "Oh, what do you think happened? You've got to come get David. I can't leave her…No, I don't know. They want to keep her overnight…"

She had closed her eyes and the next time she'd opened them, David was gone and Aunt Easter was talking to the nurse. She'd closed them again and opened them to find herself alone and the room lit up in that rosy orange color that meant the sun was going down. She could remember wondering if David had ever gone swimming and then she'd wondered if she had, because that was what they were supposed to be doing today, wasn't it? It was so hot and Aunt Easter had taken them to the park to play before it got too crowded with people coming to see the town fireworks.

There were lots of people there already, and lots of kids splashing around in the pond. David said they should go swimming. He was wearing shorts and shorts were fine for boys, but Ana hadn't brought her swimsuit. David said they could go get it. The apartment where Ana and her mother lived was just two blocks away. They looked for Aunt Easter to ask, but couldn't find her in the crowd. It didn't matter, David told her. They could go and come back. She wouldn't mind. She wouldn't even know. It would only take a few minutes…

The empty parking slot. The frantic search. The sound of her mother's voice swearing right outside the door. David choking and laughing as he discovered the dark bottles in the refrigerator were not root beer. The sour taste of it in her mouth and then the taste of blood. The bottle. Her back. Her head. Her arm. Sunlight shining through the window on the pieces of glass beside her hand, already turning purple. The floor was filthy, sticky. Her swimsuit had blue seashells on it and was too small anyway. She never should have gone home.

Fireworks woke her and again she was in the bed, alone. At some point during this tangled, confusing day, Ana had forgotten not to talk to strangers and asked one of the nurses where her aunt was. The nurse told her she had to go home and she'd be back, but Ana had waited and waited and they hadn't come back. Now it was dark and there were fireworks, so she knew they weren't coming. They had gone home without her. Ana was here in this big white bed and David was running alone through the yard with his hands full of sparklers and his tummy full of hotdogs.

For a moment, Ana thought she could see him, thought she was watching him in the window just like a picture on TV, and then another firework went off, waking her up before she'd even fallen asleep. The room spun, or maybe just her head, and suddenly she was outside and the sun was shining and David was there like nothing had ever happened.

She thought she was going swimming, and it seemed to her that the river was almost there while she was thinking it, but then her surroundings came in clearly and she wasn't in the canyon at all. It was last month now and she was out by the quarry with David and they were playing pirates. She could feel the sun warm on her skin and the sweat trickling down her back as they chased each other around the rocks. She could hear the slap of her shoes on the hard desert soil and each dull clack as her stick parried his wooden sword. Aunt Easter was here, somewhere. She could hear her laughing, cheering them on as battle raged between them.

This was the best part of playing pirates. David liked the sailing and exploring islands and magic spells and rescuing princesses; Ana liked the sea monsters and dragons and pirate hunters and especially the swordfights. David would win, of course. David always won because he knew all the stories, so he was always Foxy and Foxy always won. This meant Ana was Blackmane, and since today's story wasn't just any story, but The Wreck of the Pride, she knew she wasn't just going to lose this fight. She was about to die.

She drew it out as long as she could, but when she saw David getting frustrated, she had to let him knock the stick from her hand. She could remember that Blackmane said something here, but she couldn't remember what, so she dropped to her knees in silence. She bowed her head as David put the blunt edge of his toy cutlass up against her throat and then—

"What the hell was that?" a man asked, laughing. His voice was familiar, safe and full of smiles.

David and Ana both looked back. Ana could see them, but only sort of, like shadow puppets on the wall of the world, all their edges blurred and dark.

"They're just playing," said Aunt Easter's voice and it came in clear enough, even if she did not.

"She let him win!"

"I'm Foxy!" David called.

Ana nodded, holding the sword to her neck to keep it and the story in place. "Foxy wins!"

The man muttered. He and Aunt Easter receded. David looked down at her and shrugged in that embarrassed way he had whenever grown-ups called too much attention to the serious business of children. Ana smiled back at him, then faced forward and the story resumed.

"Look there," David growled, pointing into the sun.

One year later and miles away, older-Ana would turn her head obediently, her closed eyes dancing beneath their lids as she faced the window, and many more years later, grown-Ana would turn her head as well. In the hospital, the orderly who had just come in to empty her trash brushed the hair back from the sleeping child's brow and left again; Ana never knew he'd been there. In the tent, the man who crouched beside her eating a candy bar and watching shadows dance on the walls picked up her hand and used it to give himself a comforting pat on the head, then tucked another candy bar in his shirt pocket and slipped away, zipping the tent shut behind him; Ana never knew he'd been there.

But in the dream, Ana looked and saw, as she had only pretended to see that day when all this was real, the black sails and gold trimming of the Lion's Pride, floating in the desert hardpan like a blood-red sea.

"She's a beauty, aye," David growled. His boy's voice made a ludicrous impression of a pirate, but in his own mind, he wasn't just saying the words, he was Foxy, so as he spoke, he became Foxy for Ana, too. "She's a rare thing and a true treasure and it'll hurt me heart when I blast me cannons through her hull and sink her to the bottom of the seas. But don't ye think on it. Ye just look. Look on her and see she's beautiful, for ye've been a worthy enemy these many years and if we've come to the end of it, I wants ye to be happy…all the rest of yer life."

The wooden sword stabbed between Ana's arm and chest. Its dull grey painted blade pushed out in front of her, golden in the sunlight. Ana gasped, grimaced—

"You deserve it," said the man. His voice was still smiling, but smiles or not, he wasn't teasing. He meant it.

"Honey."

"She let him win," said the man. "She deserves to die on her knees. And she doesn't deserve to be happy about it."

"It's how the story goes," called David, frowning back at them. "Captain Blackmane dies."

"Foxy wins," Ana agreed, also looking back.

"I know how the story goes." The shadows separated, one of them growing tall, coming nearer, fading from black to purple and then taking on the vague impression of true form, even if his face was still hard to see. He walked across the desert toward her and hunkered down, and even here, right in front of her, all she could see was the shadow across his face cast by the brim of his purple hat, the flash of sunlight on his glasses and the white lie of his smile. "I know Foxy won," he told her, only her. "And do you know what else I know?"

Ana stood her ground, because even then she knew not to run, but her stomach knotted. Was she being bad? This man had never hurt her before, but that didn't mean he never would. The ways of grown-ups were not for a child's understanding; there was no way to know when the slap was coming. Tense, confused, Ana shook her head.

"I know Blackmane didn't let him win," he said, still smiling but in a serious voice. "He fought like a lion. And if he were here right now to watch you get on your little knees and die in his name, do you know what he'd do?"

Ana shook her head again, still wary but curious.

Raising an arm—the sun glinted off the gold shield he wore on his shirt—he tapped a finger on the very tip of her nose and smiled wider at her uncertain giggle. "He would eat you up. You and David both. He would start with your lying little tongues." He made tickle motions at her lips and Ana giggled again. As she twisted away, he caught her up between his hands and shook her gently back and forth, growling, "And he wouldn't stop until he'd crunched your bones all up!"

"But that's how the story goes," said David stubbornly.

The man looked at him as he hugged Ana in the trap of his arms and nibbled on her ear and shoulder, then suddenly released Ana and stood tall. "Let's start a new one, then," he said and put out his hand. "Give me your sword."

David's fist clenched on it, but only for a moment. He passed it over.

"Now David is my prisoner," the man declared as, somewhere behind them, Aunt Easter loudly sighed and called them all silly. "I have him in a cage. David, go get in a cage."

David looked around, then went to the big, flat rock that would not be Chateau d'If for three more years, when Aunt Easter gave Ana a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo for her birthday. In three years, Ana would read that book in a single afternoon, pulse pounding and head full of pictures, where the clearest of them all was that of the wronged young man (who was sometimes a young girl in Ana's imagination) lying on the bare stone floor of his cell, there in the terrible prison built on a rock in the middle of the empty sea, a prisoner for now, soon to be a pirate and then to be a prince (the hierarchy of European nobility would remain incomprehensible to her for another few years). From that moment until the time of her taking, the quarry would be Ana's favorite place to play, where she could imagine herself shut away in Chateau d'If, a captive on the eve of escape.

For now, it was just a rock. David climbed up and stood on it, arms folded, scowling.

"David's cage is hanging over a pit," said the man, pointing. "Can you see it?"

Ana nodded. In the hospital, in the tent, dreaming-Ana could see it open up, a miniature quarry, bottomless and stinking.

"Good." The man hunkered down again and took something off his belt. A watch, the cartoon kind that didn't have a band but had to be worn on a chain on a belt. He showed it to Ana as he moved the hands around. "This is a key. You have to take the key away from me before the time's up and unlock David's cage or he'll die."

"How much time?"

"Never enough," he told her and pushed his thumb down on the knob at the top of the watch. One of the hands started moving rapidly around.

"I don't know this story," Ana said tentatively. "Who are you?"

"I'm me," said the man, standing tall again and clipping the watch back on his belt. "And you're you. And that's the only story worth telling. Are you ready?"

He had raised his sword, so Ana stepped back and raised her stick.

"Don't hurt her," Aunt Easter called in her sighing way.

The man looked that way, then at Ana. "This is going to hurt," he told her. "I'm not kidding. You can't save David and stay safe at the same time. You have to be willing to bleed if you want him to live. The game doesn't mean anything if you can't lose. Understand?"

She nodded.

"Okay then." He put a hand down on the watch, showing it to her once more before slipping it into his pocket on its chain. "Go."

Ana lunged, swinging her stick at his sword.

He knocked it away in a sweep of his arm and smacked her across the back with the next. It startled her more than it hurt, but the pain came after, stinging and itching like the fresh scrapes on her knees and palms. "This sword isn't trying to kill you," he told her as she picked herself out of the dirt. "I am. Watch me, Ana. Hit me."

Hit…for real? He was a grown-up. Grown-ups were always telling kids not to hit. Grown-ups were the only ones allowed to do that.

She hesitated.

He stopped smiling and struck her in the stomach with the hilt of David's sword, knocking the breath out of her and sending her sprawling on the ground again. Her elbows scraped the ground, stinging, hot. She grabbed at one and stared wide-eyed at the smears of blood left on her palm. When she looked up, the man said, "I told you I wasn't kidding."

Ana closed her hand into a fist, hiding the red marks, silent.

"David's running out of time," he said. "I wasn't kidding about that, either. So you can get up and try to save him or you can lie there and cry, but—"

Ana grabbed her stick and slammed it down with all her might on the man's foot.

He leapt back, yelling first and then laughing, then kicked at her as she scrambled around him.

She hit him. Never mind kids and never mind grown-ups. She hit him in his shin just as hard as she could. It was not like hitting David's sword. She felt the impact all the way up her shoulders, heard his shout and recognized, through the laughter, the sound of pain. It made her feel something, something hot and tight in the middle of her chest that made her head throb and her legs go watery. It was not fear, not anger, not joy, but all of them together. It made her feel…powerful.

He knocked her away in the next instant, but this time, she didn't fall down. And as soon as she had her balance again, she swung, not for his sword but for the hand that held it. He yanked his arm up at the last second, taking the blow on his side instead, but she still hit him and she could tell it hurt.

"Good," he said, circling around her and forcing her to turn, keeping him in sight. "That's very good. Ask no quarter and give none, that's what Foxy would say. Do you know what that means?"

A quarter was the big coin with the eagle on it, and even though Ana knew instinctively that was not what he meant this time, she nodded. "It means you play to win," she said and stabbed her stick forward.

He caught it, which was cheating, and pushed it aside as he smacked her on the side of the head—left and right—quick and hard enough to leave her ears burning. "Only sort of. It also means you play so the other guy loses. There's a difference. Do you see it?"

She nodded, stabbing at him again.

Again he caught her stick, this time giving it a little shake before shoving it away. "You are never going to run me through with this," he told her. "If you hit me when you know it can't hurt me, it's just like not hitting me at all. Play to win, Ana."

She nodded and stabbed.

When he grabbed for the stick, she yanked it back and hit him in the side of the head. He darted away, not quite quick enough to avoid it altogether. Her stick was long and heavy, the bark still on and rough right up to the tip. There was blood along the edge of his ear. Not a lot. Not even enough to form a whole drop, but it was there and it left a visible smear when he rubbed and looked at them.

"Okay," he said, laughing as he sucked the blood from his fingers. "Okay, we need to lay down some safety rules. Rule number one, no going for the eyes. What do you say?"

"No quarter," said Ana.

Their eyes met; he smiled.

Ana would never know who moved first after that, only that the moment ended and they were at each other. The sound of them—stick and sword—bashing and battering at each other was tremendous, drowning out Ana's own breath and the scuffling of their shoes on the hardpan, but somehow the ticking of the man's watch stayed with her. She wasn't sure how much time she had left, but she knew when it was gone, it was gone, and David would die.

She could not win. He was bigger and stronger and faster and he had a better sword. It wasn't fair!

…It wasn't fair.

And if he wasn't going to play fair, Ana decided coldly, neither was she.

She jumped back and threw her stick straight at his face. As he was batting it aside in surprise, already laughing, she ran at him with her fist clenched and punched him in the No-No place boys had and girls didn't.

She felt it. She felt the scrape of his zipper on her knuckles and the solid heat of meat and bone that was his body, but more than that, she felt the lumpy shadow-shape so dangerous it couldn't be looked at or talked about or even named. She felt it, the Thing, and in all the six short years of her life, she would never feel anything as satisfying as that Thing under her fist as she punched it with all her strength.

The man let out a breath that was whistle and moan and woof, all at the same time, and fell on his knees, dropping David's sword to grab between his legs. Ana snatched at the watch as he slump-rolled onto his side, but couldn't figure out how to take it off the belt. She pulled at it, seeing nothing but that clock-hand moving, then planted a foot on his chest and yanked until the little chain broke.

She ran to David, who was staring at her with his mouth open and his eyes wide all around, and pulled him down from the rock. Aunt Easter rushed over in the next instant, flying past Ana and David to kneel by the man, who had managed to roll all the way onto his back and was still gripping between his legs, with both hands now, his knees bent and wide apart, panting at the sky.

All sense of triumph died away, seeing him, seeing Aunt Easter. What had she done? There was no cage and no pit. The watch still ticked, solid but silly in her dirty fist, the little tail of its broken chain tapping at her thigh. That hot angry feeling that had made her feel so good, so…so strong now shriveled up and dropped down into her belly. She was in trouble now. She was in so much trouble.

But he was shaking his head at whatever Aunt Easter was saying, shaking his head and, yes, laughing as he let her help him sit up. "The lacerations aren't that deep," he told her. "I know the bruising is scary, but there's no real damage to the eye or the socket." He twisted around to look at Ana, breathing hard, then he reached out a beckoning arm.

She went, expecting the slap and knowing she deserved it, but he merely pulled her up against his purple shirt and hugged her tight. His stubble scraped her cheek as he kissed her. His fingers caught in her hair as he tousled it. "Good girl," he panted, still with pain tight in his voice. "That's my good girl."

She wasn't. Was she? But no, she knew she wasn't. But he said she was. But she had the broken watch right in her hand.

She held it up, stammering sorrys through a throat gone small with the threat of tears, knowing it wouldn't be enough, it never was, and now he'd hit her, now the yelling, now everything would be all right, but again, he only hugged her.

"Things get broken," he said, holding her hand as she held the watch. "Multiple fractures of the clavicle and scapula…three ribs…partially dislocated elbow. The only real breaks were her wrist and those two fingers. But do you know what we do when things get broken?"

Ana shook her head.

The man smiled, curling her fingers around the watch and holding her hands safe in his. "We fix them."

Ana managed a small flinching smile.

"Now you hold on to that until we get home," he told her, groaning as he rocked onto his knees and then to his feet. He took her hand and then took David's and, with Aunt Easter behind them, headed toward the shiny place in this memory that was Aunt Easter's car. "They're hopeful she'll be out of the cast by September, so she can start school right on time, and I'll bet you can fix that old chain yourself if you had the right tools."

David, walking backwards to see all of them at once as he pulled on the man's hand, said, "She's not going back," in a deep, distorted voice that was so at odds with his excited seven-year-old face that it was that, and not the sudden boom of fireworks, that woke her.

The quarry melted away and little Ana was back in the white room, huddled under her white sheets.

There was a man at the foot of her bed. She saw him clearly even as she thought she must be dreaming. He was wearing a tall hat like the one Freddy wore in Aunt Easter's tapes, and a long coat that took away the shape of his body and made him something that was just big and black. She saw him and thought for sure she was asleep, so she simply closed her eyes again and listened as another voice, the man from her dream still in shadows even when he was real and in the room, now said, "If it comes to a custody fight, I've got to stand up in court and tell the world just why I think I'm the father and you know Mellie will have plenty to say about how that happened. Don't kid yourself, Freddy," he said and so Ana knew for sure she was dreaming. It was not Freddy, it was just a man in a hat. "They may take her away from her, but they'll never give her to me. Or to Marion. As long as we keep this private, just between us, we can do whatever we want, but if it ever comes out—"

"She's so small," said the man in the hat.

The other voice fell quiet. Footsteps brought him from someplace unseen behind Ana close to the foot of the bed.

"Look at her. She's a baby. She never had a chance. How could this happen? How could anyone hurt someone so small, so perfectly helpless?"

The other voice did not answer.

"How do you do it?" the man in the hat asked.

The quiet thickened, sharpened. "What?"

"How do you keep someone you love safe from someone…someone you know wants to hurt them?"

A second silence, longer than the first. "Marion's already told her if this happens again, she won't get any more money."

A sound, a breath, soft as the puff that blows the dry seeds of a dandelion into the wind. "Are you buying them now?"

"What are you talking about?" the other voice asked, no longer smiling, no longer safe.

The other man didn't answer.

"Look, this was the deal," said the other voice. "Mellie takes care of Ana until she's eighteen, and we take care of Mellie, and as I recall, it was your idea, so I'd love to know just what the hell it is you're implying now."

"I'm sorry. I don't know. I just…This can't happen again. I don't care what you have to do. Whatever you're paying her, double it. Get her out of that apartment and buy her a house. Buy her a car. Buy her a pony! Bury the bitch in money, but you make it clear to her that this doesn't happen again or I will take this child away from her. If she goes into foster care and ends up on the other side of the world, so be it, but I will take her away and no one, no one, will ever see her again, is that clear?"

Silence, the loudest of them all.

"I'm sorry," the man in the hat said again, softy now. "I'm too upset over this and I…I don't know why. I haven't been sleeping well lately."

"It's fine. You're fine. Have you eaten anything? You want me to run down to the automat and see if they've got a sandwich or something?"

"I'd like some coffee, please."

"That won't help you sleep," said the voice, once more full of smiles. "You sure you don't want anything to eat? I saw some cake at the nurse's station. I could probably charm them out of a couple slices. What do you say?"

"Sure."

"There's my man."

Footsteps receded.

Ana raised her head, but the man in the hat was still there and this time, he saw her eyes open. He smiled, but it wasn't a happy smile.

"Are you awake?" he asked her.

Ana nodded.

"No," said the man, coming around the side of the bed toward her. "No, you're dreaming. I see you dreaming. Here." He took the sheet out of her hands and tucked it in around her shoulders, then took the blanket, folded it over so it felt a little warmer, and draped that over her too. In a deep, soft, rumbling sort of voice that reminded her in a funny way of the real Freddy, he began to sing: "Sleep now, baby, sleep. Night is calling, full of dreams. Slow the midnight hours are creeping. And I, my loved one's watch am keeping. Cares are heavy, set them free. And sleep now, baby, sleep."

Fireworks exploded right outside the window, lighting up the whole room in gold. Ana watched the fire fall, then closed her eyes and slept.