Work Text:
Everything, it turned out, could be reduced to routine.
Like circles in Fourier series, looping together, endlessly, all to create a single, intricate drawing. Always following the same path. Depending on each other. A single disturbance, and the result was ruined.
A thousand carefully positioned dials, playing off each other, and Wifies had to handle the control room every second of every day. Forever. He’d simplified it, streamlined everything he’d ever have to do as much as possible.
Now all that there was left to do was do it.
Wake up, stasis chamber to his safe room in Paragon, get a report from whoever had been on night shift. Get dressed, get cleaned up, check over all his failsafes and early warning triggers for anything that might have happened overnight. It wasn’t like he trusted his guards. That was his morning done.
Meet with Parrot. Mentally record his mood, his physical state, his willingness to cooperate. Wifies had a spreadsheet for it, later on. Try to lure him into some kind of enrichment, touch, or emotional vulnerability. Wifies tried to hit at least one of the three, every day. It should account for all of Parrot’s non-physical needs.
At midday, or as close as to the more relaxed schedule he allowed around Parrot, eat something. Wifies let Parrot do his own breakfast, most days. But he was there to supervise for lunch and dinner. Protein, carbohydrate, vegetables, extra vitamins where Wifies’s record specified. Four more pointers down, checked off his list.
Parrot had the afternoons partially alone. Not in privacy, but it was a time for projects. Wifies liked to encourage him to carry on working on his house, or some fishing. Safe, easy to handle activities.
Then, once night had fallen, and he’d gone through an identical routine for dinner, Wifies did some work at his house beside Parrot’s, until his own instincts and one of his guards confirmed his avian was asleep. He didn’t do anything important, while he was in Paragon. Admin things.
Parrot would try to break into his house, within the next week, and Wifies had been preparing enough fake secrets to keep him entertained. It was a small allowance. Really, he should shut it down now. But then Parrot would grow more desperate, and Wifies wanted to keep his levels of rebellion within predictable limits. Let it build, then give him an outlet, enough to keep him docile a little longer.
Once Parrot was asleep, Wifies teleported back out. There was always one guard on active duty throughout the day, and the other two at night. They were on constant standby, but the two during the day could get some sleep, since Wifies was there to keep order. During the night, he made sure the precautions were tighter.
But outside, Wifies could almost let his prison slip his mind. Not that anything ever did. It was pinned just beside his active thought, a constant hum of mental energy directed to improving, to safeguards, to new activities to keep Parrot distracted.
For a few hours, then, and a few in the morning, Wifies took care of the outside world. He’d let his control lapse, at least on the surface. Really, he was tightening his hold on what mattered, letting people begin to forget him, if they didn’t. He didn’t need a war. He had everything he wanted.
Then, he slept.
Sometimes.
His own bodily rhythms had to be set aside, for the most part. They didn’t align with his schedule, so they were forced out the way. He ate when Parrot ate. He showered, if it was a quiet morning. His life conformed to the routines.
Besides, Wifies didn’t sleep well, these days. He never had, without Parrot close. Even when he’d been none of this, just a puppy trailing after his master, he’d always made sure their camp was small enough he could see Parrot’s feathers, even if they slept in separate tents.
Now, he couldn’t risk it. Paragon was pure safety, layers of cotton wool and rounded edges. But only for Parrot. Every time Wifies went in, he did so with open eyes, knowing it was the most danger he’d ever be in. Another variable he had to handle. His own fear, accounted for, minimised, and set aside.
It was too much a risk, to sleep near Parrot. Wifies had to keep himself alive. His calculations couldn’t justify such a gaping hole in his precautions, just for something as trivial as his own comfort. He’d worked it through a thousand times, and every time it came out the same. If either he or Parrot died, the other would too.
Maybe it would be a comfort to Parrot, to know Wifies was as much a prisoner of his own design as him.
Too much of a comfort, more likely. Even as much as Wifies wanted to lure Parrot back into that sense of companionship, beg for some sympathy, Parrot wouldn’t fall for it. And Wifies didn’t want him to fall for it, for some pathetic pity play.
Parrot would continue to think Wifies was an infallible evil, keeping him prisoner with no remorse, and that was better. Wifies didn’t need to bring himself into this. He didn’t matter, to his routine.
If he got involved, it introduced variables. From the inside, Wifies wouldn’t be able to see as clearly. He might have some need to be there, because some weak, weak part of him couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Parrot entirely alone in what was meant to be their happy ending, and that was a stipulation Wifies would allow, but he could keep emotional distance. Physical distance, too, because Parrot flinched away every time their hands brushed.
There was some part of him that still hurt, every time that happened. A puppy, looking out through his eyes, wounded and betrayed that the person he’d done all of this for, ruined both of their lives for, wasn’t appreciating it. A puppy that wanted to curl up beside Parrot, wanted to fall into the fake world Wifies had created and pretend they were both safe, forever.
If Wifies could split himself in two, he would have. Let a part of him accompany Parrot, truly innocent, truly trustworthy and kind, and enjoy the spoils of victory. The other part could be the Director, distance himself from the two of them, from Parrot, and devote himself to making sure nothing ever disturbed them.
But he’d had to choose. He couldn’t have both. He could have Parrot, or he could give Parrot the safety he needed.
Wifies had never wanted to be selfish.
Now, he was stuck on the outside. He had Parrot, at least, even if it was at arm’s length. He could watch his avian make a life for himself, work within carefully orchestrated rules, rules that would never hurt him. He could retell Parrot’s story, assured it would have a happy ending.
Jumper spoke to him, sometimes. In those long stretches of night where Parrot might sleep peacefully, or might try something. Where nothing was quite real, and Wifies didn’t know what would happen. It was a feeling that had grown in its discomfort, until he’d do anything to eliminate it.
Leo and Derapchu never tried. Derapchu hardly seemed to speak at all, or shut up quick when Wifies was near. Leo tried to find some high ground, some confidence that he could throw into a chink in Wifies’s armour.
Jumper just sat next to him, and talked. She didn’t appeal to his humanity. Didn’t rail at him. Didn’t even beg.
She talked about attachment, mostly. Sometimes it sounded like she was quoting textbooks, sometimes lectures, sometimes her own essays. She spoke about imprinting, about dependency, about cycles and about the science of love.
It was one of the few things Wifies listened to, these days. She never seemed to pick a side. Never pretended she was talking about him. She just talked. Like it was practice, revision outside the exam room, like this term would ever come to an end.
Wifies didn’t like exams. Jumper, it seemed, adored them. Tests, moreover, because that was what she always came back to. Test for attachment. Test for communication. Test for love, test this, test that, poke and prod and feed in stimuli until they had answers.
Some of it he knew already. Classical conditioning, a pet peeve of his. It was more than association, less than punishment. Wifies applied it. But he never liked the alleged simplicity of results yielded.
Neuroscience came up to, from time to time. Jumper was a girl who liked her manipulation. If Wifies had any space left in his own attachment centre, he’d have liked her.
One night, when everything had gone well, and Parrot had pretended to be happy, Jumper had been happy too. Wifies suspected that guards had been breaking some rule, bringing in their own food, but he’d been in the mood to allow it.
She’d shuffled closer to him, so close her fingers were almost brushing his hair, when she explained there was a point in his brain where, if stimulated, it would trigger an out-of-body experience. She’d giggled, clearly far too relaxed, and asked if that was how he seemed to see the whole world at once.
Wifies had tightened the rules, after that. The guards didn’t leave. No exceptions, new barriers on the doors even for them. Jumper hadn’t spoken to him for a while.
But sometimes, he ran a hand through his own hair. It had always been a thought, after all. If there was something wrong with him. He wondered what Jumper would make of the inside of his head, if he ever let someone past his walls.
Maybe there was a disturbance, an anomaly, in the thin cortex between grey nerves and cerebrospinal fluid. Visible under a microscope, if Wifies ever cut open his own skull, or even plain on the surface. Something he could look at, Parrot could look at, and they’d both know that there, that there, that was what was wrong with him.
Maybe, if he ever cut himself open, he wouldn’t be human at all. Wifies wondered, sometimes. What it would feel like, to be normal. To think at ground level, to indulge the puppy in him, to be capable of shutting down the layers and layers and layers of constant, constant processing, and live in a singular moment, nothing more than mere perception and storage.
It didn’t much matter, if he was human. Not to any of this. Abstract away the unnecessary details, remove himself from the equation, decompose it all into manageable chunks, then set up an algorithm, that he didn’t need to pretend to be human to run.
Set the wheels on the track, and watch them start to turn, turn around the graph paper, a thousand hand-sculpted circles drawing out his and Parrot’s forever.
It all repeated, in the end. Came full circle. Wifies was ready to do all of this, for the rest of their lives. He could do it for Parrot, too. All his avian needed was the final, concrete removal of choice.
Wifies didn’t make choices. He hadn’t, for a long time. Flow diagrams, spreadsheets, probability tables and Boolean statements.
True or false, and that was what he’d do next.
True or false, he hadn’t needed to be human for a long time.
True or false, he’d stopped being human long before Jumper taught him how humans loved.