Chapter Text
Michael Afton was the kind of kid who laughed when something broke. A window, a rule, a promise, it didn’t matter. If it cracked, he grinned.
The world didn’t give him much to work with, so he gave up trying to play nice a long time ago. At seventeen, with a cigarette tucked behind one ear and a pocketknife in the back of his boot, Michael had turned survival into an art form. Long shaggy hair that hadn’t seen a comb in weeks, gray tank tops that hung off his shoulders, and jeans that were more rips than denim, he looked like a walking, smirking warning sign.
He didn’t care. Not about school. Not about cops. Not about neighbors who crossed the street when he walked by. He especially didn’t care about David, the whiny little brother who couldn’t keep his mouth shut or his eyes dry.
“Quit crying, loser,” Michael muttered one morning, shoulder-checking the ten-year-old as he passed by in the hallway. “You’re not gonna survive past twelve if you keep acting like a baby.”
David, pale and skittish, didn’t respond. He never did. Not with words, anyway. Just stood there, wringing his hands, eyes too wide, like a puppy that’d been kicked one too many times. Which, in Michael’s opinion, was exactly the problem.
Soft.
Pathetic.
Weak.
Michael didn’t hate him, not really. He just didn’t have the patience for dead weight. Not when their house felt like a pressure cooker with no off switch.
Elizabeth was better. Sharper. She knew when to keep her mouth shut and when to speak. She had their mother’s eyes. Michael didn’t like her, but he respected her, and that was more than most people got.
Their dad, though? William Afton?
That was complicated.
Michael followed orders. Always had. If his father told him to clean the blood off the tools in the workshop, he did it. If he said "Don't go in the basement," Michael didn't ask why, he just made sure the door stayed locked. If William told him someone was "important" or "his," Michael knew better than to question it.
He didn’t fear his father.
He probably should.
Instead, he admired him. Feared being him.
William Afton didn’t raise children. He sculpted them, like little machines. Wired tight, taught to obey, programmed to protect what was his. Michael learned early that love came with conditions, and failure meant silence. Long, empty silences that could stretch for days until his father’s voice returned like static through a busted speaker. Low, crackling, and just short of human.
But Michael still craved it. The nod of approval. The rare, gruff "Good work, son" that lit his brain up like fireworks even though he pretended it didn’t mean a thing.
He lived to impress a man he hated.
That was the rebellion, wasn’t it?
Michael wasn’t stupid. He knew people whispered about their family. About the pizzeria. About what happened behind closed doors after hours. He knew things went missing. People, too. But he didn’t ask. He didn’t want to know. Knowing meant being responsible. And Michael wasn’t responsible for anything. He just followed orders.
At night, when the town shut down and the shadows stretched long across the driveway, he’d sneak out through the kitchen window and loiter behind the old Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The place was boarded up now, paint peeling, metal rusting. But something about it still buzzed, like it was alive, humming with unfinished business. He liked it there. It was a place where things made sense. Where monsters wore fur suits and rules could be broken without anyone caring.
He’d sit on the cold concrete and imagine a different life. Not better. Just different.
Mike Schmidt.
He’d seen the name on an old security roster taped to the wall inside. It was stupid, fake, meaningless. And that was why he liked it.
Mike Schmidt didn’t have siblings. Didn’t have a dad with a god complex. Didn’t carry the stink of the Afton name like a disease. Mike Schmidt was a nobody.
And in a world like this?
A nobody had a chance to live.
But Michael Afton didn’t.
Michael Afton had a role to play.
And the curtain hadn’t even risen yet.