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"Would you like to give me Lime, Dreaming?" Phil asked with his hand outstretched. He didn't know what he expected when the ink touched his hands. What did happen, though… it honestly did not surprise him.
Philza blinked as the emotions bloomed across his flesh, across his heart, and buried their fingers into his very soul. He could feel something marching across his feathers, across the heart emblem of his chest.
And he blinked.
And Philza saw
He counted over the spoils of their latest adventure, the humming of the portal soothing to his ears over the popping lava and the grunts of the zul'ma sounder foraging nearby. Satisfied, he slung his pack over his shoulder and looked to his friend, Technoblade. The piglin was eyeing the portal with suspicion and a hint of interest.
"You want to come back with me this time?" He asked. Technoblade didn't answer right away, but the corners of his mouth twitched down. "I'm sure you'd love it, though it's a tad chillier there than here. Even in the deserts." His friend stepped forward and trailed hooved fingers down the obsidian, considering. His hand fell away as he let out a sigh.
"Sure. Why not? Let's try it out."
Phil stepped through and trilled in the warm sunlight. He stretched out his feathers, shaking nether ash from them. He heard Techno step through the portal with a grunt. He started to turn when he saw Techno collapse out of the corner of his eye.
"Techno!" He dove for his side, wiping the sweat from his face, checking his pulse, checking everywhere for what hurt him when he saw blood dripping from his lips. "Techno? Techno, mate, can you hear me?"
Panic bloomed across the memory, Red and Lime mixing before his eyes as his voice echoed in his skull.
"TECHNO! PLEASE! PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME! TECHNO! ANYONE, PLEASE!"
And Philza saw
"What are you doing?"
"Phil?" Wilbur turned on his heel, his eyes wide as he froze. Philza stepped into the room, his gaze lingering over the words written into the walls. He recognized the lyrics from his son's letters, knew the tune from when he sent over the sheet music. Phil had learned to play the song on his panflute and had one day hoped to play it alongside his son and his friends.
"L'Manberg, you said?"
He tried to comfort him, tried to convince him and pull him away from the cliff he stood on in his mind. When his hand dropped on the button, Philza dove for him, shielding him with his wings. His scream echoed alongside a thousand crows. His hands shook in agony and sorrow.
And as he plunged the sword into his son's chest, Blue and Lime bled through the seams of the memory.
And Philza saw
"You're being safe, right?" Phil asked as he leaned over the railing. Ranboo gazed up at him, quiet for a moment. The moment stretched and Phil waited. He'd give him all the time he needed, no matter how weird time was in his skull.
"Yeah, of course!" Ranboo replied brightly, his smile just too wide, too happy, too…
Phil knew what hidden emotions looked like. He knew what it looked like on people when they were hiding things, in case those things hurt the people they care about. Phil hadn’t known Ranboo for very long. Not as long as Techno, not even as long as his son. But he knew, if Ranboo was in danger, if he asked for help out of trouble, he’d give it to him in a heartbeat.
“You’ll tell me if you need help, right?”
“Yeah, of-of course I will.”
And it didn’t matter to him how little his aid actually helped. It didn’t matter if, in the grand scheme of things, his aid really did nothing at all. If it helped in that moment, that one singular moment of him taking the water bottle from Ranboo and giving him a warm, if old and sad, look, then it was enough for him.
The memory faded from a deep shade of Green to a bright Lime.
And Philza saw
A ghost. A ghost faded in every other way except for his eyes. Bright eyes. Lime eyes. A ghost not shivering in the dark and the cold, but shivering under his gaze, under his attention. And Phil saw the scars, the wounds peeking out under his sweater. And it was the face, the face that caught him off guard the most.
Not because it was Dream, though that was a factor of his shock.
But because of who it reminded him of. Because of what that face and those eyes reminded him of.
A memory from, really, he had no idea when. Time flowed differently in Death and time flowed differently in his skull.
Philza, Angel of Death, looks up at Mistrixtin and he smiles. Behind her veil, she smiles back. They are having tea and there is the flutter of wings that echo throughout the void. But one set of wings brings his attention back to the table.
A crow lands and pecks at the biscuit. Mistrixtin moves the dish towards it and it squawks happily as it proceeds to eat the biscuit in a way that's far more human than Phil expected. He holds out a hand to the crow and it glitches, sending off every alarm bell in his head.
But Death reaches out and stills his hand.
"He is a special one of mine," she explains. "His soul abandoned him, so now he exists here until they can bond together once more."
"Why would a soul abandon a part of itself?" Philza asks, watching the glitching crow take flight once more. Its wings are not made of smoke or starlight, and its eyes almost glow in the dim light. Lime eyes peer down at him from its perch, first one, then the other. He's never seen a soul crow with such bright eyes.
"I don't know," she says. "He… I don't know what he was thinking, to ask for it to be taken away. I don't think he understood what he asked for."
"And there's nothing you can do to help him?"
"What I could do, I have already done." Mistrixtin cooed up at the crow and it fluttered down on her hand. She scratched the top of its head and it turned its head to look back at Phil again.
And as Philza, Angel of Death, old and worn and grown as the White still seeping at the edges of his vision, looked back at the ghost, looked back at someone searching desperately for a home, for a place to belong and be wanted, he remembered. He remembered the little soul crow with the bright eyes.
"Oh, I see," he breathed as the ink stained his hands Lime.