A/N: Hey there! This is my first time writing a FNaF fanfic, so I hope you'll enjoy. Just to give you a quick heads-up: This is loosely a "What-if" AU which follows the story from the games up to a certain point, but then goes into a different direction. As such, characters, events and such should be similar, but I will most likely take some liberties and change a few things as I go along. This will be based on what direction I want this story to go as well as theories and headcanons I personally hold. Shouldn't be anything too drastic, but if there's anything about my interpretation that you disagree with, just remember that it's not intended to 100% adhere to the canon story.

That aside, enough preamble; Let's get to what you're here for!

Tim shuddered as he wandered the hall of the restaurant. He felt like another one of those horrible robots could be around every corner. He was not going to deny it- they scared him. Why were they so big? Why did they have those unsettling faces? Why did he feel like their unblinking eyes were always following him?

He simply could not understand why Dad had made them like that.

Ahead was a familiar face. It was his sister, Lizzy. She was peeking through one of the doors in the hall. It led to a small party room from what Tim could see. He attempted to call out to Lizzy, but his voice was weak, and she was too engrossed by the sights and sounds she saw and heard in that room to notice him.

Waiting not a second longer, Lizzy ducked inside the door. Tim hurriedly ran towards it and rushed through as well upon reaching it.

As he had feared, there was one of the robots up on a stage. This one unsettled him perhaps the most. It was made to look like a young girl, but it was easily the biggest one. She was singing a song, but Tim could not care to listen. He felt like he had to talk to Lizzy about these things, and he had to do it now.

Where was she? He looked around. The room appeared deserted.

There! By the stage, he spotted the familiar orange-blonde hair, red bow and all. Tim started walking towards her, but stopped when he noticed the robot on stage was no longer singing, and had bowed to look at Lizzy, who simply stood there in wide-eyed awe and innocent delight. The room was eerily quiet now; nothing moved, nothing made a noise, only the faint buzz of activity from the other rooms could be heard. All Tim felt was building dread.

Then the robot's stomach opened to reveal something, a prize of sorts. Ice cream. It was right there for the taking, as if the mechanical girl was offering it. Lizzy greedily reached for it, oblivious to what was about to happen.

Tim looked back and forth between Lizzy and the robot, and saw with horror that the latter's eyes had become dull, empty. He could not watch this any longer and yelled at Lizzy.

"No!"

But it was too late. She had gotten too close, and a claw shot out of the robot's stomach. In a flash, Lizzy was gone, eaten by the robot's stomach-mouth. Tim squeezed his eyes shut. Horrible noises filled the room- screaming, grinding metal.

Tim could feel the tears streaming down his cheeks, and for a while, his own cries of fear and anguish drowned out the awful sounds. It wasn't until he finally stopped crying that he noticed all the noise was gone.

He opened his eyes; his surroundings were dusky, but not too dark to see. The robot was gone. So was the stage, and the awful restaurant itself for that matter. Instead, there was just his bedroom. Judging from the happy chirping noises of birds outside, it was already morning.

Tim exhaled slowly. Another nightmare. He had lost count by this point. It is hard to forget watching your sister get murdered by a machine, after all- especially since nobody seemed to believe him. At least he would not have to go back to sleep.

He looked around at his familiar surroundings to try and calm himself down. He could still feel his heart beating in his throat, but it was slowly going back to normal now. There was the door to his room, his closet, his scattered toys, his plushies, Foxy, the-

Wait, Foxy?

"RRAAAHHH!" Foxy cried, making a lunging motion towards him. Tim screamed, and his eyes started watering again.

Then his brother took off the Foxy mask and guffawed at his expense. Tim hugged his blanket, half out of lingering fear response, half out of sheer shocked disbelief. His rapid breathing slowly went back to normal.

Mike's attempts to scare him got meaner by the day. He used to wait until he got out of bed, at least.

When Tim failed to make any sort of response, Mike finally stopped laughing. "Hey, come on now. It's only me. Stop shaking already."

Tim finally looked him in the eye, frustration shining in his still-wet eyes. "I told you to stop doing that, it's not funny."

"Is too," Mike curtly shot back. "You need to man up a little. Had one of those 'killer robot' nightmares again, I bet?"

Tim lightly nodded his head. Mike huffed in mock-disappointment. "Really now. You know those things aren't actually alive, right? They won't try to hurt you any more than a microwave will."

"I know what I saw," Tim hissed. "One of those things killed our sister."

Mike frowned. Now he was actually disappointed. "This again? I told you to stop saying that. Elizabeth died in a gas leak accident. It's really tragic and I won't have you muddle her memory with stupid ghost stories."

"But it's true!" Tim yelled back. Why would nobody believe him?

Mike just rolled his eyes. "And I'm the Queen of the Nile. Get over yourself already."

Before Tim could argue further, Mike already moved to leave the room. Tim sighed, looking at his various plushies in turn. He lingered on Fredbear, who almost seemed to smile at him encouragingly. Today was another day.

"No! No, no, no!" Tim yelled.

"Yes!" Mike shot back as he pulled harder. Tim held onto the table leg for dear life.

"I don't wanna go!"

"I told you. My friends and I arranged to meet at Fredbear's. But Dad told me to look after you today, and he'll kill me if I leave you alone. So you have to come with!" Mike argued, capping off his explanation with another hard tug. But Tim held on for dear life.

"I don't want to! I'm scared! Don't you get it?" Tim desperately cried, hoping to get through to Mike.

"Get what?! You're being stupid! It's just a children's restaurant. Most kids your age would be ecstatic to go!"

"They're gonna kill us!"

"They?!"

"Those robots!"

Mike groaned in frustration and finally let go. Tim's legs flopped to the floor as he laid there, face-down. They had been at this for a full minute now and Mike's arms were getting tired. "Oh my God, you're never going to get over that, are you?"

Tim sniffled, but didn't reply. He cautiously hoped this meant his brother had given up. Mike moved to the phone in the living room, from which he dialed a number.

"Hello? Yeah, it's me, Mike. Listen, sorry, but I can't make it today. Yeah, my dad's at work so I have to babysit Tim. ...No, I tried, but he's scared for some stupid reason. ...Yeah, I know. Next time for sure, okay? Thanks. See ya."

He hung up again, then sent Tim, who had gotten up and cautiously followed him, another disapproving look. "I hope you're happy now."

Tim looked at the floor, conflicted. "Why won't you just believe me? I saw it with my own eyes, I promise."

Mike looked away, rolling his eyes again. That was his standard response every time Tim tried to reason with him. Then he refocused his eyes on his younger brother. "Okay, suppose I believe you for a second. What did you see these robots of yours do, then?"

Tim let out a deep sigh. This might be his only chance to convince his brother, so he had to tell his story as accurately as possible. "Well, we were at Dad's new restaurant just before it was going to open. It was a party to celebrate the opening, and it was only for invited people."

"'We' being you and Elizabeth, right?" Mike clarified, to which Tim nodded.

"She went her own way and I kinda got lost. I was looking for Dad or Lizzy when one of those aah-ni-tronics..."

"Animatronics," Mike corrected.

"Yeah, that. Anyway, the one that looked like Freddy with the hand puppet snuck up on me, and I almost jumped out of my skin," Tim began again. He could swear he saw his brother roll his eyes and whisper "ah-hah" under his breath.

"So I ran away quickly before he could catch me, and I found Lizzy again. She was on her own in a small room with a stage, and there was another robot there. It looked like a girl, but it was huge." Tim spread out his arms for emphasis as he said "huge," but Mike still seemed unimpressed.

"And then what happened? Did the giant robot girl gobble her up whole?" Mike sarcastically suggested.

"Yeah, it kinda did," Tim quietly agreed. Mike dipped his head a bit and looked at Tim incredulously, but did not interrupt. Tim took it as a sign to quickly continue.

"When I came in, it opened its stomach. I think it was using ice cream to lure Lizzy closer. Then when she was next to it, WHAM!" Tim exclaimed, clapping his hands together. "It grabbed Lizzy with a claw and ate her with the mouth in its stomach. It was horrible. Then other kids ran in, but they wouldn't listen to me..."

Tim's story trailed off when he realized his brother was chuckling to himself. "You don't believe me."

"Of course I don't," Mike sneered between wheezing laughs.

"Why not?!"

"Because it's nonsense, okay? Animatronics aren't that advanced, you couldn't get one to kill someone if you tried. let alone without anybody finding out. And even if you could, Dad and Uncle Henry made these together, didn't they?"

'Uncle Henry' was not actually an uncle of theirs, but he was such a close friend of Dad's that calling him that simply felt natural to the boys. Tim did not get to talk with the man very often, but he seemed nice- nicer than Dad, at least- and he had to admit that it was hard to believe he would help make such a horrible machine. But he saw what he saw, and that would never change.

"I know. But it still happened. I don't know why either," he said to his brother in a quiet voice.

Mike buried his face in his hand. "Good God, Tim, what's it gonna take? Do I have to get Fredbear to give you a kiss before you believe they're harmless?"

Tim flinched at the thought. "No!"

"Then stop freaking out about it already!" Mike groaned as he tried to come up with an argument that would convince his little brother. "Look, Dad and his colleagues work on those killer robots of yours just about every day, right? But they're fine as far as I know. How do you explain that?"

"I don't know! Maybe they only go after kids!" Tim guessed.

"Oh, so now Dad and Uncle Henry made child murder machines, is that it?"

Tim sunk to his knees, making a strangled sound of frustration, unable to answer the question but unwilling to concede the point either.

"Okay, what if-" Mike seemed to get an idea. "What if we go see for ourselves, would that make you happy?"

Tim looked up at him. "What?"

"We sneak into the place Dad works at and check out the animatronics you saw that day. Then you'll see they're just dumb hunks of metal and we can let this stupid nonsense go."

"But... But won't Dad get mad at us, then?" The thought of getting in trouble with Dad again made Tim anxious.

"He goes off to drink or whatever it is he does almost every evening. If we sneak out then and make sure we're back in a couple hours, he won't even notice."

Tim fell silent for a bit. He was wracking his brain for an excuse not to go, because he really, really did not want to.

Mike appeared to notice Tim's reluctance. "What, are you chicken?"

"Yes... Uh, no!" Tim replied, finding a false sense of bravery from nowhere. "But it just seems like a bad idea to me... I mean, how are we even gonna sneak in?"

His brother made a dismissive "pfft" sound. "You let me worry about that. So, we have a deal? We go in, check out the animatronics, you get to see there's nothing to be scared of, we go back home, and we lay this dumb issue to rest once and for all. Sound good?"

Tim swallowed. He could not think of a good reason not to go- Besides the fact that he was very afraid, but Mike would never leave him alone if he let that keep him. "Okay."

Mike smirked. "To be honest, I always was curious about what Dad gets up to down there, he never talks about it. This oughta be fun."

He then briskly walked away, presumably to start planning the night of their little adventure. Tim wished he could feel as confident about the plan, because all he sensed was a foreboding feeling that he was going to regret agreeing to this very quickly.

A/N: Aaand that's it for the first chapter! If it left you hungry for more- I hope it did- then you're in luck. I've already got the second chapter ready to go, so it should be up already.