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The canaries clockwork ticked but was not heard. The whir of its wings were louder, and the shine of it's feathers distracting from the cogs and gears hidden underneath. This did not bother it. Nothing could bother it; it was not alive, nor was it pretending to be.
Rather, the Toy Soldier liked to imagine that this didn't bother it. It liked to imagine this in the way that it liked to ponder the Mechanisms.
It liked to think that when Brian leaned over to pick a rose blossom and smiled at the Toy Soldier that he was saying, “You, I love you.”
It liked to hope that Raphaella kept her past hidden not out of distrust for any of them, nor because she wasn't ready to, but because she trusted that she would be respected until she wanted to share.
It liked to imagine that the silence of mechanisms of the canary did not bother it.
They canary flitted around the room, as aimlessly as something that will never be capable of purpose or direction has the capacity to. It studied the canary and listened to the familiar tune of the music box hidden under the finely painted feathers.
The Toy Soldier recalled with clarity the first time it had seen the canary.
The Toy Soldier wasn't alone. A good husband was always there for his wife, after all. It spent time with her, it went through the motions it had been trained to do. Make tea, make sandwiches, say ‘I love you’, comfort her as she cries, walk her through the gardens.
No, the Toy Soldier was not alone. But it was by itself.
Even now, having gone through more lifetimes of tragedy that it should have been possible to experience, it looked back on those years as the worst thing it had ever had to go through. It was by itself, but it was never alone.
It was not treated like a person. It was treated like a person that it was not. She said that she loved it. She said that it could never be ‘loved’ because it could never be ‘real’.
The words meant less than the shattered glass and the tears.
After a night of it doing the wrong thing and shouting and words that it did not understand, she sent it back to be with the other clockwork figures. It stood there, alone and unmoving, trying to parse what would make her happier when it was Ordered back to the Widows side. Then it wasn’t alone in the quiet anymore.
There was a canary singing, it felt compelled to hold out its hand, inviting it to land. This was not the compulsion of an Order that moved its limbs and voice out of it's control, this was the compulsion of something that was supposed to be. Something that was meant to happen.
The clockwork canary landed in its hands and something inside the Toy Soldier sang, the song of companionship that was so different from the false love wrought by the desperate hands who wanted someone that the Toy Soldier would never be.
It spoke now, it's quiet voice filled with the kindlings of what could be adoration, “Hello! May I put you in my pocket? I fear she will come back and I will no longer have you.”
The canary did not make a sound, the Toy Soldier hoped that it would fly away if it did not want to be in it's pocket.
The Widow did come back, eventually. She came wielding apologizes dipped in honey and Orders that sounded like uncanny music. But the Toy Soldier carried the canary. It carried a piece of true companionship.
It had kept the canary safe for so long, the wooden feathers kept polished by gentle hands. It never needed winding, neither did the Toy Soldier.
The Toy Soldier sang with the canary sometimes, and the wisps of rainbow that flowed from their voices was a reminder. First of kinship. Second of the beauty that had been found in the void of happiness.