Chapter Text
He heard her before he saw her - the shift of weight, the near-silent press of boots against the covers, familiar enough to him now after a week of knowing her that he catalogued it before he was even completely awake. He laid there for a time, eyes closed, listening as the room settled back into silence, before finally cracking one eye open and glancing in the direction of the window. She always chose the window. It made sense, he thought, with her having been in storage for years, shut off from it all.
She was standing there with her back to the bed, plastic hands braced on the windowsill, her hat still in place despite the late hour. He still had yet to see her without it, he realized, though he suspected he wasn’t meant to. The street outside was still and quiet - the kind of quiet that only ever came with the middle of the night, and the sky was clear enough that he could see the stars from where he laid. He watched her look up at them for a time before finally easing himself out from beneath Andy’s arm.
Woody didn’t stir even when he nudged him mid-extraction. He simply snorted in his sleep and slung an arm over his face. Rolling his eyes, he let Andy’s arm fall carefully back into place before making his way down the bed and getting to the floor. He kept his steps as quiet as he could so as not to wake the other toys dotted around the bedroom floor, and before long he was climbing up beside Jessie at the window. She didn’t look his way. He didn’t look hers either. They just stood in silence for a while.
“Nightmare?” He said after a time, already knowing the answer.
She didn’t answer right away, though eventually she sighed. “Somethin’ like that.”
He nodded, but he didn’t push. He never did. If there was one thing he’d learned about her since she’d become a part of the room, then it was that trying to extract information from her that she wasn’t prepared to give was pointless. The dark years after Emily had taught her that it was safer not to trust.
“She used to take me to look at ‘em with her. Emily,” She caught him off-guard when she spoke again. “She used to wait until Mom and Dad were asleep, and then we’d sneak out to the tire-swing hill. We’d lie there together for ages, just looking at ‘em. She used to give the shapes of the stars different names, but I don’t think any of ‘em were the actual ones. I just…I just wish I could remember ‘em.”
“Well, that one—” He stopped himself mid-point at the constellation above the house, dropping his hand back to the windowsill. “I mean…uh…what would you call that one? If you had to give it a name?”
She looked his way for the first time since he’d come to join her at the window, studying him for just a second before lifting her gaze back to the constellation once again and resting her chin in her hand. “The Lasso,” She decided, lifting her hand to point it out to him. “See the loop at the end of the line?”
“Mm,” He hummed in agreement. “Fitting.”
The corner of her mouth quirked into something of a smile before it faded once more and she dropped her gaze back to the windowsill, her fingers flexing against the smooth surface as she took a breath.
“Hey, Buzz?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you think Andy hasn’t written his name on my boot yet?” She asked, lifting her boot to reveal the still-blank sole. “I know it hasn’t been all that long, but I…I just thought he would have by now.”
He patted her arm without thinking before catching himself and letting his hand fall back to his side. “He will. He’s eight. He has a lot on his mind with school and his friends and ice cream and other things. But he’ll get around to it. And you got a spot on the bed. That’s the highest honour for a toy.”
She nodded slowly and looked at him again - really looked at him, in a way she hadn’t quite managed all evening - and she must have seen something there that reassured her, because she let out a soft sigh of relief as she turned back to the window again. They stayed there for a little while longer, neither of them feeling the need to say anything more, until she yawned and covered her mouth with her hand.
She pushed back from the windowsill then, turning toward the bed. “G’night, Buzz. And thanks.”
He gave her a small salute in response before she jumped down from her spot and began to make her way back across the floor to the bed. He didn’t follow her right away. Instead, he remained standing there as she climbed back up onto the bed and crawled back to her spot, making herself comfortable and pulling the brim of her hat down over her eyes.
He turned back to the window once she’d gone still, looking up at the stars littered across the sky for a little while longer. The Lasso with the loop at the end of the line, the other constellations with their real names that neither of them had used tonight. It was enough to make him smile before he went back to bed.
And, the next morning, a certain eight-year-old boy went down to breakfast with marker on his hands.