Warming Their Robotic Hearts

Chapter 03

When Bryan woke up later that day, AI asked if he wanted to see Freddy. Immediately Bryan's response was to hide his face in AI's chest. He felt bad, knowing how Freddy would feel considering he and Bryan were surprisingly close. "Hey, Springy?" Helpy, the smaller bear AI, asked. AI hummed, looking away from where he was watching the young boy carefully in case he got hurt. "Could I spend some time with Bryan? I... I don't know why, but I really want to spend time with him as a kid." AI nodded, calling Bryan over and introducing him to Helpy before leaving to go talk to Molten about something. Probably getting Bryan back to normal, thought the small bear animatronic.

"What do you want to do?" asked the brunette, sitting next to his new friend. Helpy hummed, looking around before her eyes locked onto the duck pond. Pulling Bryan towards it excitedly, she started to explain her idea of fun.

"We can play in the duck pond!" She exclaimed. Bryan giggled at the animatronic's excitement. The two played for a while before Helpy realised something, watching Bryan as he spoke about his older brother and sister. "Why don't you call anyone 'mom', 'dad', or call them your 'parents'? I mean, Springy's like a father to you at the moment, isn't he? I haven't heard you call him dad once yet."

Bryan is silent, refusing to look at the small bear. Helpy seemed to take note of the boy's silence before changing the subject as AI made his way over, kneeling down at the edge of the pond and joining the conversation.

A while later and Bryan had gone off to play near the Starlight Stage, wanting to be alone for a little while. Taking this as her chance to mention her observation of the young boy, she mentioned it to the others. Just like her, they thought it odd that a boy as young as Bryan wouldn't ask where his parents are. Now that they think of it, whenever the subject of parents came up around Bryan he would tense or fall silent, refusing to talk.

"I'll talk to him about it," Lefty said before heading to the Starlight Stage where Bryan was sat, holding one of Baby's dolls. "Hey, bud," he greeted gently, sitting beside the small boy. "I have a question for you. Why don't you call anyone 'mom' or 'dad', hm?"

Bryan looked away, not wanting to admit the truth. Realising the black bear animatronic wasn't going to leave until he got an answer, he decided it best to give some sort of response. Looking up at Lefty through his lashes, the boy shyly admitted, "I don't know what those are." His robotic heart clenching, the animatronic plucked the suddenly shy boy up before heading back to the others who were patiently waiting.

"Bad news," Lefty started. "Bry here doesn't know what a 'mom' or 'dad' is." There were mixed reactions amongst the gathered animatronics. Most were the same – shock, sadness, sympathy, concern – but the one the boy hated to see the most, ones he got from strangers ever since his older brother's death: pity. Bryan hated pity, absolutely loathed it. To Bryan, pity was worse than sympathy. With sympathy, the person at least knows a little bit about what really transpired but with pity? With pity they didn't. people who pitied others don't care to learn what happened, just know it was bad. Don't care how the person really feels, they just feel the need to have a say, to be included in some way, shape or form and it really pissed him off.

Nedd Bear seemed to have noticed Bryan's slightly pouty face, quickly pointing it out to AI who took the boy from Lefty and held him to his chest. Almost immediately the boy calmed down. "How about I look after the sweetheart whilst you guys try to figure out how we're going to entertain him?" Ballora suggested. The others agreed, AI handing Bryan over to Ballora who headed to the arcade room whilst the others stayed in the main area to try and figure out how on earth they were supposed to entertain such a young child until the portal could be fixed properly.

~

Word Count: 712