…

…Okay, I couldn't resist.

I grew up with Toy Story and just recently watched the third one (and I won't lie, I bawled). My plot bunnies instantly hit me with this and now…now I'm seriously writing a fanfic for it. Not to mention that of all subjects out there it had to be this one. EHHHHHHHHH.

Before anyone asks, "Bullseye" really is how it's spelled.

Anyway, this is set between the second and the third Toy Story and I hope you all like it; if you have not seen Toy Story 3 yet 1) don't read this, and 2) go watch it because OMG I LOVE THIS MOVIE. Leave reviews on your way out.

Toys can't cry, really.

Oh sure, we like to pretend to make them cry. Get an ice cube and hold it over their eyes and wait until it starts dripping. Hold them under a faucet and you can have all the tears you want. Imaginary tears are the best, though—you don't have to get your toy wet and somehow the mental image of your toy crying gets the job done most of the time.

But when it all boils down to it, a toy can't shed a tear. Not one.

Buzz hadn't been there when it happened. He had been with Andy at school; the days of going to school for show and tell had long since ended, but Andy had been using him as a prop in art class and Buzz had been gone all that week. Woody should have been the one to go, but the cowboy had yielded this honor to his friend this time with cordiality and had hidden out of Andy's sight when the boy tore his room apart that morning; besides, it was Buzz's turn to be with Andy at school.

When he came back that Friday afternoon, Buzz could feel that something was wrong. There was a heaviness in the air that suffocated him the moment Andy carried him through the door and it instantly made him uneasy; Buster was curled up miserably in his bed and it put the space ranger on alert. Something was wrong, he decided, and when Andy set his backpack down in his room so he could go over to a friend's house for the night he climbed out and searched for the others.

He found them all under the bed—their numbers had dwindled drastically over the past few months and it was easy to take a head count. Slinky and Hamm were consoling a loudly wailing and highly panicked Rex in the corner, Bullseye had been curled around Jessie's crumpled and trembling figure, and the Potato Heads were clearly distraught as they distractedly spoke to the LGM's gathered around them.

He hadn't seen Woody.

Buzz recognized the behavior his friends were displaying; this happened every time there was a yard sale, and he had seen Andy's mom cleaning up from the one she had just this morning. What bothered him was that no one from the small group had been sold and their reactions were to an extreme this time, much more so than what they had been in the past. Even more troubling was the fact Woody had not been down there with them, trying to comfort them.

Words couldn't quite describe the feeling he got when someone finally told him what had happened while he had been gone (to this day, Buzz still doesn't know who told him—the shock from the news completely bowled him over), but the fact that she was gone was more than enough to make him stagger backward.

Buzz also understood in that moment why he hadn't seen Woody when he had come back.

"Where is he?" he'd asked immediately in a sharp voice, mainly to hide his distress.

Jessie had vaguely gestured to the window before burying her face in Bullseye's shoulder again, but Buzz had already started crossing the room and was halfway to the window before he'd realized he moved; somehow, he had already known where he would find his best friend.

The lanky cowboy doll was sitting silently on the windowsill and looking through the open window when Buzz reached him, never turning around to face him; for once his cowboy hat was sitting on the ground near his foot, carelessly discarded near a few stray pencils. He didn't need to move for Buzz to know that his friend was in immense pain—the way the shoulders were slumped and the way his hands were gripping tightly at his arms gave it away.

Buzz had come very close to calling out to him, but for some reason couldn't. What was he supposed to say that would make Woody feel better? They had all known that eventually they might be sold, but he had harbored a hope that maybe she would not be; he knew Woody would watch every yard sale from Andy's window with a tenseness that was evident from the other side of the room.

But if she had been sold…what did that mean for the rest of them?

"Bo's gone."

The sentence that broke him out of his thoughts was spoken in a small, hoarse, and broken voice, one that Buzz didn't recognize at first because Woody had never sounded like that in all the time that they had been friends. That was all that was said, too. Woody said nothing more after that, curling in on himself as if he wanted to do nothing more than vanish.

Buzz was not very good when it came to speaking reassurances and usually had left it to Woody to console the others, backing him up when needed; Woody always had known what to say to bolster everyone's spirits. To see Woody like this had him at a loss and it hurt him terribly, almost as badly as the knowledge that Bo was gone hurt.

Bo had been there since Buzz had first arrived, and she had been a good friend to him. If Buzz was hurting this bad from her absence he could hardly imagine what Woody was going through; never once had those two been separated in such a manner.

So instead, Buzz simply hopped onto the windowsill and sat beside Woody, placed a firm but comforting hand on his friend's shoulder, and remained where he was until the sun had gone down and the stars had come out. Jessie eventually joined them, but not one of them said a word during their silent vigil.

Toys cannot physically cry, despite the state of their emotions at the time. They may want to in the worst way possible, but in the end they simply cannot shed a single tear.

Buzz could never imagine what the expression on the cowboy's face was, since Woody never once turned to face him at all and never said a word the whole time he and Jessie sat beside their friend.

But he was willing to bet that Woody, had he been granted this ability on that night, would have been in tears.