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English
Series:
Part 1 of ...and the Toy Soldier as Jessica Law
Collections:
The Toy Soldier Has Rights
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Published:
2020-02-19
Words:
602
Chapters:
1/1
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49
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940
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62
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4,451

Out in the Stars and Far Away

Summary:

The thing was, Jessica liked being the Toy Soldier.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

The thing was, Jessica liked being the Toy Soldier. It was fun. It was a thing she did with friends. It was a fascinating psychological game, to pretend to be a thing that wasn’t a person and didn’t entirely want to be, but enjoyed playing at it anyway—in a way that freaked out pretty much everyone she greeted with the Soldier’s dead-eyed, moustachio’d smile. 

So obviously she kept the full costume. She was pretty sure everyone kept their costumes.

At first, she just wore it to a costume party or two. Halloween. A themed bridal shower. The Mechanisms were dead, narratively and metaphorically, but most of them kept in touch enough to get a laugh out of a familiar black-and-red coat, and it was a good costume in its own right, too. Can’t go wrong with a creepy clockwork soldier.

Then she started seeking out excuses to wear it—ren faires, mostly, for the full soldier costume and moustache and face paint. But she found that she could get away with more in pieces, and it became something like a game: how many eyes would she raise with the dress pants at the office? The bright-epauletted coat at an opera house? Some obvious stage makeup at a carnival where there were, after all, already clowns?

She found herself wearing the full costume more often than not. Why shouldn’t she? The Mechanisms were dead but the Toy Soldier had only chosen to be, and it could chose to act alive again just as well. And wasn’t that wonderful, in way? To be a thing that was alive because it simply chose to be alive.

And the way people flinched, looked aside and hurried away, when she walked with the Soldier’s stiff gait or smiled the Soldier’s painted-on smile...it was just like old times. It was even better than old times, better than the cheer of a crowd or a really good crescendo on the glockenspiel. She slipped into the persona (did the Toy Soldier even have a persona?) without a thought (did the Toy Soldier even think?) and it was the most fun she’d ever had. The best she’d ever felt.

She didn’t even react when the mannequin stepped off the pedestal, one night when she was walking through the mall, helping the occassional demanding customer who mistook her for a clerk. The mannequin didn’t hesitate; it stepped down, reached plastic-clawed fingers for her throat, and tore out her voice box. It hurt. It hurt enough to distract from the mannequin donning the voice box herself.

Well, fair enough. The Toy Soldier had stolen it in the first place.

“Well aren’t you a pretty thing!” The mannequin spoke with the voice of an angel. “Tell me, do you dance?”

The Toy Soldier shrugged and pulled a small ukulele out of one pocket. It was out of practice; it couldn’t manage a full mandolin, much less its old percussives.

“Perfect!” The mannequin turned with a grin and a spin of her coat, sharply tailed and nearly as bright a red as the Toy Soldier’s. “I’m Nikola, by the way. For now! Come along, then!”

The Toy Soldier followed. Whoe’er commands, after all.

.

Jon put his head down on his desk. He hated having an idle question, the sort someone normal would answer with a skim of Facebook, and suddenly Knowing the answer. He hated it, he hated it, he wished he’d made more effort to keep in touch with anyone from his college band and he wished that it wasn’t too late and he wished that he didn’t have to Know it.

Notes:

Ask me how many times I've listened to the Toy Soldier's song in Gunpowder Tim vs. The Moon Kaiser today. Go on, ask. Ask. Ask, go on, ask-

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