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Being held might just be the hardest thing Parrot had ever tried to let go of.
It was just... warm. And it felt safe, wrapped in Wolf's arms and nest and tail and blankets. Why a faerie even had blankets, Parrot may never fully know. But he did, and they were warm, warmer than would have been expected, from such an austere court.
Parrot had been reminded of the universities of his town, when he'd first been brought here. Rabbit had stood beside him, cloaked in her concealing armour, forcing Parrot's eyes off her whenever they'd drifted off the marked path.
He'd been forced to look forward, and upwards, over a road carved of a riverbed of obsidian, past the paths branching off it like so many sticks on the great tree of life. Each path demarcated another section, blooming with its own life and colours. Like Wolf had replicated the entirety of the mortal world in his slice of the feywildes. Parrot had seen cherry blossom painting pink across the pale grass, he'd seen ravines slicing through mesa not more than short run away, he'd seen mountains blocking his route as the crow flew to freedom.
It had been beautiful. Rabbit hadn't even acknowledged it. Parrot had felt the wonder pressing in around him, and fixed his eyes forward, to the marble chamber that, like the armour Wolf hid his guards from attention with, resisted all efforts to be penetrated by mortal eyes.
He'd walked forward, without thinking. His feet nearly slipped on the shiny stone beneath his shoes, before he found his footing, and felt Rabbit's eyes linger on him.
He couldn't be hurt. Not because it was any law of nature, because this place defied the laws of nature, rewriting them to Wolf's commands. But because Wolf had full command, in here. If Parrot was hurt, even by the ground beneath his feet, Rabbit and Bear would pay for it.
Parrot had never felt so protected, and so alone.
In the end, there had been nothing to do but go forwards. No matter how the river, just a short hop to his right called to him, the azure water sparkling in radiant sunshine that spread no further than its segment of the felled, obsidian tree. Or the jungle, just a few branches onwards, its own branches stretching towards the perfectly open sky, perfect for perching amidst the vines. It seemed to glow orange, a pristine contrast to the rich jade of the flora within, forming a divine backdrop to his paradise.
That said, for all of Wolf's meticulous flora, there was no fauna to be seen. Parrot had yet to see a single creature, his namesake or otherwise. They weren't to be accepted, it seemed, in Wolf's temperate snowglobe, frozen forever in their perfect eternity. Maybe he feared real canines in Parrot's fragile, mortal flesh, the splash of scarlet onto sunbaked sand, a death to a feral beast even he couldn't control.
If Wolf couldn't control it, it was removed. That was how they'd lost... Deer. Parrot struggled to remember names, sometimes. Wolf's came so much easier, his simple monikers as he'd recited those to whom Parrot owed his eternal safety. Their deaths, so he could live undisturbed. Their lives, so Wolf could remake his. Their existence, a meagre price to pay for one songbird's cage.
Rabbit hadn't let him stray. Parrot hadn't slipped again, as he'd been lead over glass and frozen magma, the compass Wolf had gifted him tucked safely under his tunic. He hadn't trusted Rabbit with it. Even after everything they'd been through, even when her name and being were Wolf's, she remained human. And Parrot didn't trust humans. So he kept his compass, close to his heart, the beat of his blood through his veins to his whirring thoughts feeling strong enough to disturb the needle from its eternal home.
Wolf had met him, at the entrance to the marble folly. Parrot's folly, for thinking he could evade a Fae King. His folly, for thinking the forests he escaped to were anything more than another being's cage.
It felt like folly, to take what he was given. Parrot knew he was being hand-fed pomegranate seeds as Cerberus himself lay across his lap, but Wolf was too kind to be believed. It was impossible not to believe his saccharine assurances, calm words and silver eyes each finding their mark in Parrot's heart, that he would be safe, forever, in the lap of a killer.
"You're thinking about me."
"Don't you want me to?" Parrot couldn't help the quirk in his lips, the endless questions that had lured him this far from a civilisation that had never been worth his time. "Isn't that the whole point of this?"
"The point is that you don't think." Wolf shifted, easing Parrot's head off his legs so he could lay down beside the human, liquid silver coating Parrot's throat against any lingering dregs of resistance. "You don't need to be thinking about everything."
It was the constant line of argument. Wolf kept pushing it, a silver lure Parrot refused to bite. He could relax, let the soporific bliss of this world become his paradigm and be lulled into an eternity fishing at false lakes, and building a cabin in the image of where he’d first met Wolf. He could relive the past for eternity, and let the fae take his thoughts as payment.
“What if I want to think about you?”
“You’ll have time to do that, too. But… you’re thinking about who you think I am.” Wolf’s eyes glittered, in the glowing etchings on the walls Parrot half-suspected to be runes to ease his animosity. “Then you’ll try to escape again. Then we both have to go through all the reason why you can’t.”
“I’m not trying to escape.”
“So this is your freedom? The one we’ve been looking for?” Wolf’s voice oftened, and he leaned closer, tucking his head against Parrot’s chest like he was the one with the answers. “You’re happy?”
“I… never said that.”
“Exactly. I’d know, if you were lying.”
“How?”
“I know you, Parrot. I know you were thinking of before.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It doesn’t exist.” Humming, Wolf pushed a little closer to him, the drowsiness in his movements a feeble disguise for how his ear was pressed to Parrot’s heart. “We’re here, now. This is it.”
“Do you… do you really think I’m going to give up so easily?”
***
“You- you didn’t-“
Rabbit’s voice broke, shattering into horror and wonder and something in between. There were universes, as her world shattered, and Parrot stood and watched them tumble out of her mouth like bile and stars.
He didn’t say anything.
There was nothing left to say. Wolf had finally done it, he’d taken all his words, and now Parrot was left with nothing but hollowness, wondering where Wolf was to deal with the tears filling Rabbit’s eyes.
Dead.
Wolf was dead.
And in all the universes Rabbit might have seen or imagined, for however long she’d been trapped inside her own mind just the same as Parrot had been trapped in this cage, there was nothing that could be said that would make that make sense.
Even Parrot, now, lifeblood staining his hands like ink across paper, raven streaks feathered up to his wrists and further, had nothing to give her. Nothing would take it back. Nothing would put the world back together, the world that shone just the same as Wolf’s eyes had reflected it, yet lacked the allure that had made it shine.
Maybe it had always been the bars of his cage reflecting back. That had died, with Wolf, and Parrot had no way to justify to himself, now, the yen he felt to stay. To put down roots. To build a nest, here, in the scorched earth he’d left behind with a power he hadn’t known he had. The world was empty, now. This Court was long dead, and still, the world seemed to demand Parrot explain himself. Explain why he’d killed the King of his dreams and nightmares, leaving this world bereft of a being that had only ever tried to shelter him from himself.
Wolf had been right. Parrot would never know how he’d known, but the faerie blood on his hands corroded. It had always been there, eating through everyone he’d dared to touch. Like acid through metal, like rain through cobwebs. He destroyed. Erased. Those who mattered less than Deer, less than Rabbit, less than Bear, each lost to time and the wildes. Now Wolf could join them.
It wasn’t Parrot’s job to explain. He was only human. What did humans do, if not claw their way through the fabric of the world, and tear it as they were ripped away? If Wolf was dead, what was Parrot, but another hero for the stories, the paradigm of foolish children.
As he watched Rabbit, her pink jumper long rotted into leaves and wood, Parrot’s claws crept to his own chest. They brushed his heart, staining it the blackness of decay, of whatever had warmed Wolf’s eyes to the point the silver edges melted, whenever he looked at Parrot.
They found his compass.
Magnets, it seemed, had no reaction to silver. Where Parrot had seen nothing but glimmer and gold, his needle had stayed true, pointed to its home. Even now, as faerie blood streaked the brass case, working its way to the iron core, Parrot’s iron heart that had been poison to his Wolf. With shaking hands, he could open it, and stare.
“P- Parrot? Is- is it over?”
“Yeah.” It felt like nothing, and Parrot would never understand why the universe let him live like this. He closed to compass, closing his claws over it, letting both scrape close to his heart. “Yeah. Its over. I’m done.”
The blood on his hands wrapped around his fingers, a final embrace from the only creature that would ever love his iron heart. Parrot felt Rabbit’s eyes on it, tears reflecting the silver streaks staining his skin like it had been dipped in the night sky.
“Do you- do you want to…” Rabbit looked helpless, nauseated, a thousand words for what Parrot was not, and her eyes flicked to that pristine river, where Wolf had taught him how to catch salmon with his bare hands. “I can get you water?”
So helpful.
If one more person tried to help him with himself, Parrot could kill them like he’d killed Wolf.
“Why would you do that?” His voice was soft, Wolf’s eerie calmness behind his gentle words. “Go home, Rabbit.”
The ink was staining him. Parrot didn’t want to wash it off. He wouldn’t let go of the compass, at any rate, not until it remade itself with faerie blood and toxins guiding it home.
“Why- why did any of this happen?” Rabbit was moving, she wasn’t moving an inch from the ground Wolf had made for her to stand on, and it felt wrong, for anyone else to even remember him. “Parrot- Parrot, please. I- I don’t know why Wolf wanted you. But you shouldn’t- you shouldn’t hold on to this. Please, can you wash your hands?”
That would mean letting go.
He could try. He could certainly try. For Rabbit, and Wolf’s memory, to be left undisturbed here, a paradise Parrot no longer deserve.
But his fingers were stiff with caked blood, when he tried to unwind them from his compass. Wolf’s hand was around his, the blood that had been inside him keeping Parrot in place. He’d poured his heart out, just to give Parrot a chance at a safety he didn’t have to fight for, tooth and nail.
Holding on might just be the hardest thing Parrot had ever tried to let go of.