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“Parrot.”
His name sounded wrong. Even in Leo’s voice, it sounded wrong.
But Parrot was well trained.
He looked up, raised his head despite every weight resettling on his shoulders, and stared at his friend, feeling nothing but an aching numbness.
“It’s over.”
His voice wasn’t right either. Missing something.
Missing someone.
But Parrot answered the question before it was asked. He was done with questions. There were no more, for him. He knew everything he could ever have wanted to.
“We… we know.”
“We.”
Not a question. No more questions. Questions had ruined it all. Just a statement, a blank mimicry, like Parrot was nothing more than what he’d always been.
“We.” Jumper’s voice was soft, as she came around the side of the blackstone tower, heading for Leo’s side. She didn’t meet Parrot’s eyes. “We all saw.”
Derapchu, then. They were waiting for Derapchu. All waiting together, in this strange purgatory. Parrot thought he’d broken the cycle.
And Derapchu came, and Parrot didn’t even need to ask from where, or why they hadn’t been together, or anything of the sort. There were no questions left to ask. None that he wanted the answer to.
He just stared, an unarmed and unarmoured bird with nothing left inside him to guard, his eyes unfocusing the longer he tried to focus on his friends.
There was no point, really. It was over. He didn’t know what they’d do now, and he didn’t want to. He was never trusting them again. No matter what, he was never trusting anyone again.
“What now?” Jumper spoke first, breaking the silence that stretched across the fake world Parrot had grown to love. There was nothing else to break it. Just the four of them. “What happens now?”
“I go home.”
Parrot didn’t care what they did.
“Where- where is that?” Derapchu sounded on the verge of tears, but holding himself together. They all must be.
And Parrot didn’t know.
He’d gotten too used to that feeling.
He wasn’t sure what he’d ever have said. Home wasn’t something he’d ever looked for. He was a traveller, a voyager, giving up his own rest for the sake of exploration.
Wifies had been his home. Somewhere he could go back to. Somewhere that came with him. Wifies’s voice, and his constant presence, and his smile whenever Parrot had admitted they needed to make camp for the night.
It made him sick.
“Here.”
But he could never be sick of Wifies. He was sick of himself. His own stubbornness, that might as well have killed both of them, because Parrot felt empty inside. He was sick of his own endless questions, his refusal to just lie down and accept when enough was enough.
Whatever he was now, he was sick of it.
He should stay here. This place was an extension of Wifies, after all. Parrot could do his best friend this much. Stay, and enjoy a perfect world.
“Can- can we stay too?” Jumper, again, although she sounded almost guilty for asking. “It’s… beautiful in here.”
“And we haven’t got much out there left.”
When Leo spoke, it was empty. Burnt out. Parrot heard a little of himself in it, in all of them. There was nothing left.
Shrugging, he nodded. He wanted to walk away. But it didn’t matter where he went, not really.
“Here can be perfect.”
Parrot almost laughed, at himself. At how broken he sounded. So flat, his voice roughened at the edges with unshed tears. It didn’t feel right, to cry. Crying would seem like he was trying to wash away his own blame.
This was all his fault.
“Thank you. Parrot. You- you don’t have to.”
Jumper was acting like this place was his. Maybe it was. With Wifies gone, maybe it fell to Parrot to continue his story.
After all,
How different had they been?
If Parrot went back out there, he’d forget all this. Forget how, for fleeting moments, he felt happy. Happier than he’d been in a long time, in those moments where reality slipped, and he looked up, and saw Wifies’s brow furrowed as he focused, and felt his own heart flutter.
If he went back out there, he’d go back to how it had been. When it was bad. When he’d been trying to protect everyone, save everyone, because he thought he deserved to.
Wifies had been right. They needed to rewind further.
A fresh start, then. The last one. No obsidian pedestal, no marble tomb.
Just a perfect world, left by a perfect mind.
Parrot nodded, accepting Jumper’s gratitude. He didn’t need to let them stay. It was selfishness, maybe, or masochism. To give himself this fantasy, that they were all in this together.
“Are- can we all stay?” Derapchu’s ear twitched, and they all looked like Wifies, they all looked like Parrot if he looked at them wrong, the same haunted fear in their eyes. “I don’t know-“
“We’re staying.” Leo looked to Parrot, reassuring Derapchu, but searching for permission with the avian. “If we can.”
Again, Parrot just nodded. It would be nice, to have his friends with him.
It would be nice, to pretend he still had friends.
He wasn’t even sure what he was clinging onto, with this. The distant past, where everything had been alright? Then he’d just be acting like Wifies, forcing his friends into normality for the sake of his own peace of mind.
Or maybe he was clinging onto the recent past. Onto the small, bitter, miserable part of him that had felt home under Wifies’s gaze. The knowledge that his friends were trapped here, just like him.
Parrot had come to find comfort, in his cage. In whatever Wifies had left inside him, when Parrot had looked into mismatched eyes and seen nothing he recognised, but something he still wanted to love.
Parrot didn’t say a word, as he started walking. Derapchu was crying again. Jumper lingered, probably to comfort him, but she offered Parrot a smile. He didn’t return it. It felt childish, petty, inconsequential, but she’d betrayed him more than anyone else.
Then again, there was nothing saving any of them.
Leo decided to brave walking beside Parrot. Probably for the best, since they were the only two of them in coherent shape.
Or maybe they’d just had more practise at hiding it. Parrot hardly felt alive, let alone sane. And Leo just seemed angry, in a way that defied all definition of anger.
“So.”
“No.”
“Alright.”
Parrot laughed. It was a bitter, broken thing. He hadn’t laughed in a long time.
If he closed his eyes, he could imagine Wifies beside him. They’d come out together, Jumper and Derapchu was lingering out of misplaced fear, because Wifies was better now, he was like he was meant to be and they were all on their way to forgive each other.
If Parrot stretched out a hand, blind to this paradise that had been created for him and him only, he could clasp the fingers of the only person on this server who deserved a place to rest.
Wifies could be walking beside him, so long as Parrot didn’t look at what freedom might be. Wifies could be there, right there, because he’d come back before, and because reality meant nothing between them. Wifies could make anything true. Parrot would believe it, if it made him a hero.
“Parrot. Watch out.”
Leo placed a hand on his shoulder, trying to move him, and Parrot-
Screamed.
Shrieked, really, a ragged sound punched out of him like Leo had burned him.
Really, it wasn’t much at all, just a cry of shock and horror and disgust as Parrot recoiled, staggering away. His shoulder hit the wall of the watchtower, and he crumpled, sliding down in a mess of panting and shaking and a bone-deep disbelief that this was happening to him.
He didn’t know why he’d done that. It was just Leo, Leo was affectionate, there was no good reason Parrot should throw himself away like he was a warden.
But Parrot felt himself flinch again, as Jumper crouched beside him, brow furrowed and pitiful worry on her lips.
“Parrot? Are you hurt? Why-“
Parrot shook his head. No. To all of it. To whatever his body was doing to him, whatever this had done to him, because that was the first time he’d been touched in months.
The first time.
Months.
The closest he’d come before had been on that flying machine, rigid beside Wifies, wondering if he was going to be left to starve. Parrot remembered it now, and he was sobbing, because he should have hugged him, should have held on, because now he’d never have a chance to again.
“Hey, Parrot, I- I’m sorry. I didn’t realise… you’d…”
He needed to get away from them. This had been an awful idea. He didn’t deserve his friends. He’d gotten his first, best friend killed, and now he was just a broken mess the face of what remained.
Parrot staggered to his feet, breathing too hard, frozen in place by sheer terror at the idea of brushing against one of them. He couldn’t do touch. He’d refused to touch Wifies, and that had been a mistake, an awful mistake, and Parrot regretted everything.
They were all staring at him. Watching. Parrot was sick of being watched, so, so sick of it, because he didn’t want them to see him. They didn’t get it. They thought he’d been wrong, for resisting.
He had been wrong. He was staying anyway. Wifies had been right, and Parrot didn’t want to admit how everything felt wrong and nauseous inside of him.
Running seemed like a good option.
Leo nearly caught him as Parrot bolted to the trees. Nearly, operative word. Nearly, nearly held him back from doing something so stupid it was burning at his feathers.
Nearly, nearly, nearly.
Parrot had nearly gotten out. Nearly avoided being the one to choose who lived or died. Nearly realised that wasn’t a choice he should ever be given.
It had been one of those nearlys, that had gotten Wifies killed. A thin sliver of probability, odds after odds mown down by Parrot’s stubbornness. Until there was nowhere else to go. Nowhere for the probability to shunt them, no more tracks to hurtle down. Just a brick wall, plated in marble, and nowhere left to run.
His feet snapped sticks, and his feathers tore and were torn by leaves, and Parrot was destroying everything, he’d destroyed this place, and he’d destroyed everything good he’d ever been given. He was destroying himself, something eating away at him from the inside out, and tears were burning at his eyes, and Parrot wished he could dissolve right here.
So many chances. Wifies had given him so many chances. Chances to escape the survival odds outside, chances to be happy, to turn back the clock like Parrot only realised the need for now.
But Parrot had thought he was lucky. He’d made his own luck, built it with broken talons and tears, because he’d thought escaping banality was the same as avoiding the majority percentage.
He hit a tree, shoulder-first, and collapsed sobbing. Everything was spinning. It was one big wheel, rotating around him, the sun rose and set in here for him, and Parrot cried tears of selfish, bitter rage, because he could never be grateful for what he had.
Everything felt like Wifies. His voice, his eyes, his expression, going eerily still when Parrot broke his machines. That had been stupid. Cruel, and stupid, and the actions of a selfish bird who couldn’t see past what he thought was his own survival.
Even so, what had he done? One death. One death, and a thousand blocks of TNT, and a few scarred minds. None of it mattered. None of it would change anything.
The world would forget this. Parrot couldn’t even beg history to forgive him. Wifies had made it perfect, made a world for them.
He’d made a world Parrot could destroy, like he did everything, and no one would even be there to blame him.
Parrot cried. His tears were hot, and he wished they washed away ash. Wished he’d not been coward enough to not stay and watch, so he could say he had strength of will, at least. The branches tore at his arms. Nothing in here was soft, anymore. Wifies wouldn’t forgive him.
A small, broken laugh slipped out, as Parrot wrapped his arms around himself, shivering and sniffling and choking on every aborted gasp.
Wifies would forgive him. He was here, now, in Parrot’s mind, and he’d already forgiven him. There was a cold hand, running through his hair, a remark about how the stars looked nice, if he ever wanted to see them.
Parrot raised his head. His vision blurred. His head spun. Wifies pointed, finger blanched and white. Parrot saw stars.
The cold hand fell to his arm. And it was dead, dead, Parrot had killed him, and there was blood leaking over his wrist, dynamite in his throat, tearing him apart from the inside as the stars lit the fuse of his tear trails.
Everything was exploding, inside Parrot’s mind, and he was sobbing, pleading, without even a voice, just to go back. To do something, anything differently. To be the one to forgive, not the one forgiven.
All he wanted was Wifies back. To give him one final chance. Even if his odds had fallen to none, Parrot wanted to believe in miracles, just this once.
He’d been crying for a long time, when Derapchu found him.
Parrot couldn’t hear him. Or he could, but it was underwater. He’d shifted wavelengths. He flinched, depth perception shot out by tears sticking to his eyelids, terrified of Derapchu touching him.
He didn’t. Parrot didn’t relax. He just stared, pathetic and panting and blinking too fast. He nodded. To what, he didn’t know. Everything. He’d do anything. He never wanted to do anything again.
He felt like an animal. Dirt matted in his clothes, leaves in his wings and his hair, a wild kind of pounding in his chest and teary eyes.
Parrot stood, when Derapchu gestured. He stayed. He waited, waited for Wifies to come find him, waited for Wifies to talk to him again.
“-can leave you alone, if you need space?”
Space. This was a big world. Prison. World. Didn’t matter. Parrot was sick of specifics. He could hide from them. He could hide from all of them.
He was an animal. They all were. Selfish, and vicious, and cruel. They’d hurt anyone, just to survive. Parrot felt the wounds, clawed across his chest, claws digging through his eyes, blinding him to what mattered.
Tears ran down his cheeks like blood, as he shook his head.
No more space. No more running. No more letting himself ruin everything. If Wifies couldn’t be here, to be the only thing between him and killing all his friends, Parrot would have to make do.
He should have known how lucky he was.
Then Leo was there, and Jumper, and Parrot wanted Jumper, for some stupid reason, more than any of them. Maybe she could tell him what was wrong with him.
He must have said her name. Because she was there, not touching him, because he was untouchable, now. Protected from the world by an impenetrable bubble, made of his own knowledge of what he destroyed.
“Parrot? What’s wrong?”
None of them were Wifies. Parrot just wanted what he’d had. He’d always wanted that, and more, and now the moment he knew what it was like to lose something, he just wanted to hold on to when it had been good.
“We don’t blame you. None of this was your fault.”
But it was. It was all his fault. He’d driven Wifies this far, and hadn’t stopped even when he felt the consequences of his own actions. He should have stopped, while he still had the chance. He should have been stopped.
No, he had been stopped. He’d been held back, pinned down, and he’d fought like a downed bird, because all he saw was his own survival. All he cared about was himself. Wifies had been right, and all Parrot had ever done was try to inflict himself back onto the world outside.
That, then, was the tribute he could pay. To Wifies. To confine himself to this cage, to run around and around in this wheel of paradise until he tired himself out and died in here.
“-him stand up?”
“I don’t want to touch-“
Loud. Loud, loud, too loud, all Parrot craved was Wifies’s voice, his cool, corpse-dead hands. Skin rendered into slivers, blood dripping between the reconstituted chunks Wifies was rebuilt from, in his mind. Wifies would make this make sense. He’d stop Parrot caring, if it didn’t.
“-‘re right, we shouldn’t-“
“-an’t leave him he-“
“Guys, can’t we-“
“Parrot?”
Jumper, again, she was staying. Wifies had spent a little time, with Jumper. It hit Parrot, now, how little he’d truly known. He’d encountered them a few times, when he’d tried to go for midnight walks, before he started sleeping too regularly through the nights. He didn’t even know which of the guards Wifies had favoured. Maybe that would have been the thing to save him, if he’d known.
None of it would matter. But Jumper, now, felt the closest he could possibly get to the best idea of what Parrot could have, if he truly was incapable of having a friend.
“What?”
His voice was barely working. Hoarse from screaming, letters plucked reluctantly from his throat, mind hoarse from screaming, body hoarse from screaming, and Parrot was still screaming, inside, but all he did was shake under Jumper’s wool-soft eyes.
“Can we take you back to your house? You’ll be safe there.”
Oh. Oh, he knew that. There was no option, but to be safe. Parrot was functionally immortal, or he clung to the idea of it, so long as he stayed within these walls. Wifies could still protect him.
And his house. His house sounded nice. Half-built, forever abandoned, because he was a ghost here, now. There was no one to fix what he broke. He wouldn’t dare to touch a thing, if it disturbed this machine left to idle and rust, devoid of its creator.
“Yes.”
He was out of questions. Burnt out of curiosity. There was nothing left inside him but the dimming remnants of a life he’d been given, that he could never regain, now he’d thrown it away.
Jumper pulled her sleeves down, over her hands, and held out her sweater paws. It was cute, and Parrot felt his lips twitch, but he wasn’t sure if he looked appalling or pathetic. It had been so long since he’d had to be human.
Nonetheless, he took them, and was pulled to his feet just before his weight tipped both of them back into the undergrowth. There was something in the way Jumper dug her heels in, the way her arms pulled back and into her chest, her muscles tensing and flexing like hydraulics, that spoke of adrenaline. That spoke of normal, weak, flailing humanity worn thin. Whatever was inside all of them was leaking through, and there was no room left to breathe.
Inside Parrot, there was nothing. Nothing but a stupid, helpless bird, driven into the dirt to rail against the expanse of a world that didn’t care to have him.
He eyed Jumper, Leo, Derapchu, and idled over the thought of throwing up, until it, too, faded to the full ache of continued existence.
Grief was a cruel agent of numbing, when it came. Parrot dizzied, and righted himself, and stumbled. Heard himself gasp. Heard his feathers slip out of position, heard his heart slip out of his ribcage to be skewered by the jutting bone Wifies had left when he’d tried to hold on by it.
He heard Wifies. Everything. At once. He heard his own body, beating and cycling and moving still, solely at the mercy of the one person who’d put the world out of the misery of him.
“Shit, he’s gonna-“
Pass out.
Look at that. He could playact Wifies, carry his soul alongside. See those few steps into the future, enough for it to hurt, never enough to change. Never enough to save.
Parrot gasped, and laughed, and heard his best friend’s dying breath echo inside his own lungs, as the world toppled around him.