"I failed at being there for you before." Sullivan's whole body drooped. "Please, don't let me fail you again."

I sat on the cold concrete, hunched over my empty lap, my back to Sullivan.

"No."

In the deafening silence of the room, the drop of a pin would echo off the walls.

"No."

I sat in awe, as a numbness washed over me.

"I've had to fend for myself from the earliest age because of you. I've been forced to teach myself to never depend on anyone else. Never accept help. Ever. Not if you want to survive..." I stated in a very cold, dry tone.

Only children scream. Only children cry.

"Because no one, no one, will ever help you. No one will ever come for you. Especially when you need them most."

I looked over my shoulder to Sullivan, speaking with a blank stare. "So, no, no I don't need your help. No I don't need your saving. Not now, and not ever."

I returned my blank gaze to the wall opposite to us, my hands twitching, shaking uncontrollably.

"You abandoned me," I whispered, very matter of fact. "You monster."

The damage inside me already done, I was unaware of how much damage I myself was causing.

"Thanks for teaching me that life lesson," I said.

"Boo--" His was voice broken.

"It's Mary, by the way."

* * *

Mike trudged into his next bedroom, in his hands a cream pie and a stool.

A scowl on his face, Mike practically slammed the door behind him.

The sleeping child jolted awake, instantly sitting up in bed.

He didn't care.

The sooner this is over with...

He plopped the wooden stool and pie down, then begrudgingly climbed up the stool. When he found himself seated, he rocked back and forth on it.

He groaned. "Hey kid." He rolled his eye, almost exasperated.

The little girl lazily reached over and turned her bedside lamp on.

In one cold sharp breath Mike sucked up all negativity from his demeanor, forcing a mask over his irritation.

"Hey doll face, now I've got a question for you," he chirped, then jumped up and balanced on the old wobbly stool. "Would you like some pie?" he asked in a blubbering German accent.

A smile grew across the child's face.

About to double flip off the stool and into the pie, Mike spread his arms out like an eagle moments from taking flight ready to get the gig over with, when he glanced up and met the girl's hazy stare.

The little girl was a red headed pixie with crystal blue eyes. Thick bangs whisped across her forehead, almost brushing her eyes.

He felt like he'd been rammed in the gut.

He bit his lip, trembling, fighting back what wash began to sweep over his face.

Boo—

He massaged his temples, desperate to lock it out.

Too late.

"Well so long, kid."

"Mike Wazowski!"

"Yeah. Oh Boo, it's been fun."

He exhaled, freezing his lungs like ice, frozen in the thought, unable to stop the progression of memories with her now locked in his mind once again.

"Every time I look at you, I think of her."

So many years. So many years of cold glares, so many years of walking out of conversations, so many years of pushing away—

He blinked.

"You and I are a team. Nothing is more important than our friendship."

He exhaled, freezing his lungs like ice, frozen from the thought.

Then suddenly, a song that he had sung years and years before at a musical he had written arose from the grave in his mind, a memory he thought long dead.

"She's out of our haaaaair." He stretched out the note as he sang on a stool, the blue stage light beaming down on his face."And just, when I dared to care."

The individual chords of the piano lifted the song."She says, oh contraire! You're my pair. Of friends," He rested as the piano carried the instrumental.

"I love you."

Mike sat, sucked out of the memory, baffled.

Even though he had written those words himself for the sake of play, it almost felt like, like...

Like they were words spoken from Boo's very own soul.

"Friends."

Her pair of friends.

Mike zoned out, his eye fallen to the ground, before sighed deeply.

"Michael, what have you done?"

To slip into such despair, such lament, as to grow to resent your own best friend...

"Huh?" Peeped the human girl.

Mike looked up to her, almost having forgotten her presence.

"I'm sorry kid, but I've gotta go find a friend." Mike said.

For Sulley.

For Boo.

Mike hopped to the ground, picking up the stool and pie, the walked to the door.

But under the door way, he stopped, and turned around, back to the child sitting in bed.

Mike held up the pie in his hand.

"Watch this, kid," he said with the open door behind him.

The kid watched.

Looking up at the ceiling, Michael threw the frothy pie in the air.

It landed clean on his face and gigantic eye, cream and curd flying everywhere.

"AH! LEMON! THAT WAS LEMON!" Mike cried. "EYE-AH!"

The child practically died of laughter. Her giggling sent Mike's score on the board sky rocketing.

He wiped off the cream in his eye and flew through the doorway, forgetting the stool and microphone in a frenetic search for a sink. "WHEN I FIND THAT INTERN!"