The compound is still asleep. 5:17 a.m.
The only light in the entire fortified penthouse comes from the soft amber glow of the kitchen strip LEDs and the faint blue pulse of the security monitors behind her. Vanessa is finally, blessedly off-duty. She’s barefoot for once, silent on the heated tile floor. A pair of black underwear and one of her personal bathrobe (stretched to breaking point across her 40K chest and reaching the bottom of her soft belly) are the only things she bothered to throw on. Her waist-length blonde hair is loose for once, a wild golden mane that spills over her shoulders and down her back like liquid sunlight. In her hands: the biggest insulated tumbler on the continent (44 oz of iced coffee, four shots of espresso, vanilla oat milk, and exactly one pump of caramel because she’s not an animal). The straw is comically small between her fingers. She leans her hip against the counter (hips and ass so heavy the cabinet creaks in protest) and just… breathes. For the next thirty-seven minutes, there is no Gregory trying to rewire the wet-floor bots into a battle mech.
No Cassie asking if Grandma SpringMilf can teach her how to pick locks “for science.”
No Freddy humming love songs while attempting to make heart-shaped pancakes.
Not even the distant, ominous thud of her parents dropping off yet another “perfectly safe” gift that will need to be defused in the workshop. Just quiet. She takes a long, slow sip, eyes half-lidded, and watches the horizon through the floor-to-ceiling bulletproof glass while scratching her rear not caring if it’s ladylike or not. The restored Pizzaplex glitters in the pre-dawn dark like a promise she fought tooth and nail to keep. The monitors behind her show every hallway, every stage, every dark corner she once crawled through bleeding and terrified. All green. All safe. Vanessa exhales, a low, contented sound that rumbles in her chest. She allows herself one small, private smile (the kind no one ever sees, not even Freddy). For the length of this one cup of coffee, the matriarch of the Fazbear family is just Ness.
No titles. No threats. No past trying to crawl out of the vents. Just a woman, her coffee, and the quiet certainty that today, like every day she’s fought for, her family is still breathing. She takes another sip. Thirty-six minutes left. She’s going to savor every damn second.