Chapter Text
Wifies is a clone; he is a copy of another. The number printed at the nape of his neck proves this fact to be true, and the way he falters and fumbles to construct pieces of words before they leave at the tip of his tongue to not be seen as different from others makes the fact that he is a clone— a reality.
The world in his eyes that holds a metallic shine, or maybe a waxy gloss, is weird and unfamiliar. When his body was shipped onto this unstable server at the request of an avian needing his aid to solve the world’s greatest secret, he accepted without hesitation.
After being ‘freed’ by Kenadian and Wato from the clutches of his original self, he didn’t know what he’d do next. Everything felt uncertain; it was as if whenever he looked at the palms of his hands and to the factory that had sewn his existence alive from the scraps of metal of the many more clones that came before him, they whirled and warped themselves into bright nauseating colors. Then, a pang of ache flooded his head, and like hyped electrons which pooled in his stomach, would eagerly travel and rise through his throat, until his feelings of uncertainty would sit at the tip of his tongue and bloom into even more questions of doubt splattered all over the floor.
“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Wato spoke in hushed tones, the warmth of his hand seeping through Wifies’ jacket and onto his cold skin as it drew slow circles on his back.
Were he really?
Will he be really?
And before his state of well-being could spiral again in a series of doubt and disorientation, he shut that memory away and deleted it from his program. Needless to say, it was a futile decision to make, as it was a virus that contaminated his being– one that would haunt the entirety of his reality, coming back and back again until it would bleed through the gaps of his everyday life.
It was not something to be or can be deleted, because he was a clone, and as much as that was an established truth, his trail of uncertainty and disorientation that would follow him wherever was just as real and true as the number behind his neck.
⋆.˚✮☽☯︎☾✮˚.⋆
Wifies is dead; he who was but a fragment, a copy of the original, is now a soul hovering around the existence that has taken away his life.
His body had become translucent— fading, warping to the background around him, and at its core was a small purple glow that, ironically enough, was invisible to the world around, its light never influencing anything it held near. It only brought about a slight chill to anything close, and for the many players and creatures that roam around the server, he was just the cold breeze that came from the trees and the seas.
Everything that had unfolded, everything he did, all of it was unbecoming of him. But when he squints into the far-off distance, like a reflection from the mirror, his creator stares at him, and Wifies stares back. He was no different from him at all, or maybe the things he did were just his instincts acting out, a fragment from the original’s true, twisted personality, and these borrowed emotions from him were the reason he was acting out of what perception his best friend had for him.
He could stare at the reflection, forever lost in thought, but nothing could be changed. He did what he did, and a part of him did not regret it at all. Why was that? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t really want to know why he doesn’t wanna know either, for fear that if he looks harder for an answer that was right there all along, he might spiral into another abyss filled with doubts and questions regarding himself.
Wifies doesn’t like questions. He prefers to be certain. He prefers to know what he is, why he is, and where his stand is inside the myriad of servers and possibilities out there. It should be up to him to decide who Wifies will be and what his purpose is in this world.
His past was no more than just a speck of what he could be; he would not let it define him and the many more versions he could be. Because for now, or maybe back then, he was Parrot’s best friend, and that was his role to fulfill.
He was something.
He’d always thought that someday, somehow, he’d become a story of his own, not a cheap copy, but his own.
⋆.˚✮☽☯︎☾✮˚.⋆
“Wifies, bro, I swear to god, if anyone finds us out here, tens of thousands of blocks away from spawn, I’m gonna crash out,” Parrot complains as he slices through the potatoes they have managed to secure from the destroyed farms here at this remote and deserted village.
“It’s like trouble itself has a GPS attached to us 24/7,” He continues as he deals a harsh blow to the diced potatoes before throwing them in the pot of stew, combined with everything else they deemed edible enough to put inside.
Parrot leans his back to the kitchen counter and sighs; his weary bones had grown tired from running. When will this ever end? How can they do anything at all when numerous dangerous players are out to ban their asses from the server, and if not banning, they sure are excited to trap them into prisons the size of an entire biome.
This is honestly ridiculous. It seemed as if they’d never find peace so long as the server itself is not at peace, but would that even be possible for such an anarchy server as Unstable? The server truly is befitting its name.
Parrot turns and continues to stir the pot; he murmurs curses for the creator of this server for the name it has bestowed upon this world. Be clear to the universe, and it shall give, and it truly did. He sighs again for the upteenth time as he puts out the fire; no matter, he thinks, Parrot is not without challenges.
As he sets the two bowls of soup for him and his best friend, he looks at the other; a nervous smile faintly strains on his face. His best friend had been staring at him ever since they stepped foot inside the abandoned house they raided, face devoid of any emotion at all. So he steels himself and decides to confront the other,
“You’ve been looking at me this whole time.” Parrot would’ve asked if something was wrong too, but something inside his stomach squirms disgustingly; his fear of something he doesn’t wanna acknowledge overcomes him, and the remaining words remain in his mouth.
Wifies turns to look at the table instead.
“It’s okay if you leave, Wifies; I don’t mind.” Parrot plasters a muted smile, gazing away at the window, mindful not to give away any feelings of mourning. If Wifies wanted to stay with him after all he’s put them through, he’s more than glad to accept that, but he knows to respect his decisions if he wants to leave too. It’s just that Parrot was trusting, and maybe all this time, he thought he and Wifies had gotten close, close enough to call the two best friends. Amidst the hurdles thrown their way, they’ve always managed to come out safe together, and maybe Parrot had placed his expectations of trust on Wifies to stay even without confronting the other.
He’d always thought that Wifies silently agreed.
Truth to be told, the reason why Wifies started following him in the first place was because he invited him to discover a secret, and where that led was unfortunate on Wifies’ end as he got chunkbanned on the server, temporarily being exiled to a never-ending void, with the person who orchestrated the two of them to discover the secret in the first place.
And to Parrot’s luck, the secret did not exist in the first place, courtesy of Spoke’s twisted manipulation. He doesn’t know why he did that to them; he could assume a guess surrounding another player who has recently disappeared, but that was not his headache to soothe.
It was all Parrot’s fault; Wifies should never have gone through all of that.
The tip of Ferre’s blade against Wifies’ neck, threatening to go deeper the longer Parrot falters. Cold air seeps inside his veins as he unconsciously holds his grip tighter on the knife that presses against Branzy’s back. Clown senses Parrot’s desperation, and shoots a sidelong glance at Ferre, urging him to take away the remaining inches between his blade and Wifies’.
All it takes is a bit of red stain against the metal before he throws his knife away on the ground.
“Give Wifies back.”
It was normal to think the reason for the silence he’s been receiving from Wifies for quite a while now was due to those exact trail of events he’s been suffering from.
One thing led to another, and from finding clown and all the other players who went, he had been played; they had been imprisoned by clown himself.
Wifies was his own person, after all.
“I won’t leave, it’s just...” Wifies voices out, absent-mindedly stirring the bowl of stew, else the soup stills, and leaves a clear vision of the more complete version of him.
“It’s just what?” Parrot can’t bring himself to ask again; instead, he slowly turns to look at Wifies, waiting for the other to construct his sentence. He glances at those deep-black eyes that reflect everything it lays upon, as if the void was embedded into the center of those two balls of flesh.
“Back in Proton,” the spoon in Wifies hands lay atop the table, eyes sternly fixed upon the avian in front of him, “Why did you do that? You almost died.”
Those void eyes shone as his head tilted to see Parrot in full view, and in that shine, Parrot saw himself,
“What?” he murmurs in disbelief, “Wifies, why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t want you to die, Parrot.”
Concern flooded Wifies’ gaze, and Parrot couldn’t help but be comforted, the corner of his lips subtly reaching upwards. Maybe that silence of agreement was enough, because the value of their friendship was hidden in these moments, in little words and actions that the two shared daily in their lives.
“I won’t.” is all he says before he starts to spoon a portion of his stew, carefully blowing out the hot liquid on its hold.
Wifies’ gaze lingers for a moment; his doubts slowly creeping in. He reaches again for the spoon, and as soon as he scoops a portion of the stew to his lips, its corners frowned at the cold touch.
“What if we make a safe place?” Parrot suggests.
Yet despite it, it was homely and comforting.
⋆.˚✮☽☯︎☾✮˚.⋆
“Horrace, you built this?” Parrot’s eyes shot wide open as he raised his head to take in the towering castle in front. The castle was made of quartz and bricks composed of numerous towers that stood tall on top of the end island. The walls that were pale as the moon were a stark contrast against the deep blue of its roof. Outside the front of the castle was a massive stairway of grayish color. Overall, It had a simple design; it lacked adornment elsewhere, and the inside was hollow and barren still, but the place was as massive as a biome.
Wifies looked at the towers around the main castle, and to the black bags that deepened underneath its Builder’s eyes. Keep him working for more hours, and his complexion might rival the blocks of the castle itself.
“Thank you, bro.” Parrot slapped a hand at Horace’s back in excitement; this was more than what they asked for.
A couple of hours ago, the new inhabitants of the End civilization had been terraforming the area to accompany their soon-to-be castle. After that was done, Parrot had advised everyone to take some time off and rest for a while. Rest would be located on the outer edge of the island, where a humble shed was built, and beside it was a food farm. It would be a strain to call it humble, when the shed did not have any windows inside, and had an evident lack of a door.
Clearly, ‘everyone’ did not include Horace.
“You sure outdid yourself, Horace.” Wifies smiles at him, though this might be the first time they ever interacted at all.
Wifies doesn’t miss the way Horace falters for a while before he corrects himself, and returns the smile.
“I am getting paid, right?”
At this, Parrot stops in his tracks to go further inside the castle, where a sudden realization conveniently lands in his trail of thoughts. He turns to Horace and looks at him gravely, “Don’t you think the castle looks easier to spot?”
Parrot was right; the castle was too conspicuous. If they intended for this place to be a haven against the lurking dangers on the server, it should be well-hidden.
“Horace, is it possible to move the castle a hundred blocks down?” Parrot asks, “That way it won’t easily be seen.”
Horace, almost at his wits' end, takes a careful look around Parrot’s face, looking for any sign of humor at the slightest twitch of his expression. It takes a few seconds in Horace’s head before it finally registers that the avian is not kidding.
“Sure, but it’ll take a while.” The builder sighs, waving his goodbye to the rest of the people around and excuses himself elsewhere lest his sanity goes down the drain.
As Horace’s figure slowly dwindles in the background, he averts his attention to the remaining citizens around. The remaining citizens being Dean, Kenadian, Dolphin, and Max. It wasn’t really much, but nonetheless, a group of four people is indeed a crowd.
Wifies gazes at the supposed-to-be crowd with a face etched in quiet contemplation. The people were but a hazy blur against the light and confidence that Parrot held himself in. He held a grave look, but it was devoid of the past hardships they had undergone. It was as if no amount of tribulations would cling and show— evidence of his resilient personality.
But when he redirects his gaze elsewhere to the avian’s ruffled wings, damaged from TNT explosions and scarred from arrows, it reveals the dangers they have and will be going through in the near future.
Wifies doesn’t know what to feel about Parrot; human connections for him were always a naught; forming them was futile when faint lines formed boundaries between him and the others. He acted with a script; he read his lines, and when they delivered— for a moment, he became part of something whole. Unfortunately, that was not him; how could he be so presumptuous when he was one-half of a part?
Parrot talks with ease; it comes to him like how the snow falls on the ground, how the stars rise when the sun sets— Absolute, and certain. The avian justifies that they’ll soon need something to defend the castle, and how the speck of dust reflects onto Wifies’ eyes as Parrot connects two and two, suggesting to Kenadian that they make a chunkban around the castle.
Maybe that was why Parrot always stirred something in Wifies, because Parrot has something Wifies does not have— to be sure, to be confident, to be devoid of uncertainty. Maybe that was why Wifies became the avian’s shadow whenever he made bold steps forward, despite being crowned the smarter player, because being a part of Parrot’s life reassures him that he too is as capable and confident as he is.
Maybe that’s why Wifies wants to be around him; he doesn’t want him to go off and die somewhere the light cannot reach, because who would he be if Parrot ceased to exist?
Then, the crowd laughs somehow; Wifies infers it to be a joke involving Horace, whom he noticed had just arrived, seemingly eager to decorate the interiors of the castle. Kenadian, also just noticing the builders' arrival, hands a diamond in Horace’s hand, playing to the gallery of players around them.
All this invokes a bitter taste in Wifies’ tongue, the corner of his lips inching downward. Parrot is not an umbrella for him to use and feel stable from his rain of insecurities, under the guise of him wanting to be his friend.
Parrot is a real human being capable of feeling real human emotions.
Maybe there was no hope in this at all; it would’ve been better if Wato had sent him back to the factory and let him stay there for all of his eternity. Everything was for naught, and nothing was to be experienced when he was incapable of doing so in the first place.
A clone is a copy of the original, after all.
Wifies interrupts the group of friends. They all stop to hear what he has to say, curious of him as he had remained silent all along,
“Parrot, I’ll take care of the farm.” Nervous at the sudden attention, Wifies fumbles an excuse to leave and narrows his field of vision to Parrot.
“Some weed-plucking, haha.” He continues, hollowing a laugh under their stares. If he didn’t notice how harsh the cold wind blew in the void before, he certainly did now.
He moves his feet before Kenadian, debunks him in his lies, and figures out his own trail of thoughts, like how he does with the runs of zeroes and ones on this server. He was the one who managed to deliver him here on this server for a fresh start anyway.
Parrot peers through the sudden shift of Wifies’ demeanor; he doesn’t miss the way his features morph into something undecipherable. Before he could land on a proper deduction of what just happened, his friend had blended into the void.
—
Wifies stares beyond and wonders about the plausibility of his existence throughout the endless worlds of servers. Every server contains similar structures; that was what Wato explained to him back then. Much like how the end is cold and desolate here on this world, it would be the same for others. He tracks the white dust scattered in the sky and wonders if out there in the universe, someone is looking too at the void, pondering the meaning of their existence.
Sitting on the edge of the island, all it takes is a jump to mute down his thoughts. He places a hand on his chest and sees that he is somehow breathing, its rise and fall telling him he is alive, and the air entering and exiting through his nose reinforces that very notion.
He stretches his legs and draws them to his chest, his arms hugging his knees as he stares deeper into the void.
“You won’t understand yourself better if you stare at the void harder.”
A hand on Wifies’ shoulder grounds him back to existence; he tilts his head upward to see mismatched eyes staring back.
“You okay there, bro?” Kenadian sits beside him.
“I am.” And figure Wifies out, he did.
Wifies had only interacted with Kenadian for about 72 hours and 45 seconds, including the one they had right now. He doesn’t know why, but ever since Kenadian and Wato had freed him from the factory, he had started counting the moments he had with them.
Kenadian’s time with him was a pale comparison to the hours he had with Wato, though. Kenadian was always here and there; he was busy going through servers and servers trying to find something to debunk. Meanwhile, Wato was always hired by infamous players to make prisons and escape rooms here on this unstable server.
He recalls the exasperation engraved on the Escapists’ face whenever he was stuck at a dead end, grumbles of how he was threatened to make a blueprint of another escape room by a certain deadly player, and how he should have switched servers back then.
“You shouldn’t, though; won’t there be another version of you there?” Wifies quipped, coaxing a rise from a stressed Wato, “It’ll disrupt time and space, and distort our own universe to nothingness.”
A beat.
And two.
Wifies had tried to see the escapists’ eyes then, in hopes to see the result of his provoked remarks, only to find himself be the punchline instead;
No,
“There’s only one of me in this world,” Wifies gazes at the black horizon ahead.
Kenadian looks at the boy he rescued from that factory; they may look the same age, but in that grim place devoid of windows where he saw Wifies for the first time, huddled inside that rustic cell, he became someone to look out for.
“So why were there so many of us?”
Kenadian doesn’t know either.
He also doesn’t know what it feels like to be a clone either, to suddenly gain awareness that everything around you is fabricated, that you yourself is fabricated. It must’ve been an awful experience.
“There were many of you, yes,” He tests the waters, carefully trying to piece his words so as not to cause further dismay at the other. “But Wifies, you’re capable of feeling.”
Kenadian had raised his arms, and would have used the sleeves of his jacket to wipe the tears from Wifies’ face; but his cheeks were dry, yet his eyes were sullen.
“You’re capable of thinking, quite more than I can.”
So instead, he shifts his weight closer to Wifies until their shoulders clash with the lack of space.
“Then does that mean I’ll become my own person?” Wifies turns to him, hopeful.
“You’re already your own person,” Kenadian reassures the other.
Wifies only hums.
There were no tears that pooled in Wifies’ eyelids, and no tears that rolled in his cheeks; there was nothing to cry about, and there was nothing to wipe. Though the time he spent with Kenadian was shorter than with Wato, both of them were equally as awkward. At that, a soft, sudden titter had escaped his lips.
“I’m envious of what you and Wato have.”
Kenadian waits for him to continue; he waits for a while, but nothing follows after those words. He scans his eyes, looking for a clue as to what he might be feeling. Wifies was always a mystery for him to figure out, maybe because of how he came to be; Kenadian always finds himself trudging lightly around him.
He never quite catches the heavy air that Wifies hides in his walls; it's one of the only things he can’t debunk completely or at all. It’s easy to tell when something was wrong; it often came in the form of big disruptions and anomalies in Wifies’ pattern of behavior. However, it was much harder to dissect the whys of it.
So, as always, he opts for the easy way out; he keeps himself closer against the other in hopes of sharing the little bit of warmth he has.
“Sometimes, I can’t help but think that you guys should have left me at the factory.” Wifies tries.
The cold of the end is sharp against the tip of his nose.
Every puzzle has a pattern, one that he can slowly go over and eventually arrive at a solution. However, human bonds are intricate; it was a series of jumbled-up threads that he can't find the ends of.
Kenadian stills at his side, eagerly waiting for his next train of words.
He is but a third person narrating his existence, a mirror of the many people he had met. He is not quite sure if that is him, but nonetheless, that role is his; it only takes that for him to comply and play the part.
“I want to have friends, like you do with Wato”
“But I’m your friend too, aren’t I?”
But I wouldn’t be as close to you as you already are with him.
It’s just another boundary he can’t cross. Wifies musters a faint smile instead, and he burrows his head into the crevice of Kenadian’s neck. There is no point in drawing out his misery like this; they’ll never arrive at understanding. Wifies had always thought that Kenadian could know him like how easily it is for him to interpret the codes of the servers.
It’s bittersweet to realize that he was wrong all along. However, such was his fate, he supposes. Comfort from a person can only be given so much, and he supposes he’ll take whatever he can get too.
A minute passes, then a rhythmic soothing pressure strokes the back of his head.
—
“I thought you were plucking weeds at the farm, bro.” A gentle voice cuts Wifies from his thoughts and grounds him back to reality.
The space beside him had remained vacant long ago.
“Well, I was...” It takes Wifies a moment, “I’m just taking a much-needed break.”
“Bro, if you wanted help, you could’ve just asked.” Parrot mirths at Wifies, who only exhaled at his insinuations.
He wasn’t sulking, thank you very much.
“Bro’s acting like a little kid.” Parrot continues to giggle, his hand on his knee as he supports his weight, offering a helping hand.
“What are we saying?” The corner of Wifies’ eyes crinkle in amusement.
They both head to the farm to start plucking weeds, much to Wifies’ dismay, all in accordance with his pitiful excuse to get away for a moment. The air in the end dimension was like a cold fog that shrouded everything.
“It’s weird for wind to exist in a place that bore no trees, doesn’t it?” He blurts as they head inside the shed.
“Well, there are Chorus plants here.” Parrot muses, closing the door behind them.
The end dimension was freezing, and normally these crops inside the farm would have frozen off and died had it not been for Kenadian’s genius, who built a warm lamp inside the ceiling of the farm.
Stepping inside felt like noontime in the overworld.
“It’s a good thing Kenadian installed this incubator thing.”
Beads of sweat began to trickle down on the avian’s forehead. Did this machine have some sort of setting installed too? It was a drastic temperature change compared to the outside.
“Aren’t you part bird? Why are you sweating so much?” Wifies hums a low, trilling whistle.
Parrot uses the sleeves of his jacket to wipe the sweat off his forehead; he scans Wifies only to witness a lack of normal human body reaction from him.
Did this guy even sweat at all?
“Not when you’re covered in clothes that are meant to counter winter, no.” He rolls his eyes instead.
“Then take it out, genius,” Wifies retorts, tossing him some sort of gardening tool that he suspects will aid them in weeding. Parrot catches the tool and sighs,
“You really weren’t kidding when you said you wanted to pull some weeds, huh?”
Wifies waves a hand and dismisses the other, “Don’t dilly-dally now.”
Some weeding took about an hour to accomplish, and while they were inside, they took it as an opportunity to plant the remaining seeds they had secured from the Overworld, all done as per Parrot’s idea.
“Dude, once we finally establish this place, it will be like, a secret safe place for everyone on the server.”
“Right.”
“The citizens will chant our names, all hail King Parrot…. and Wifies,” A quiet, breathy laugh catches in the back of Wifies' throat before he murmurs a teasing reply, keeping his voice hushed just to get under Parrot’s skin. “ … Don’t forget about Wifies, most especially Wifies.”
“What is bro yapping about?” Laughter blooms alongside Parrot’s chest.
It takes a while for the quake in his shoulder to die down before he replies,
“Nah,” He shrugs the thought of becoming king, and instead he preaches, “Everyone in the civilization will rule it.”
“That’s,” Wifies hums in a contemplative low tune, “Quite Cheesy.”
“Shut up.” Embarrassment finally reigns upon Parrot in the form of his reddened ears. To preserve what little dignity he has left, he flings a freshly plucked weed at the other.
The dirt now suspended in the air merrily lands onto void-like eyes; Wifies squirms at the sting, uttering a yelp as he splashes water, from where he hopefully thinks his memory is serving him right, directed at the avian.
“Aurafarming didn’t go as planned, huh?” he dryly laughs. “ I must say I did not think you would resort to dirty tactics.”
“Once I become king, you definitely won’t be my right hand, Wifies,” Parrot shuffles his slightly drenched feathers, “I’ll have you know that.”
“I thought you wouldn’t become one,” Wifies arches an eyebrow, “Are you going back against what you said?”
“Oh, King Parrot,” he takes hold of a weed behind his back, abruptly separating its root from the dirt, and without warning, flings it back to Parrot. “What a farce.”
“Argh, Wifies!” It was now Parrot’s turn to groan in pain at the sharp sting of having specks of dirt plaster themselves in his eyes, hurriedly trying to rub them off.
He then glared at Wifies, who had come to laugh even harder at the sight of his reddened eyes.
“Yeah, bro’s definitely off my listed potential right-hand man candidates.”
Is this what it felt like to have a friend on the server? His own, only friend. Wifies wouldn’t mind experiencing everything this server had to offer; maybe he wouldn’t mind the slight alienation that haunts him wherever he went, so long as he could have someone he had for himself, so long as he had Parrot.
Parrot and Wifies, Wifies and Parrot, it sounds as natural and well as how you’d say Kenadian and Wato, or maybe even, Wemmbu and Eggchan. Admittedly, Wifies had always been envious of them. When he looked at the world through his mechanical lens, everyone seemed to have their other halves.
This initially didn’t bother him at all, but his doubts percolated through in the little ways he interacted with everybody on the server.
It first came when he had been rescued, when Kenadian and Wato had spoken to him in caution and in dear tones, offering readied assistance whenever he needed. Yet when night fell, and Wifies dazed at the stars above, his back turned to the makeshift camp they had set for the night, where comfort had melted their bones weary, the two would speak in tones of familiarity Wifies could only hear or witness and never partake. Wato scolded Kenadian for his exploits; Kenadian warned Wato for his sketchy choice of clients. They spoke in familial tones, too deep for Wifies to translate and comprehend.
Then it came back when Wemmbu had descended into the prison of Proton, offering their escape in exchange for Eggchan’s guaranteed freedom.
But Parrot did the same, did he not?
He freed him from that Chunkbans even if it meant Spoke would be freed, and even if at the expense of incurring Prince Zam’s Wrath (to which they did, and boy, did it lead to numerous traps and agendas, like a falling domino).
What Parrot has done for Wifies is more than enough proof that he cares, and Wifies will do the exact same for him. Dare he say that they could even be the bestest of friends? Yet, he still stops and falters because Parrot is kind, and he cares for others. It’s easy to see that Wemmbu cares about Eggchan, even more than he does for himself, because the care he gives is selective.
One can always know with Parrot, because he always does. So if he cares about everything, where does that leave him?
Wifies doesn’t want to think.
For now, he’s happy.
And for now, he doesn’t want to let go of this moment.
⋆.˚✮☽☯︎☾✮˚.⋆