Work Text:
If he had a heart, it'd have stopped in the moment he saw her shards flying into the air, rapt in horror at the beauty of her final moment.
There wasn't much to be done about it: there's no realistic way that a novelty cookie jar for last year's trend was going to find a niche fanatic to love her, but she was always cheerful, always such an optimist that someone somewhere would be delighted to find her after a long search. Unfortunately, a slip of a customer's hands as they lifted her from the shelf sent her careening to the ground, her crockery shattering with the impact into a thousand shards. Perhaps that was enough for her, in that final moment: someone was finally looking at her with genuine interest. How many could say their last feeling was the thrill of hope? The rest of the bargain shelf could only watch as her pieces were swept up and discarded, silent in their witness and immobile in their grief, until the night had fallen and the aisles fallen still of shoppers.
No longer obliged to their best behavior while vying for a potential purchase, the survivors were left to mourn. Mugs empty with sorrow, chipped dishware nervously inspecting their own damage, glassware wiping at dust in the fervent effort to find cracks of their own. These things happened, often, and it left everyone tense in the aftermath. Metal items had the privilege of worrying less about such a peril, unless they were poorly welded or a thin alloy: as such, from a separate shelf, they watched and observed. Three of them from the same factory, overstocked from a main retailer and left as triplets to the mercies of the public, they were very close-knit…mostly.
Jon stayed near the edge, ears trained on the congregation of ceramics and their conversations. Though he wasn't much for speaking at length, he'd always found some comfort in listening to the world around him, for any errant word or inclination of praise, of what people liked and didn't, of how people related to their world and how that reflected upon them. He knew that the glassware thought that metalworks were arrogant for having a better constitution. He knew that the tea sets cried when someone didn't buy the entire set together, missing their siblings when separated. But tonight, he heard something new on his own shelf, from Jake and James.
Being mass-produced meant that your face was not your own: it was modeled from some unknown piece you'd never meet, the authentic article you're as good as a ghost of with a mockery of the care and attention given to the genuine artisanal work that you emulate. Though he didn't mind sharing the looks of his production batchmates, the prospect that his being was never truly his own troubled Jon in a way that his kindred did not seem to be burdened by. That, and a slight misfire of the die that imprinted him, made him something of an outcast (he loathed the pun) among his own. James and Jake, however, had always been fairly polite about it…until now, it seemed, when a whisper of his own name crossed their hushed exchange at the other end of the shelf. Gaze lingering downward as he pretended not to notice, Jon cued in on the muttered conversation among his fellow Wicks. With a wake going on below their bases, what on earth could they have to say about him? Not as if a fall would break him, like Cera…
"Listen, Jimmy, you know it ain't gonna last. None of this ever does, we can only get marked down so many times. We gotta up our game."
"Jake, sure. I getcha. You know I do." muttered James, tossing a waxy curl over his shoulder with a frown. "But that's too far and you know it. We don't gotta do that. We're on a different playing field, people don't buy candelabras when they're looking for mugs. Think this through."
With a huff, Jake scowls at James, their faces a perfect facsimile of one another. "I been thinking. Since way before today! I'm just sayin' that less competition will only do us favours. More shelf space to shine, even if they ain't the same product. You know humans love impulse buys, and that's all we're gonna be at this point. Impulse is what'll get us outta here, so why not stack the deck?"
"And what about when it's just us three, Jake, what about that? Who's gonna be buying three candelabras? You gonna shove me and Jonny off the shelf too?" hisses James, nose wrinkling.
Jake snorts, lip curling in patronizing disdain. "Jonny? C'mon now, with that crack in his mug, right next to that lil' drop of solder? He's no competition, ain't nobody gonna buy that guy over us."
(From his supposed vigil, Jon ran his tongue over the prominent gap in his teeth, adjacent to his beauty mark. They'd always told him that such things had character…a deviation to be proud of, that made him stand out.)
"And that smudge in his finish that never polishes out? Nobody with taste is gonna pick him. He's not even cutting it as a mass product, he's nothin' special. You and me though…people love buyin' matched decorations. Candelabra at either end of the dining table. You and I stick together." Jake adds, offering a sconce. "With me?"
As James chuckled dryly, a murmur of assent is granted as the sconces clank: a toast to conspiracy in serial murder, as Jon holds his breath to subdue the flush of betrayal creeping through his chest. His own alloys turned traitor, and plotting the downfall of the dishware on lower shelves? Laughing about it, their own little secret, as if this was some sort of game to be won? Kings of the anthill, superior to the broken and half-expired, lords of a land of missing parts and opened packaging? No, no…no, this would not do. Rising, the burning wrath of justice ignited in Jon's chest as he traversed the shelf, a simple smile on his lips as he greeted his identical kindred, hands clenched in the nest of ruffles at his cuffs as he listened to their lies for the very last time.
----====----====----
The following morning, a human in a fabulous red shirt found themselves bemused in the clearance aisle of Valvidimart: the menagerie of wares was as mixed a bag as ever, but three candelabras stood alone on a shelf of their own, with most inventory well-separated from them. Something had clearly gone wrong with production or shipping somewhere: one had its middle sconce twisted off, with the other two mangles and flattened. The other, at the very edge of the shelf, was bent in odd places and missing a labrum…which was hooked around the arm of the third candelabra. This one had very minor flaws: a tiny crack in its sconce, a drop of solder near the neck, but otherwise looked lovely. With a hum, the human removed the snapped arm from the candelabra and set it back on the shelf beside its owner, before setting their new purchase-to-be in the cart.
As the human meandered off to browse, Jon knew, inwardly, that he'd have to be sure that they'd never doubt his integrity, his worth, his existence…and if he did it right, nobody else would either. There was no place in the world for ordinary things like Jonathan Wick to shine…but with some polish, perhaps he could be someone exceptional in a house full of strangers. Stand out in a spotlight to keep the shadows at bay, and make sure that the whispers in the dark didn't come with knives aimed for his back.
Someone unique.
Someone special.