Ignorance is bliss, but bliss is boring

The walkie-talkies were Bo’s idea.

Whatever had happened since she’d last seen Woody, at his core he was still the same toy. No matter how ready he was to strike out on his own, or how certain he was that his friends could handle things without him, he was always going to worry about them. Knowing about Sunnyside, and about the motel where they’d almost been lost, who could blame him? But she could also see how proud he was of them, everything he owed to them. He could never have handed Jessie his badge if he didn’t see it, too. 

Jessie embodied everything that made his decision so hard, as well as everything that made it possible at all. He was the one who’d brought her to Andy’s room to begin with, and had always felt some responsibility for everything that happened to her since. Most recently it was the motel, where, as Bo understood it, she had put herself in a box and faced down a giant lizard to save everyone. He beamed talking about how brave she’d been, but it wasn’t lost on him for a second what it meant for her to do that. Buzz had been terrified for her. Bullseye had stayed by her side for three days straight after finding out about it, despite her insisting she was okay. Bo was hardly surprised that Jessie had it in her, but she would have been equally proud to see it for herself. 

Darn it, she missed those guys too.

They had been a prize left behind by some kids at the carnival site. Hardly used, fresh batteries. It was a long drive to 1225 Sycamore, but the look on Woody’s face when she showed him the walkies labelled “W” and “J” was worth the detour. ***

So far, Woody hadn’t been much help. All he’d really done was endure ridicule from everyone in the room and unplug a charger from the wall. He still didn’t know what the deputy situation really was, if he should have been there at all, but he certainly wasn’t going to back out now. He was confident they could get something out of Lily in the morning, but for now, they had a long night ahead. 

Buzz was staring at the outlet and anxiously tapping his index finger against his knee, and the sound of clicking plastic was getting annoyingly loud. Woody fought the instinct to whack Buzz’s hand with his hat and instead tried to empathize.

“Buzz,” he said. “We’re gonna find her.”

Buzz stopped tapping. “She’s been gone for one day, and I let everything fall apart. No wonder she asked you to come.”

“I’m not even sure she did.”

Buzz looked incredulously in his direction. “What?”

Woody pinched the bridge of his nose. “I dunno,” he said. “It was…staticky. I didn’t catch everything she said.”

“‘Staticky?’”

“Yes, ‘staticky.’ I know I heard somethin’ about –”

“So you’re not even supposed to be here?!”

“Look,” he hissed. “I don’t know what happened, and maybe I don’t know how to fix this, but so far I’ve done more than you.”

Buzz’s face darkened.

“I’m sorry,” Woody said. “I’m just –”

“Why did you come back?”

He frowned and stared at the nightlight across the room for a moment.

“Do you remember when Molly started first grade, and she couldn’t read as fast as the other kids?”

Buzz raised an eyebrow.

“She thought she was never gonna get it, thought there was somethin’ wrong with her. But Andy helped her every day after school until she was reading chapter books by herself. And even when she was getting all As and Bs, he kept offering to proofread her homework until she yelled at him to quit asking.” He sighed. “I guess that’s what I’m doing here.”

Buzz smirked and put a hand on Woody’s shoulder. “You’re a good brother.”

He rolled his eyes. It had long since stopped meaning anything for him to remind everybody that Jessie wasn’t literally his sister. They would all keep saying it anyway, if only to annoy the two of them. 

He nudged Buzz’s arm with his elbow. “You’ll make a good brother-in-law.”

Buzz took his hand off and shook his head. “Sure,” he said. “If she can forgive all her friends being boxed up under my watch.”

“Buzz, c’mon. You don’t really think she’ll hold all this against you.”

“I don’t know what to think. Even if everything wasn’t a complete mess, I don’t know if I could actually ask the question.”

“You're too shy to tell her how ya feel? I don’t believe it.”

“I’ve done it a million different ways in my head,” he said, ignoring the overwrought sarcasm. “I’m trying to be creative, and it all just sounds stupid.”

“So don’t be creative.”

“I keep catching her at the wrong time, anyway.”

“Your relationship has always been based on ideal timing.”

“Woody –”

“Lemme ask you somethin’, ranger. Why now?”

Buzz just blinked.

“It’s not like you’ll get a tax break out of it. You said it yourself: it’s pretend. Won’t change anything. So why do it at all?”

Buzz narrowed his eyes and thought hard for a moment. “We miss you around here, but we all know you belong with Bo. You couldn’t give her up again, could you?”

Woody shook his head.

“And she knows that, because you already left everything else behind for her. I want Jessie to know I’d do the same thing if it came to it.”

“She knows, Buzz.”

“I know she’s terrified she’ll end up alone again.”

Woody’s face fell.

“And I can’t picture her being out of my life. She makes me feel so sure about everything. So if she wants me there…well, I want to be there.”

Woody chuckled quietly. He thought back to when Bo had found out Buzz and Jessie were together. She’d been annoyed at how long they’d taken, though ecstatic that they were there at all. She’d also guessed that, once over the impossible hurdle of an open conversation, anyone just meeting them would assume they’d been together from the beginning. 

Woody and Jessie had come back from one of Bonnie’s playdates to find everyone uncharacteristically quiet. Woody scanned the room: Bonnie’s toys looked either worried or confused. Andy’s looked uncomfortable in a much more knowing way. Buzz looked pensively into the middle distance.

Slinky wrangled everybody but Buzz to the other side of the room while Hamm, Rex and Potatohead argued under their breath about whose fault this was. Woody and Jessie glanced sidelong at each other, waiting for an explanation.

Buzz finally spoke up. “Is it true?”

Woody’s eyes darted between him and Jessie, whose face had fallen. 

Buzz continued, “At Sunnyside? Did I really do all of that?”

Woody squeezed his eyes shut and sighed. “They probably made it sound worse than it was.” He opened them again and realized he’d just confirmed enough to make Buzz absolutely horrified. Jessie started wringing her hands.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

He was about as angry as he possibly could be at his friends. It was rare, but they could tell when he was completely furious with them. His voice would get low, and he would try to suppress a scowl. If he didn’t know or trust someone anyway, he wouldn’t bother maintaining his composure. With them, everything he did was carefully controlled.

“There’s not a good way to tell someone that,” said Woody.

Buzz narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “I’d think you two would at least try.”

“Woody wasn’t there for it,” said Jessie. She looked at Woody and nodded toward the group across the room.

He hesitated, but left them to talk.

The other toys had been watching and, though he chided them for it, he ended up doing the same. The conversation didn’t seem to be going too well. 

“I never seen ‘em fight before,” Slinky whispered.

“They’re not fighting,” said Woody unconvincingly. “They’re just…talking.”

The Potatoheads shared a look.

Eventually everyone saw the two of them pause. Buzz said something to her, she nodded solemnly, and he left the room. The Andersons were about to go out to dinner, so he could be gone for hours. 

Jessie slumped against the wall in the corner. Like usual, Bullseye was the first to go to her. Woody trailed behind him as the others went about their business trying to pretend they hadn’t seen it all.

Bullseye had just laid his head on Jessie’s knee when Woody got to them.

“He asked for some time,” she said. 

Woody furrowed his brow. “That a good idea?”

She shrugged. “His head’s not in a good spot. But if he says he needs it…”

He sat down next to her.

She absentmindedly stroked Bullseye’s mane. “I messed it all up.”

She’d said the same thing back when Bo found out about the museum, soon after they got back from Al’s. Bo had been understandably hurt at finding out Woody was going to go along with it. Jessie felt she was the reason Woody ever even considered it. Ultimately, Bo just needed time to process before they could start to repair things, which they did. If she’d ever blamed Jessie at all, she was darn good at hiding it.

That had been Woody’s mistake, plain and simple. This was more complicated. No one had done anything wrong just by going through what they had at Sunnyside. Buzz had effectively been a puppet. 

He might tell Buzz, after all of this, how she’d made him promise they wouldn’t leave Sunnyside without him, even if they couldn’t find a way to fix him before then. It never occurred to any of them to leave Buzz behind. She knew Woody was the last person who would consider it. All the same, she’d been adamant that he shake on it.

He hadn’t told Buzz about demo mode partly because, as Jessie said, he hadn’t been there to witness most of it. She had also asked him not to say anything until she had a chance, but he wasn’t about to tell on her like that. Admittedly, though, he was never sure when she would take that chance. 

“Why did you wait so long to tell him?” 

“Kept thinking there was gonna be a better time, I guess.”

“Jess.”

She sighed. “I hate thinkin’ about it. We all thought you were dead, I didn’t know if we would ever get him back…”

Bullseye lifted his head and huffed. She rested her chin on her knees.

“There was a whole day when I lost both of ya.”

Bullseye’s ears drooped.

“And then it just kept happening. He changed again, but he still wasn’t him, and then he got hurt ‘cause of me, and we all – ugh.”

Woody gave Bullseye a comforting scratch on the head. They both knew she needed to get this out, but even after all this time with her, Bullseye still worried. 

“I didn’t wanna feel all that again,” she said. 

Woody put a hand on her shoulder. “How much does he know?”

“I got all the way up to the box ‘fore he walked out.”

“You tell him that was the punishment for talking back?”

“And for everything else.”

“And that you talked back the second he said that?”

She raised her eyebrows for a second, then rubbed her forehead and groaned. “Well I never went in there!”

“Does he know that?”

“I didn’t get to finish.”

“Jessie, you know him. He wants to help; he wants to protect people. He’s a space ranger. They used that against him.”

She lifted her head a little. 

“Maybe he’s mad at you – well, us – right now. He also thinks he threw you right into your worst nightmare, and I’m pretty sure that’s his worst nightmare.”

She shook her head slightly. “He’s too noble.”

Woody nudged her with his elbow. “Hey, you love him for it.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I do.” She sat up a little straighter, and her face fell again. “I dunno how to fix this.”

Woody shrugged. “Give him his time,” he said. “Then tell him what you told me.” ***

It was dark except for Bonnie’s nightlight. She’d gone to bed awhile ago. Jessie had been watching the door. Buzz still wasn’t back, but nobody could go looking as long as Mom and Dad were still up and moving. It felt like forever before they went to bed, too, and Jessie could venture out into the hallway. 

She found him, as expected, on top of the office filing cabinet under the skylight. He’d fallen asleep there again. She climbed up the drawer handles and did a flip to get on top, though she overshot and nearly fell right back down to the floor. She must have woken him up in the process, because he caught her by the arm and pulled her from the edge. He was good at that.

He seemed to take a moment to remember why he was there to begin with, and he cast his eyes down sadly. She smiled softly and angled her face under his to make sure he saw. 

He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “None of this was your fault.”

“Wasn’t yours, either,” she said.

He didn’t reply. He couldn’t, because he still didn’t really believe her. 

She opened his helmet and kissed him gently on the forehead. Then she took his hand and sat back.