Chapter Text
"Parrot I can't keep doing this." Theo croaked, the pattering of the rain against the ocean's gentle waves cloaked his voice in more weight than it would've carried if he said it in silence.
Parrot stopped rowing, and turned around to meet Theo's dreadful gaze. "What?" He questioned, the bluntness of Theo's statement plastering shock in his voice.
Theo sighed heavily through his nose, his molars nibbling on the inside of his cheek, his throat hesitating to expell what was on his mind. He closed his eyes before forcing the words out.
"Dude, we can't just go around carrying every dead weight that we come across." Theo spoke the sentence with his chest, meaning every word he had just told his friend.
There was clear offense and confusion melted on Parrot's grim face, and Theo looking up to see it with his own eyes dulled out the constant tapping of the rain in the night. His breath hitched before he continued on to speak. He had already said what he said, he might as well say it all.
"This is my limit, bro." He stated. "We let Boomie go or I'm gone."
Theo's throat tightened gruesomely as he saw Parrot's face melt from confusion and into clear disdain, as if he had come to an epiphany about the cockatiel. Theo's shoulders tensed as he saw Parrot's mouth open, the words tumbling out of him in disbelief, almost as if he'd come to enlightenment.
"You don't want me to save the server." Parrot uttered into the rain, the gentle swaying of the boat against the waves did nothing to hide the way his body stayed frozen as he glared daggers into Theo's face.
The blonde felt a relentless itch in his throat, forcefully swallowing it down before he had begun to get irritated. "You can save the server! I just—" He stammered. "We can't risk everything on one random guy!" He complained.
Theo could visibly notice Parrot's eyes grow narrow, and his expression fall grim. His throat itched violently at the sight, yet still, he choked it down with every word he spoke.
"And you keep doing stuff like this, you keep—" He was interrupted by Parrot's sudden burst.
"Theo, this is why you're never gonna be—" He stopped. The unspoken Wifies clung into the wet air.
Theo felt the trapped, pressurized air seal into his abdomen, the ever-growing violent scratching in his miserable throat. His stomach lurched the moment the sentence left Parrot's mouth. desperately, he shunned it down for as long as he could before he raised his voice.
"What?!" He asked, his voice full of disdain. "I'm never gonna be what. What, part of your third group of—of self righteous saviors?! Like, I don't care, dude. I don't care." It pained Theo greatly to see such unhappiness on Parrot's face at the words he spoke, but he couldn't help it anymore.
Something about what he had said gave him a great sense of nostalgia. He sounded an awful like someone he was desperately trying to cover up, and be as unlike him as possible. Billy. As upset as he was, he continued to speak amongst Parrot's growing silence.
"You're the only person in that group Parrot." He meant to leave it off at that, but something in him felt the need to go even further. "You're the only person who's delusional enough to try and save ever single person on this server!" Immediately, as the insult rolled smoothly off his tongue, he regretted it immediately. The burning itch in the back of his throat only continued to grow.
"And that's why I'm gonna be the only one who can save the server because I'm the only one who can."
Before Parrot could even properly finish off his sentence, Theo sat back down in the boat, grabbed the oars with an angered grasp, and spat one last formality at his friend before he began to row away.
"Alright. Have fun. Go save the server."
Immediately, as the final straw left his mouth, the scratch in his throat had reached it's peak, and it felt as if a pair of nails sharper than a knife's edge had begun to tear away at the flesh of his esophogus.
"Are you serious?" Parrot called to the cockatiel, who's distance had now been growing the more he rowed.
"I'm out. I can't do this."
𖤓
As the physical distance between him and Parrot grew, Theo finally stopped the boat, and rapidly slumped over the edge, finally allowing the volcano of coughs he had been holding back to erupt out from his throat. Some part of him hoped that maybe, just maybe, Parrot had followed him, and forgiven him for what cruelity he had spewed at someone who was supposed to be his best friend.
As he hunched over the edge of the boat, and as the wracking coughs shook his lungs, and with that, his whole body, he felt the soft tumble of gentle flowers fall from his mouth, and gently flutter downwards into the vast ocean. The weight of each petal was so featherlight that they barely broke the surface tension of the waves, only doing so after floating for a moment.
He barely got to see the falling of each white petal into the blackness of the ocean in the night. He only got to slightly see the distorted reflection of the twinkling stars in the broken waves of the water before he hurled violently—flowers emerging from his mouth, not even allowing him to take a short breath in without a sharp pain stabbing in his throbbing lungs.
He should be used to this by now, he told himself. It had always been like this every few weeks ever since that one, dreadful night had occured when training with Billy.
Billy—the name was like a poison seeping into the buds of Theo's tongue.
Every few weeks, he'd have these inexplicably painful episodes where violent spurs of coughs would plague his lungs, and stab his throat relentlessly until they were allowed to be coughed up. And each time he did, he wasn't met with vomit, or anything of the sort—but with soft, white angel's trumpet flowers.
Tears pricked against his waterline, a few coming loose down his cheeks as the awful, grating itch that clawed it's way up his throat and onto his tongue lingered around in his mouth. He felt as if he was going to pass out from the sharp grinding in the back of his throat. He whinged gruesomely, his chest heaving with the need to breath.
He couldn't even focus on the pain anymore when the crushing sensation against his lungs only made him panic for his need of air.
The only words that bounced around in his pounding skull were—
Air. Air. Air.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
In the midst of his awful hell-on-earth experience, he genuinely would have perfered to be dead than to endure such a putrid, painful experience.
Finally, as the final petal escaped his quivering throat, the stabbing sensation in his esophogus dispersed, and at long last, he could finally take in a few short breaths that blessed his lungs with oxygen. His relief was unfortunately short lived, as he felt something…emerge in his chest, as if something had bloomed within the veins of his lungs.
The experience left him heaving violently over the edge of the boat, gasps raging through his lungs.
His breath had fallen short once again, and every inhale he tried to take in order to fill his shriveled lungs with air felt as if it wasn't enough. He wished so much in this moment to feel a pair of Parrot's frigid fingers gently rubbing his back, murmuring gentle reassurances that he was going to be okay as he hurled up the vile petals from his throat. Was this really the right descision?
What would Billy had done?
Theo's canines came slamming down on the insides of his cheeks as the name entered his mind. It doesn't matter what Billy would have done, because Theo is not Billy. And he tried desperately hard not to be.
Billy wouldn't even have decided to travel with Parrot in the first place. He would've shown no mercy to him at spawn and sent his mace hurdling downwards to crush the bones of the innocent. If he did decide to spare him and join along on his journey, and ended up in the situation Theo was currently in, he'd simply row away, not even bothering to look back—maybe even coming back a few hours later to slaughter him and hoard all of his loot.
Good—he knows what Billy would have done. Now he knows exactly what not to do.
Did what he just did seem like something Billy would have done? Now that he thought about it, he sounded an awful lot like Billy as he was expressing his discomforts to his now ex-friend.
"I'm never gonna be what. What, part of your third group of—of self righteous saviors?! Like, I don't care, dude. I don't care."
The sentence he had dared to shoot at his friend rung in his skull. That was something Billy would have said. Billy wouldbe the type of person to not care. He would be the type of person to turn a blind eye to the clear issues of violence unstable has. But of course he would—Billy is violence, violence is the one thing keeping that cold blood in his veins warm.
"You're the only person who's delusional enough to try and save every single person on this server!"
Billy would be the type of person to call a player delusional for wanting to do good for the server. Hell, he'd call a player delusional for wanting to do good at all.
As the sentence bounced around in his skull, the voice of Billy superimposed onto his own as he relayed himself speaking it to the face of the one person who willingly wanted him along—y'know, now that he thought about it, did Parrot even want him along? If he did, Theo surely ruined that chance now.
He should go back and apologize.
In a fit of misery, Theo tossed his head backwards and shoved his face into the palms of his hands, an exhausted groan leaving his charred lungs.
If he did go back, Parrot was near impossible to find now, somewhere lost among The Great Sea along with Boomie. The thought of losing Parrot in such a vast ocean scratched irritatingly against the back of Theo's throat.
He had to try. What would that make him if he allowed his best friend to go off into danger alone, and have the risk of getting killed all because Theo left him?
He sighed, dragging his fingers down his face, stretching the skin beneath his eyes. If he couldn't find Parrot among the sea, then the least he could do was wait for him at their happy ghast, and hope with all his heart Parrot would find his way back alive.
If he didn't all that would prove was that Billy had successfully shaped him into a selfish, cruel monster.