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Parrot isn’t sure why they’ve stopped, past discussing what has already gone through both of their heads and left via the back end. They should be at concurrence, nestled next to each other, threads of clothing and locks of hair intertwined as they move forward. Something feels off, braids slipping from one another and knots coming undone as Parrot holds out his compass and directs them north, where the head dives as Parrot spins around.
Wifies asks for the compass. Parrot isn’t one to deny him of anything, so he hands it over, metal passing from one heat source to another as fingertips brush together.
There’s some small hum of acknowledgement before the world turns infinitely hotter, lava spilling from an obsidian bucket, a shining compass thrown into it. The lava’s back in its bucket before Parrot even realizes something has happened.
“You-” Words don’t really come to his tongue at all; they sit in his throat, hesitant to emerge, waiting for his brain to take them in and mix them into something he will speak with conviction.
“Why did you do that?” he settles on.
Wifies clears his surroundings, no expression painted over his face. Diamond armor covers his entire body and spills to the floor. The ground glows blue, diamond material catching the light and projecting it the opposite direction. To Parrot, the world burns, and Wifies’ diamond turns the ground into lava and metal; dead ends without temperature, horrifyingly dangerous and all-too hollow.
“We’re not going to the Farlands.”
His brow furrows, face creasing as some sort of emotion comes over him. Parrot feels frozen, his eyes not getting any wider, his body not stilling any further. “No- no, what? Yes we are. We’re going to the Farla-”
“No, no, no. We’re not. Because you know what’s going to happen?” There’s no room to wedge a foot in. Parrot feels a blade press against his throat. “You’re going to get there, get yourself wrapped up in some war that you have no place in, and you’re going to die. Parrot, you’re going to die. You’re going to give your life for something that doesn’t even concern you; that you should never die for.
“At least one of us is going to die, Parrot. I can’t have it be you.”
The heat rushes up to Parrot’s eyes, midtones scattering like dust across his view, gifting the world some red and a lot of blur.
“We’ve made it nine thousand or so kilometers, looking for this city. And you just- you want to- you want to throw it away? Like…” Parrot shuts himself up, filling his lungs with oxygen to clean them of all the residue, letting the breath slowly ride out through his nose. His entire body aches, voice cracking and wavering and straining, muscles tensing, face hot and flushed. His wings hurt, feathers ruffling involuntarily, shuddering despite the warmness of the rising sun.
“You’re going to get yourself killed, Parrot.” He hates the way Wifies says his name, like it’s something fragile he has to cradle in his arms. Dropping it will kill him, and Wifies doesn’t want him to die, at all. That’s been made too clear. Syllables roll off his tongue like honeydew, lathering the ground, making the grass smell sweeter. Parrot wants to vomit.
“So?” His tongue falters, collapsing on his teeth as consonants are spilled out, not attached to any words. Finally, enough emotion pools in his gut to rise to his head, words falling out before he can stop them. Semantics are thrown into the dirt, buried under soil and grass with aggressive footwork. He means to be gentle. Somehow, despite Wifies standing in front of him, they can’t be anything but vengeful.
“You know you’re being such a fucking hypocrite right now.”
“How?” It’s immediate. They’re both twisting each other deeper and deeper into their gravitational fields, the supernova imminent, only worsening in severity as the two stars grow bigger and bigger. Their cores collapse, shedding their lives to feed the coronas.
“You remember a couple months back, when this was happening with a different group? How I ran away, and you ran right behind me, chastising me for even attempting to avoid my problems?” Words flow like a river now, blood interlaced between the characters. “You said that doing this was stupid. That running away from my problems and pretending things were fine – surviving – was awful.”
Wifies steps closer, diamond boots cracking the ice beneath his feet. “That time was fundamentally different than right now. That was running from your problems; this is running into death. This is a completely different set of odds, one that I much prefer to be how it was back then than how it is right now.”
Parrot feels his cheeks grow damp, headcrests instinctively curling in to shield his face. “I don’t think you understand. I don’t care if I die. This– you can’t live if you’re only–”
Wifies huffs, a crude smile breaking on his face. His eyes are blown wide, face flushed with emotion he tries desperately to stomach. It all spills over, waterfalls of blood and marrow and guts and lava and compasses; trickles of love interlaced between the fluids. So imperceptible that it might as well not be there.
“Do you not understand!? Parrot, you’re killing yourself. What’s it gonna take, huh? What’s it gonna take for you to understand that you’re killing yourself for no fucking reason!? Do I have to die for you to take what I’m saying to heart!? The righteousness you get from fighting in this battle isn’t gonna bring anyone back or right any wrongs. It’s gonna fucking kill you, Parrot. It’s going to kill you. And where does that leave me and Dean?”
Parrot’s throat hurts. Tears flow as waterfalls now, mixing with the rest of the fluids, overpowering everything else. It’s somehow everything at once, warmth from the lava and emotion from the love and intimacy from the blood.
“No,” he says, voice loud and desperately authoritative and cracking and unstable. “I promised Luigi that I’d get to the Farlands and stop the Mafia from ever doing something like that. I’m going to actually do something against the Mafia. Because you know what happens, Wifies? Do you know what happens?”
“What happens, Parrot?” He spits words into the soil.
“You and I are both gone anyways.”
They’ve both been crying since this stupid fucking conversation even started, tears bating behind their eyes waiting to spill. Even as he furiously wipes at his eyes they continue to run, heating up his cheeks and streaking over his skin. They ache his muscles and cut them open, tension releasing as blood pools in his body. He feels himself die and respawn and die and respawn and die and respawn until he can’t tell the difference anymore, everything mixing with everything else and falling under one name.
“So I’m going.”
As Wifies prepares to say something else, Parrot’s feet are already carrying him, past the riverbank and towards the hill where the village ends. He hears words come out of Wifies’ mouth, but they don’t register, stopping at a barrier in his head where words become meaning and emotions spur to life. There’s already too much emotion, all around him and inside him, and if he hears any other word, picks it apart for sense, he’ll die.
He hasn’t been able to tell the difference between death and life for a while now. It feels like this conversation is on the timescales of universes, billions of things coming and going under a single syllable.
Wifies comes to the break of the hill, where the land starts to slope up and the horizon lowers into the sky. When he speaks, his voice is quiet. Conviction is missing, placed in his footsteps as he made his way to where Parrot moved. “I know I can’t stop you, but please , just be a little selfish. Be indulgent, Parrot. You can be selfish just once.”
“I can’t lie, Wifies,” he begins, “I don’t know what’s gotten into you.”
The world seems to stop spinning, time freezing under temperatures as cold as deep space. Despite the tears, despite the waterfalls, despite wherever they’re standing – in the void or on solid ground, in the world – when Parrot speaks, his words are filled with more sincerity, more solidity, than anything else he’s ever said.
“I hope I see you at the Farlands.”