AN: What is it with authors and causing emotional turmoil to their favorite characters?
He was going to make a child happy. It was what he was made for. His whole purpose and reason for being was to help in creating lifelong memories, to fuel a child's imagination. He'd be able to watch their personality grow as they grew physically. He'd be there for all the important milestones.
He'd tested that pull string while on the shelf at least a hundred times, polished his badge and made sure he was the perfect image of a cowboy sheriff.
Countless hours of saving the townspeople lay ahead of him and his kid.
So his confusion and then disappointment was hidden behind a pristine painted smile and shaded under a new and perfectly threaded hat when he realized he wasn't going to a child.
He was a birthday gift.
He'd hoped to be a gift, birthday, Christmas, or special occasion.
He wasn't expecting to be given to an adult...
His pull string worked, his badge was polished, and much to his appreciation, he wasn't exactly disregarded. In his confusion, he barely caught the conversation surrounding him. Pleasant smile firmly in place, Woody couldn't help but feel like he'd been a little cheated.
His kid's name was Jesse, and he'd just turned twenty years old...
He'd pieced together that he was a gift for nostalgia's sake. There weren't many present when his box had been opened, and from what he could tell, they were siblings.
His frustration began to fade and turn to guilt during their conversation.
You remember Daddy reading the comics to us when we were little.
He would've watched the show with us...
He'd been looked at with a fond if somewhat pained grin and he felt his irritation beginning to ease.
That didn't make it any easier. He'd been put in a special place, and while he appreciated the care behind the thought it wasn't the same as being played with. Toys weren't meant to sit on the corner of a dresser.
So he'd focused his attention elsewhere. He'd learned everything he could of his owner (thanks to the stuffed dog that still resided in Jesse's twin sister's room) and while he might not be putting bandits in jail or cleaning up the town, he would still watch out for his kid. Because the more he watched, and the more he learned of this kid who seemed to be known for going fast and living dangerously...that's just what he was. A kid.
More than once he'd stood on the window sill, face pressed against the glass and hat pushed back until it almost fell off, watching a navy blue car leave the property, only to return a day or so later. Waiting to hear what adventure might have taken place while he was gone.
Woody might not be playing games, or being taken to sleepovers around campfires, but he could listen. He could hear as well as any toy. Listening and watching his kid through the following months was good enough if that's all he was going to get. There were still moments of excitement, childlike games he could almost be part of if only from a distance.
He'd get a chance to get in that car someday, he had to. Anything that was important to Jesse, he wanted to know about. If his first owner had to be an adult, at least he wasn't a boring adult.
Maybe someday he'd be passed on to another child in the Hudson family, become a family toy, an heirloom maybe. I was given this to be a reminder of my dad...
Woody wasn't sure how attached most toys became to their owners, but he did know that when his kid was happy, he was happy. When his kid was upset, he was upset. He could tell by the tone in Jesse's voice what his day might have been like. On Sundays when he trudged in to his room, looking exhausted but content, he knew it must have been a good day. When Jesse paced or bounced his knee, Woody became agitated as well, like his stitching was too tight.
When there was laughter through the house, he continued to grin on the desk, afraid of the door opening at any moment. When the siblings had gone to New York on vacation, he'd paced the house and explained to Ruth's stuffed dog, Ace, that of course he was worried about his kid, he's not from the city and he despises the cold...
He wished at times that he could have the excuse of being found in random places, but he always had to make sure he was back on the dresser in the room upstairs. Once or twice he hadn't made it but had been lucky enough that it was passed off as only falling from his perch.
It had happened more and more throughout the one year...never being sure when there would be activity in the house. His worry had grown from little things he at least had a name for, to something he couldn't even place. He'd only catch small comments concerning driving, and hospitals...
Then one day it was silent.
If there were anything he could wish for, anything a toy could ever be granted, was to not be stuck wearing a silly grin while their kid stared at them with tears in their eyes.
Jesse had never ignored him. He took good care of him, made sure the area around him was tidy and never collected dust. Still checking the pull string now and then and talking back to whatever phrase played as if Woody would return the favor.
How he wished he could then. His hat set carefully on the bed beside where Jesse sat, holding him as if he were made of glass.
Face flushed, and eyes red, Jesse pulled the pull string and spoke along with Woody's voice box.
"You're my favorite deputy."
His arms and legs fell in a heap when he was placed carefully on the bed, but the smile was gone as he watched his kid cover his face with his hands.
Woody was made for scrapped knees and elbows, to protect from monsters in closets. He didn't know what to do for a broken heart.