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Parrot never truly left.
Sure, he turned away. In that moment, he turned away, and he flew off, and he swore he physically felt something shatter in his chest with the distant rumbling of explosions and the death message that he very pointedly ignored. The death message carrying his best friend's the Director’s Wifies’ name on it, something inside him died along with him and he knows it but it doesn’t matter because he left, he left, Wifies hurt him and he left because he doesn’t care and he shouldn’t, he should be so, so angry and he is.
It doesn’t matter, because part of Parrot always stayed there. Part of him was always standing among pristine quartz walls, part of him was always clutching the cool metal of the spyglass, of a gift, a promise, a show of trust. Running his thumb over the glass one final time, setting it down on the pressure plate with a quiet clink and stepping away. Part of him stayed in the final glimpse of his Wifies, in the sound of sharp words and the echo of his retreating footsteps in a now painfully silent room, I left you there but I never really left.
Part of him looks for Wifies in every room. Part of him calls his name, maybe for a question or a simple, “Good morning ‘Fies, how have you been?” and he forgets that he’ll never get an answer ever again. Part of him catches glances of purple and expects him to be there, he was always there and now he’s not, he’s not and he never will be because he’s gone, he’s dead and gone and maybe Parrot could’ve done something but it doesn’t matter anymore because he’s gone.
Parrot never really left, because something dragged him right on back. An eagle to an aerie, maybe you always find your way back home. Not a place, never a place on this server, where material things can be so easily broken and physical buildings can be so easily destroyed. But a person, because to give trust to another is to present them your heart on a silver platter and stare into their eyes as they decide what to do with it. It is to strip yourself of your armor and bear your deepest of vulnerabilities and still believe you will have each other’s backs until the very end. It is to be known inside and out, and to know inside and out. Wifies has always been home for Parrot, and Parrot was always home for Wifies. He could’ve turned around a thousand times, and maybe he should’ve, and yet he still flew until his wings were freezing and shaking from the combination of frigid cold and overexertion. He hit the snow with a quiet thud, and then he was walking. It doesn’t look like he’s all the way there, all the way present, and he really isn’t. The only thing that’s getting to him is the cold, something he can’t keep out no matter how tight he pulls his coat around his shoulders. He doesn’t even know why he’s here.
Of course he does, he just can’t make himself admit it.
He walked through the snow until he came across the crater. Crumbled pillars and walls and dust and the heavy scent of gunpowder remain where there used to be perfection. Polished white stone juts out of the ground like it’s physically clawing itself from the earth. Parrot climbed over it, carefully navigating the wreckage with his eyes peeled. Not just looking around but searching, slowly and thoroughly but he wishes he could go slower because he doesn’t want to find what he’s looking for. He’s scared of what he knows he’ll find and scared of how he’ll react.
The scent of gunpowder in the air got thicker, until it was clogging his throat and resting heavily in his lungs. Settling within his chest right next to the weight hanging by his heart and the fear weaving its way around his ribs. But the heavier it got, the closer Parrot knew he was. The more mangled his surroundings got, the closer Parrot knew he was. Until eventually, he was crawling over and through fallen debris that was covered in dirt, dust, and then splotches of dried blood. Blood that was slowly growing in volume the further he traveled. Blood that was making his hands shake despite his efforts to stay distant from the situation, because he knows exactly who it came from and maybe he still wants to be in denial even now.
Parrot found him pinned under a crumbled slab of quartz.
It took less effort than he expected to lift the debris away, not that he even realized what he was doing until he was knelt next to Wifies. Reaching for him but hesitating, hovering in the space between the two of them.
It almost doesn’t look like him, or maybe that’s what Parrot’s telling himself so it seems less real. Like it’s not someone he cared for so, so deeply limp on the ground in a pool of his own blood. Did he get the mercy of dying before he hit the ground? Or did he lie there suffering, feeling the life drain from his bones as he bled out cold and alone?
Parrot closed the distance. Carefully at first, knuckles brushed against a too pale temple. Even now he’s still searching, trying to find any sign of life. But Wifies’ eyes are half lidded and unseeing, and his chest won’t rise and fall with rattling breaths, there’s nothing.
The spyglass is still clutched in Wifies’ hands. The glass is shattered, the copper is bloody, and his fingers are loose around the metal but it’s clutched close to his chest, like he was terrified of losing it.
Maybe it was his last comfort in his final moments. Maybe his biggest form of comfort was and always would’ve been Parrot.
“…Wifies.”
Parrot’s voice split the air, fragile and shaky and pained. A spike wedged into the gaps of his ribs, squeezing away at his heart because he can call his name all he wants but there will be no answer. He reached out again, weak hands pulling Wifies into his arms, tucking his head under the avian’s chin. He’s cold, Wifies had always been cold but never like this. He was cold but buzzing with life, what warmth he lost physically he regained tenfold in his demeanor. In the glances shared between the two, in the hands methodically shifting Parrot’s feathers back into alignment, in every little thing he did that made him the man Parrot cared for.
Every little thing that made him the person Parrot trusted with his spyglass, and his life, because that’s the person he wanted to see in front of him right now. Everything that made him right.
Only now, the cold goes deeper than his bones, he’s too cold. Too cold, he can’t be this cold. Parrot laid Wifies’ head in his lap and shrugged off his own coat, the frigid air wrapped itself around him with a vice grip but Wifies was colder, Wifies needed it more. Parrot draped the coat over his shoulders and pulled him back into his arms, one around his shoulders and the other supporting the back of his head. Fingers playing with his hair, he hates that he can feel blood dried into some of the strands. He hates how cold Wifies is, how limp he is, Parrot wound his arms tighter around him to try and get the warmth back into his bones but it’s not working, it’s not working, he formed a shield with his wings and it’s still not working because Wifies won’t warm up and he won’t breathe or blink his eyes he’s gone he’s gone he’s gone—
Parrot’s crying. The tears are falling down his face in rivers, landing themselves in Wifies’ hair, on his bandana, his cheeks. Crying turned to gasping and sobbing, rocking back and forth with his best friend in his arms. Begging, begging because he needs more time, he needs him back, he needs him to open his eyes and look at him because everything will be okay if Wifies would just look at him. Please Wifies please, please I’m so sorry please come back I’ll stay and we can go anywhere and be anywhere we can figure something out you just have to come back, please just come back I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’m so fucking sorry Wifies PLEASE—
He can’t remember if he was whispering or screaming, but the latter fits well into his memory. Screaming his name over and over, burying his face into his hair and pleading for him to come back. Holding onto him like if he loosened his grip Wifies would disappear. His Wifies. His dearest Wifies.
Deep down, Parrot still wants to be angry. He wants to be so angry at Wifies, because if he hadn’t done what he did it never would’ve come to this. He wants to be angry at himself, because despite his best efforts he couldn’t save Wifies. He was supposed to be able to save everyone and he can’t even save the person that mattered to him most. He just wants to be angry, because he tried so hard and it wasn’t enough, and that makes a sick burning feeling rise in his stomach all the way to the tips of his fingers. Parrot hates him for what he did, and yet he misses him like a little kid.
-
He buried Wifies, he deserved that much. Carried him out of the rubble once he gathered the strength to move, dug out a grave for him to rest in. And for a final act of love, he gifted him his most prized possession one final time. He laid him down, tucked the spyglass into his folded hands. And Parrot took his bandana with him, so that no matter where he goes there is proof that Wifies was there, that he always has been and always will be. That Parrot was known by someone, and so was Wifies. That Wifies was loved, and so was Parrot.
And for a final act of love, Parrot forgave him. Whispered the words to the sky and the moon and the trees, words he’d like to think will reach him one way or another. If he looks up at the stars, maybe he can almost imagine Wifies staring back at him. Waiting for him.
Maybe it’s selfish, but Parrot would like to hope he is.
Until next time, friend.
- - -
Wifies would wait forever.
He did, in fact. When the dust settled and everyone was gone, Wifies stayed in the wreckage. Not physically, though his body was still there, but he wasn’t truly… there in the typical sense. Couldn’t interact with his environment, couldn’t leave, couldn’t do much of anything but wait.
So wait he did. Silently hoping that Parrot would come back, as selfish as it is he so desperately wants him to come back. As selfish as it is, because Wifies brought this upon the two of them, didn’t he? Did he even regret it? Sometimes you have to make the difficult decisions, does that justify all he’s done? Do the ends justify the means when the end failed anyway?
Too many questions to answer, it makes his brain crawl around in circles like a staircase spiraling down and down and down until he wants to tear the heart he no longer has out. He just wants to see his best friend again, his better half.
Wifies wishes he would stop startling at every noise, wishes he would stop hoping it was Parrot he was hearing. It would be easier to move on, but to move on would be to let go of such an important part of himself.
So he’ll wait, and he’ll continue to wait until—
“…Wifies.”
…
“Parrot?”
Parrot did not glance up at his name, because he cannot hear Wifies. The wind will not carry the raspiness of his voice, crackly from lack of use, across the space wedged between them. Life and death, it’s a bridge no entity could ever cross back and forth between. But he’s here, he’s genuinely here, with his hand against Wifies’ face. He’s here, and that’s all Wifies ever wanted, and he’s touching him like something precious and sacred and it hurts how terribly he wished he could actually feel it. He could only watch as Parrot pulled his coat off to wrap it around Wifies’ limp body, as he pulled him into his arms and whispered pleas into his hair. He could only watch, because no word or sound or touch will ever reach the man on the other side of a bridge neither can cross.
When Parrot began to cry, the only thing Wifies could do was cry with him. He made attempts to dry Parrot’s tears but at the most the only thing Parrot would feel is a gentle brush of cold that would be lost amongst the biting chill of the wind. When Parrot pleaded between sobs, to him or someone else entirely, all Wifies could do was mutter worthless reassurances. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but he would like to lie to himself and think that Parrot can hear them anyway. He’d always been able to do the impossible like that, he could do everything and anything he set his clever mind on.
And when Parrot screamed his name over and over again like it would bring him back, all Wifies could do was cling to Parrot’s side and bury his face in his shoulder and cry. His own chest shook with silent sobs, he was soaking Parrot’s clothes with tears that didn’t really exist. There’s nothing either of them can do, and never has it hurt so badly to feel so useless.
Wifies could die all over again, hearing Parrot scream his name with such desperation. His Parrot, who rarely even did so much as raise his voice. His Parrot, who had never sounded so pained, so broken. His Parrot, clinging to a body that would never breathe or blink or smile or laugh or play with his hair or make some witty remark or solve a puzzle with him ever again.
Parrot can’t hear him, but he apologized anyway. Something about his death reawakened that kind part of Wifies, the man who was endlessly kind and intelligent and eager to help. The part of Wifies Parrot claimed he wanted to remember. Maybe to be dead is to have clarity, for the first time in a while. And that kind part of him, he apologized.
Wifies watched him bury his body, eventually. So carefully, with so much attention to detail. Parrot will never know, but he was at his side the entire time.
Parrot left the spyglass in his cold, limp hands. And how could Wifies ever forget the very first time it was gifted to him, the first time he ran his fingers over that metal? How could he forget the look in Parrot’s eyes, or the way his feathers seemed to reflect the light? How could he forget the look on his face now, when it might be the last one he ever sees?
He’d be foolish to think Parrot would ever return here. Not again, Parrot will move forward and keep living and Wifies will stay here. But Wifies can hang onto this moment, onto every feature he can possibly commit to memory. He can keep it in the space between his ribs, and maybe when the maggots eventually find his body and dig into his heart and brain they will learn about Parrot and everything that made him… Parrot. They will find the love Wifies held for him in all of its intensity, and all the words he’d ever heard from him, and all the words he never spoke in return. They will find the warmth of Parrot’s hands in Wifies’ fingertips and the adoration he saw in his eyes and they will get to learn just a fraction of Parrot’s beauty. Because he truly was, in all of his imperfections, perfect.
“I forgive you.”
Three quiet words that split the silence, and when Wifies met Parrot’s eyes they were staring right at him. Through him, in reality, but maybe for just a second he could pretend Parrot could really see him. He was always so much smarter than he gave himself credit for, maybe he just knew.
Wifies gave him a watery smile. I see you too, my darling Parrot.
“I love you, my Parrot.”
Parrot turned and flew away with a final longing glance. And maybe, just maybe, Wifies heard another three words from the avian before he departed. A comforting thought to hold on to.
“I love you.”
He’ll see him again, someday. Someday, Wifies will hold Parrot’s icy, stiff hands in his own, and it will be strange when Parrot was always so, so warm but he’ll be able to feel fingertips against his again and that’s all the warmth he needs. Someday, Wifies will lean his head against a chest with no heartbeat and look up into brilliant green eyes and they will look back and see him too. Someday, hopefully a long time away. A long time away, when Parrot has gotten the chance to live.
It’s okay, he can take his time.
Wifies will wait forever.
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