"What happened?" Hamm shouted.
"Is it a firework show?" Mrs. Potato asked.
"Where's the other Buzz?" Buzz demanded.
Jessica froze, looking at his familiar leg. She couldn't look up. Her voice broke as she answered, "He's all over the place."
Everybody began lifting their feet, looking for plastic bits.
Woody stared down at Jessica as she continued collecting the plastic shards that shared the coloration of his friend. "Jess, what are you doing?" he asked quietly.
"I have to...I need - we have to put him back together," she said brokenly. "We have to find someone who can do it."
Jessie knelt beside Jessica. "I don't think that can be done, Jess-"
"Oh, what do you know about it!" Jessica snapped, pushing Jessie away. "You probably never tried to help anyone!"
"Jess, you're angry, you're in shock. Come on now, you don't mean that," Woody said.
"We have to put him back together." Jessica's trembling hands continued to claw at the plastic litter her friend had become.
"Jessie, these parts are too far gone," Buzz began.
Jessica stood, eyes flashing. "You're all hypocrites. You'd give it a lousy shot if it had been one of yours!" she yelled.
Mr. Potato Head held up a blackened, bent piece. "It's over, Jessie!" he shouted back.
She glared down at him, then crumpled where she stood. As she covered her face with her hands, he knew he had been too harsh. He threw the piece aside. "I'm sorry."
She sniffled and began pushing herself awkwardly to her feet. "You're just glad it wasn't you," she seethed, and looked up at the humans. "And you? Why did you even stop? You don't care! It was just another toy!"
Her words ran out and she stood there, soaked and miserable. When Buzz tried touching her shoulder she jerked away. "Don't! Don't touch me," she snarled. "I can't even look at you anymore, without seeing..."
Buzz dropped his hand. "My mirror image."
Jessica looked wildly from face to face. Then, without warning, she turned and ran as quickly as she could; her boots kicking the plastic as she went. As all the other toys watched her go, a loud roar of thunder shook the sky.
-0-0-0-0-
Crawling into a hollow log, Jessica wrapped her arms around her legs and numbly waited for the storm to pass. Against the darkness of the wood, she could still see the explosion. She could still see it against her eyelids.
She turned sideways and pointed her eyes out into the bright gray of the stormy morning.
He had remembered, she thought with a sniffle. He had refused to die looking at her. Overwhelmed with depression, Jessica fell onto her back; wishing she had not been made of cloth.
"Jessica!"
"Jess?"
She pulled herself painfully upright at the Anderson-Davis toys' voices, but refused to give herself away. She closed her eyes, trembling all over. She just wanted to be alone. She couldn't look at Buzz again.
"She's not here."
"She's really fast!"
The next voice to speak sounded very much like her own. "We've got to find her, guys. We can't let her go through this alone."
"If she didn't need to be alone, she would have stayed," Mrs. Potato Head said. "Grief is natural."
"Well, I've got to be there; we're the same," Jessie replied.
"No, you're really not," Buzz began.
"Don't tell me what I'm not." There were several seconds of silence before Jessie's head poked into the log, blocking out most of the daylight. Looking over her shoulder, she gave a curt nod before crawling in beside Jessica.
"She's right," Jessica muttered. "I have to be alone."
"You need a lot of things when you're grieving. Company is one of them."
Jessica slowly lifted her head, looking at her mirror. "Who have you grieved for? The Prospector? The toy you could have saved, but chose not to?"
"Yes, and all of my owners. Friends I made who didn't last this long."
Jessica looked back into the darkness of the wood surrounding them. "Have you seen someone die?"
"Well...the Prospector."
"I mean someone you cared about. At the end," she added quickly. "The rest doesn't count."
Jessie finally shook her head. "No."
Jessica gave a subtle nod, looking away again. "Please, just leave me alone."
"Alright." Jessie began collecting herself. "I guess you don't want an invitation to the memorial, then."
Jessica looked up at her. "The memorial?"
"You were wrong about us." Jessie stood up straight and began to leave. "You couldn't have been wronger."
Alone, Jessica closed her eyes against the feeling of the price of survival. Opening her eyes, she crawled out of the log and looked around. Finally detecting the cluster of toys, she walked numbly after them. The breeze coupled with the motions of her head made her hair bounce as she walked, feeling clumsy and awkward, like Woody. She hurt all over...inside. Would that feeling never go away?
The toys didn't realize she had chosen to follow them until they had reached the bathroom, and grouped up at the bottom of the toilet stall. Woody was explaining what he had done nearly two decades prior to get out of the window when they finally saw her standing there. She walked lifelessly forward. "Why are we going onto the roof?"
"To put him closer to the sky," Barbie answered softly.
Jessica looked at Jessie, who held her hat in her hands. She tilted it slightly and the plastic pieces showed only briefly before sliding to the edge of the interior brim.
The toys watched, taking turns to jump onto the toilet lid, hop onto the toilet roll, jump onto the tank, and finally pull themselves onto the stall wall to get to the window. Much to the surprise of Buzz, when Jessie and Jessica went together, each holding onto the hat; their movements were exactly the same, performed in perfect harmony.
"Maybe they are," he muttered to himself.
-0-0-0-0-
Finally, all of the Anderson-Davis were assembled on the roof, and as Jessica knelt and scooped out the plastic parts that had once been her friend, she became uncomfortably aware of their presence, surrounding her completely. She stood, refusing to meet their eyes; and Jessie stepped backward, taking her place in the circle. Instead of putting her hat back on, she continued to hold it respectfully in her hands.
"I almost forgot," Ken said, stepping forward. "I found this, and thought it was only right to leave it here with him."
He knelt and put down a very tiny model rocket, and Jessica felt like she would cry again.
"Are you sure we can't save him?" she sobbed.
"Yes," Woody said, his voice heavy with resignation.
Murmurs of condolences swept through the cluster of toys, and without even thinking about it Jessica reached over and put a hand on Bullseye. While putting her hand down, she touched someone else's, and she looked down to see Buzz's familiar plastic fingers curling around hers. Quickly she yanked her hand away, refusing to meet his eyes.
Barbie's voice was unbearably soft. "Why did this happen to him?"
"A car," Jessica answered, and began sobbing again. "A stupid car."
"I didn't see a car," Rex said.
"No, it was gone...It splashed him and the water got inside of him...and his batteries..." Jessica stumbled on the foreign word, and couldn't bring herself to say the rest.
Jessie reached around and pushed the button to close Buzz's helmet, and returned his grin as he took her hand.
Jessica couldn't look away from their joined hands. "Was I..." she began falteringly. "Was I made for him?"
The question caused them to break apart, feeling guilty. "Uh, maybe," Buzz said carefully.
"I don't think so," Woody cut in. "I think you were made for a kid. Or," he added, "Many kids."
"I'm not staying," she whispered.
"What?"
"Why not?"
Jessica looked around at the faces that, despite her best efforts, had become very dear to her. "I can't. I can't look at you anymore," she told Buzz, "Because I'll never move on. Plus...he did have some unfinished business, and...it's got to be taken care of."
"What business is that?" Slinky asked.
Jessica hesitated a moment. "Zurg," she finally said.
"Zurg?!"
"You've got to be kidding me!"
"Well, I'm not!" she insisted. She looked at Jessie. "Even Buzz said it was serious. Don't you trust him at all?"
The toys were silent.
"We just saw him forget he's a toy. If Zurg is unaware too...then Buzzard was right."
"Total planet annihilation," Woody murmured.
Jessica almost smiled. "You know, for so long I thought he was wasting his time. But when you came out of the sky with nothing but plastic airplanes...you made me realize that toys can do amazing things." Her smile faded and she looked around the group. "What scares me now is knowing that Zurg could do something amazing."
"Well, it's been good this long," Slinky mused.
"Bad things happen slowly. But good things, they're over before you know it." She shrugged. "If only I'd remembered that when I saw how good he was."
The rooftop was quiet for a long time. Finally Woody spoke. "I know we can't actually drink, but..." He lifted a hand, fingers curled. "I'd like to propose a toast."
The toys mimicked him.
"To Buzzard."
"To us!" Mr. Potato Head added.
"To being safe," Barbie chimed in.
Woody looked down, still holding his hand out like the others. "To infinity and beyond."