Yes, I know I missed last week’s update. I’ll even go so far as to admit I knew it last week. I even had a moment when I probably could have dragged my sorry ass downstairs and uploaded a chapter, but I had passed the point of caring about anything except staying in bed and using all my energy to not die. I’ll be honest with you–I’m not sure I’m past that point, but I didn’t want to let TWO weeks go by without at least letting you all out there know that I’m still here, so here I am. And here is the latest chapter of my FNAF fanfic, Everything Is All Right, Part IV: New Faces, Old Bones, at archiveofourown.org or fanfiction.net, whichever platform you prefer! I hope you all think it’s a good one because you may have to wait an extra week before the next one drops. In fact, I’m thinking seriously about shifting to bi-weekly updates until I feel like I’m all the way back on my feet, because stressing over missing deadlines is NOT helping the recovery process, let me tell you.

Anyway, another week is behind me and with any luck, this next week will actually lead to some productive work instead of a lot of lying around trying to think up excuses for why I got no productive work done. I hope you all out there are doing well and keeping warm. See you next Saturday with another chapter! (Or the Saturday after that with another apology…)

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She had to share the elevator with four sugared-up kids who, with no parent to ride herd on them, were simply a delight. Fortunately, they all got off on the second floor and went screaming away, leaving Ana with the relative bliss of a casual bongo instrumental for the remainder of the ride.

Mr. Faust’s door was shut. Hesitant to interrupt his evening sponge bath or whatever, she knocked.

She heard him say, “What?” so sharply that she thought he must have dozed off and she’d just startled him awake.

“It’s me,” she said.

“So soon? Come in, Miss Stark. Please. And close the door,” he said as she obediently entered. “Forgive me, you’ve rather caught me out. I wasn’t expecting you for some time.”

“I’d have been here sooner, but I had to stop for gas,” Ana lied, pretending she needed to wash her hands so she had an excuse to keep her back turned for a little while longer, just in case she’d ‘caught him out’ doing something personal.

“Where is it?”

She looked at his reflection in the mirror, hiding her caution behind surprised eyes. “Where’s what?”

“Is that a joke?” he asked uncertainly and with just a hint of impatience. “The box, Miss Stark.”

“What box?” Ana asked, and in that moment, her confusion was genuine. There were so many things she could not mention or even dare to think about too hard, lest the old man see her thoughts floating in the windows of her eyes—the key, the garage, the basement and even a certain pair of child-sized sneakers with rainbow laces. The mystery of the double-locked box had already been forgotten.

Faced with her unfeigned bewilderment, his tense posture subtly shifted toward astonishment and then to annoyance. “Didn’t you open the safe?”

Ana did not flinch, although it was a damned near thing. She had a split-second to decide how to react. The analyst in her presented only two viable suggestions: come clean and explain everything or double down on her innocence and bluff him out.

She slapped off the faucet and faced him. “No, of course not!”

His thin eyebrows lifted, then furrowed. “Why not?”

“I beg the fuck out of your pardon? Because I didn’t go to your house to fucking rob you!”

Not yet, anyway. The lie felt huge, burning across her whole face like a blush, but Faust seemed not to notice.

“Then why did you go?”

“Because you asked me to! I told you I’d take the stuff back to my place! You were the one who told me to take it to yours!”

After she’d suggested it, but he didn’t remember that part, or at least didn’t argue the point. He just took that in, turned it over a few times, and finally said, with an air of Freddy-ish disapproval, “That complicates things. You were supposed to come here with questions.”