Blackbird | The Real Jake | Hide-and-Seek
"I was trying to be the real Jake."
The child’s bedroom was crowded, even though it held only two people. It was crowded because it held so many hopes and so many regrets. It was crowded because it held the potential for so much more than what was.
Nine-year-old Jake has been dying of a primitive neuroectodermal tumor
for the last three years. With his father working overseas, he's left with caretaker Margie... and his best friend Simon, who lives in the cabinet. Simon will talk to him at night, but won't come out of the cabinet until Jake is well enough to get up and open the door himself. Jake really hopes that day will eventually come. As does Margie. But things aren't looking good.
The seventeenth Five Nights at Freddy's: Fazbear Frights story, and the second of the sixth book, Blackbird. This one follows "The Man in Room 1280" as the second story to be intrinsically connected to the Stitchwraith Stingers, as it provides the backstory for both Jake and the Stitchwraith's mask.
Tropes related to “The Real Jake”:
- The All-American Boy: Jake is an excitable, wide-eyed boy who loves science fiction and baseball.
- All-Loving Hero: Jake's all-loving nature is more emphasized in the Stingers, but even here, we know that he loves all kinds of animal life, including houseflies that most people find disgusting and annoying. Even when he's dying in hospitals, all he does is thank the nurses for taking care of him.
- Ambiguous Situation: Margie thinks she hears Jake and someone else talking the night after Evan dies, but she may have been imagining it. Was this Jake communicating with a ghost, or trying to talk to Simon on his own?
- At the end of the story, the cabinet is open. We know Jake eventually possesses the Simon doll, so did he possess it immediately and leave, or is the door open because Jake managed to walk over and find out the truth?
- Anachronic Order: This story is interspersed with short flashbacks.
- Babysitter Friendship: Jake and Margie are incredibly close, which makes Jake's illness all the harder on her.
- Baldness Means Sickness: Before his tumor, Jake actually had very long hair; the endless cycles of chemo have left him bald now.
- Bookworm: When Margie enters Evan's room, she finds his collection of books on multiple scattered subjects, showing that Jake got his curiosity from his father.
- Boys Like Creepy Critters: Jake's really into houseflies and aliens.
- Brainy Brunette: Curious Jake used to have long brown hair, before chemo.
- Break the Cutie: Margie starts out the story insisting that a positive attitude is going to get them all through this. By the end of the story, she's cutting up her smiley face shirts and breaking down in the living room.
- Broken Tears: Margie lets herself play in the sprinkler with Gillian, then sobs over everything happening to Jake. This happens again, and more intensely, after Evan dies, and she has a complete breakdown.
- The Caretaker: Margie is hired to be this for Jake, though she admits that at this point she'd do it for free just out of love for the kid.
- Childish Tooth Gap: Margie draws this onto the Simon doll after Jake made a story about the "real" Jake losing a tooth standing up to a bully.
- Children Are Innocent: While Jake knows how his illness is affecting him, he still believes in Simon being a magical friend, and innocently asks Margie to leave out snacks for him. This also applies to his friend, Brandon, who doesn't quite understand the seriousness of Jake's illness and thinks it would be fun to sneak him out to the arcade. When reality hits, all Brandon can do is stare in shock.
- Commonality Connection: The idea of Simon was solely to encourage Jake through this trope; in connecting together with someone his age, Jake regains hope and passion for life.
- Constantly Curious: Jake loves to learn, and uses a tablet that Evan gave him to look up all of his questions.
- Cope by Pretending: When Simon comes to visit, he encourages Jake to tell him what the "real" Jake did that day, and Jake will come up with stories of what he would have wanted to be doing that day.
- Dad's Off Fighting in the War: Evan is overseas in the military, in an unspecified location, which leaves Jake home alone with Margie. He ends up getting killed by an IED, with Jake oblivious.
- Death of a Child: While Jake doesn't die until the final paragraphs, the entire story is leading up to it; if the audience has read the stingers, they already know for a fact he's doomed, and even if they haven't it's still pretty clear this won't be a happy story. So the story's buildup is focused on how awful and unfair it is that Jake will have to die.
- Delicate and Sickly: Poor Jake.
- Dog Got Sent to a Farm: After Evan dies, and won't be able to voice Simon anymore, Margie cautiously tells Jake that Simon simply won't be able to make it tonight, but that he really wanted to. She also avoids telling him that anything's happened to his dad.
- Downer Beginning: We learn right off the bat that Jake's mom died four years ago, and Jake is suffering from a brain tumor. It only gets downhill from there.
- Downer Ending: We know from the start there's little hope of Jake getting better– and no hope if you've read the stingers. Still, it's absolutely heartwrenching to get there.
- Everybody Knew Already: Jake is surprised that Margie already knows when Simon comes to visit, and she brushes it off as hearing through her radio.
- Friend to Bugs: Jake leaves a hole in his window screen open for houseflies to come in, because he likes watching them buzz around.
- Good Parents: Evan is doing his best to stay present in Jake's life even while overseas, and is the one who comes up with the idea of Simon, in hopes of getting Jake to open up to another child in a way he wouldn't to an adult. Margie, Jake's guardian, and the helpful neighbor Gillian also qualify.
- Heartwarming Orphan: Jake isn't an orphan until the end of the story, but with his father gone all the time and his mother dead, he's often without his parents and left trying to cheer his nanny.
- Homeschooled Kids: Jake attends online classes due to his tumor preventing him from being able to travel to-and-from a school building. In the epilogues, it's mentioned that he was at first angry to be taken out of school, because of his love of learning and wish to be normal.
- Hope Spot: For Jake (not the audience), when he thinks he may be able to sneak out with his friend and go to the arcade. It's clear, though, that he's far from well enough to do it, and he doesn't even make it across the yard.
- Iconic Outfit: Margie always wears t-shirts with different smiley faces on them, which her friend had made for her, displaying her positive attitude. When she realizes that she is going to have to send Jake to hospice, she cuts them all up.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: The crux of the "real" Jake; as Simon, Evan has Jake imagine what the "real" Jake was off doing while "sick" Jake was focusing on getting better. This backfires, as Jake wants to be the real Jake so badly he nearly runs away from home to go play with his friends, ends up vomiting in the middle of the yard, and has to be carried back inside in a wheelchair. When asked why he did this, he just says, "I wanted to be the real Jake."
- Imaginary Friend: Jake isn't sure whether or not Margie believes that Simon is real. It turns out she and Evan are the ones voicing Simon the whole time.
- In Name Only: There were previously shades of this in "Bunny Call" and "Blackbird," with "Bunny Call" only having the possibility that Ralpho is made by Fazbear, and "Blackbird" barely mentioning Freddy's as a franchise. This story is the first that, aside from the Stitchwraith Stinger connection, has absolutely nothing to do with Five Nights at Freddy's on its own, with zero mention of the franchise, brand, or facility.
- Kill the Cutie: Jake, when he dies at the end.
- Kindly Housekeeper: Margie, who takes care of both Jake and the house while Evan is deployed.
- Littlest Cancer Patient: Jake is a serious, non-[[Glurge glurgey]] take on this trope. All the efforts by other characters only manage to ease his suffering a little, and he succumbs to his illness at the end.
- Missing Mom: Jake's Mom, Roxanne, died before the events of the story.
- No Antagonist: There's no ghost, robot or murderer lurking in the shadows of this short. Just the inevitability to death.
- No Full Name Given: Jake, Evan and Margie aren't given surnames.
- Parental Substitute: Margie has been serving as one ever since she was hired as Jake's nurse. She loves him like a kid, and when Evan dies, he gives her guardianship of Jake.
- Pining After Protagonist's Parent: Margie realizes too late that she was a little in love with Evan.
- Rage Breaking Point: Jake tries hard to stay positive, but he eventually flips a Monopoly board in frustration and just starts screaming. Margie lets him, simply closing the window; the simple reaction manages to calm him down.
- Real After All: Considering Five Nights at Freddy's mainly deals with ghost stories and haunted robots, it would be easy for one to assume that Simon is a ghost talking to Jake... until about halfway through the story, when it's revealed that it was always Evan and Margie.
- Running Gag: Jake's family has one, quoting his uncle Michael: "That would be bad. Very, very bad."
- Security Blanket: Jake's stuffed baseball bat. Simon himself could also count.
- Sensitive Artist: Margie, who originally took the job as Jake's caretaker after she failed to get a photography internship. She spends her nights drawing on Simon to reflect the "real" Jake's adventures.
- Single Malt Vision: A sad example, as Jake has had double vision for a very long time due to his PNET. It gets worse the sicker he gets.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: Margie and Gillian are baking in the kitchen when they get the call that Evan has been killed by an IED.
-
Tear Jerker: This whole story is one, as it shows a boy slowly dying of cancer while his caretaker loses hope. - Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Somewhat with Jake; while he's not shown to be perfect angelic child, it's still hammered in how unfair it is that he never got to live.
- Toy-Based Characterization: Jake claimed he was too old for teddy bears, but when he started to regret it, Margie made him a stuffed baseball bat to hug instead. He loves the thing, but in the story, he starts becoming upset that it's smelling bad due to exposure to his sweat and vomit.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Evan is always overseas, as there's no real other way for him to earn an income to support his sick child. Jake understands this, and says that he hopes his dad isn't always thinking of him, because he needs to be a good soldier.
