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Skye floats, further into the clouds than Parrot remembers being in a long, long time. Theo grumbles to himself by his side as the wind swallows the finer details of his words. Parrot snags a brief look at him, fleeting. Finds Theo with feathers ruffled, sticking out uncomfortably, and caked in dirt after weeks spent fighting, fleeing, flying through battles with Boosfer and his tag-alongs.
“Fuck,” he hears Theo say, louder now.
“You alright?” Parrot asks.
“Yeah, just — shit, my wings are killing me. I haven’t flown properly in a while.” Theo grunts, rolling his shoulders before dragging one wing forward to begin to pull twigs and clumps of greenery out from between unstraightened feathers.
It’s a little puzzling — he and Theo haven’t been doing it often, but they spent some mornings in Capital City together, finding time to soar through the greenery nearby just to stay in practice. Parrot hasn’t gone nearly as far as he used to on his previous adventures, exhaustion deep in his bones keeping him from putting in the effort. But Theo is always pushing him to do something for himself besides staying holed up in their potion’s shop.
“You haven’t?” Parrot asks, a little more slowly. Theo doesn’t tear his focus away from his wing as he answers.
“Well, not in a fight at least. Or out in the wild. Different from swooping around Capital City, you know what I mean. Or did know, I guess.”
He does. Parrot used to spend hours trying to clear debris and filth from his feathers. It was easier with help, but he doesn’t have anyone he trusts quite enough for that anymore.
The last throwaway comment from Theo is what sticks, though. Or did know, I guess. Like Theo knew that he didn’t fly the way he used to anymore. It’s not the hardest thing in the world to notice that Parrot has wings and doesn’t use them, but he just — never realized that Theo had noticed the difference. Never knew he paid so much attention in the Farlands, and saw all the ways Parrot had changed after their months apart.
Maybe that was why Theo handed over the Elytra to Parrot the moment they met up again. Another for the list of small things Parrot takes for granted: kindness in the face of anger. Separate from fury instead of in spite of it. It twists like a knife to the gut.
“Right,” he says after a pause. “Yeah.”
“I remember you used to zoom around way back at, like,” Theo gestures aimlessly into the blue distance. Bringing Parrot back to the ornate and grandiose buildings of the Farlands, old frustrations with inaction a bitter taste in the back of his mouth. Too much like the present, Theo dodging responsibility while being unable to understand Parrot’s point of view.
“Yeah, I guess,” Parrot shrugs. They falter into silence a few moments later.
Things are still raw around the edges — Parrot has never been able to shed anything easily and Theo’s words from days prior still linger in the front of his mind, hovering flies kissing fruit every time he remembers anything in too-clear detail. The sharp exhale of a disbelieving laugh when he said he would save the server, the sarcastic applause after handing over a little slice of himself and giving it to Theo. Misguided attempts to try and make Theo understand.
It’s just confirmations of what Parrot should have realized already; Theo knew nothing about him, and he most likely never will. There is never going to be any amount of words that can explain everything Parrot has gone through that has shaped him into who he is now that can compare to physically being there with him, surviving by his side through it all.
Only one person has done that, and Parrot doesn’t want Theo to end up the same.
The wind, static but strong, bursts unexpectedly, pressing the strap of Parrot’s bag against his shoulder as it tries to fly off Skye’s back. It burns unexpectedly, drawing an involuntary “Ow,” from Parrot’s mouth.
He hears Theo pause immediately, looking over to find him strangely alert. Eyes a little too wide to be casual.
“What, did you get hurt?” He asks. “You know what — how did you even find the treasure? What went on with that?”
The sudden intensity is almost off-putting, but not enough to unsettle him. Parrot shrugs, turning his eyes to the empty sky ahead if just to find something other than Theo to look at. Ignores the memory of gunpowder and heat against his skin, how close he was to Boomie before their body dissolved in less than a second.
“I just … followed the compass. Found it underwater. It was actually pretty sick, there was an empire and everything. I wish—” Parrot cuts himself off abruptly, then. Unwilling to finish that thought, catching it before it could float off further than allowed.
“Wish what?” Theo asks, worry briefly forgotten for curiosity.
That you were there to see it.
“Nothing,” Parrot says instead. He doesn’t want to know if Theo regretted leaving him behind. He doesn’t think he would like any answer he got.
“But you didn’t get hurt?” Theo persists.
Parrot remembers the stabshot. The way it cut through the earth, left a deep enough well that Parrot could imagine it flooded with rainwater in the future, something of use made from pointless death. Maybe he had been standing a little close — adrenaline always buzzes in his system for a while, and while it fades now, he’s realizing that maybe all those aches he thought were from sore muscles might’ve been more serious.
“Well,” Parrot says haltingly.
“Okay, get over here,” Theo replies immediately, wings tucked behind him neat and small at once after hearing Parrot’s hesitance. As if Parrot mattered more to Theo than his ability to fight, to fly.
“I need to steer Skye,” he protests. It’s more for show than anything, ritual repeated enough that Parrot is used to denying help more often than not. The vehemence he gets in response jolts him from his usual routine of denial.
“God, can you just — think about yourself for once? Like, genuinely?”
His grip slackens on the reins in a rare moment of genuine shock.
Parrot lets himself get tugged towards Theo after that, tensing under the gaze that Theo rakes over him. It takes a moment for Theo to zero in on his shoulder, tugging the strap of the bag Parrot wears everywhere off to find a bloodstain, still drying, slow-scabbing wound stuck to cloth.
“Oh,” Parrot says, a little faint. “I didn’t know that was there.”
“Oh, he says,” Theo mocks, voice tight. “Didn’t know that was there, he says.”
Knife appearing from seemingly-nowhere, Theo cuts through the cloth despite Parrot’s quiet protest, bulldozing over any upset. A one-track mind, digging through his own bag by his side for bandages and tweezers and needles.
It reveals a wound that’s not quite awful but not something that can be ignored. Probably some shrapnel from the stabshot slicing through him when he wasn’t looking, drowned out by adrenaline after Boomie died in front of him. Parrot can recall the stinging from saltwater now, in retrospect, but at the time, even his elation at finding the treasure couldn’t stop him from floating into a repetitive haze of packing up materials and bringing them to the surface while replaying every moment of that explosion in the back of his mind.
When he found Theo with Skye, hours later, the stinging faded to a throb. And then he was too stuck on old apologies and how they tasted just as same as Theo’s now to really think about his shoulder.
“Could just use a golden apple,” Parrot points out after a few minutes watching Theo organize his things. He snorts in response.
“Whoever taught you that a golden apple is a good substitute for proper healing is a dumbass. Full offence.”
“It works!” Parrot argues. He’s downed his fair share in moments he was meant to die otherwise.
“Yeah, if you’re dying during a fight and need to stay alive.” Theo shoots that point down immediately, “But if you’re otherwise fine and have time to worry about bacteria and infection, then it’s best to deal with it the old-fashioned way.”
“It’s going to take forever,” Parrot says, a little later, because he’s always been stubborn and Theo can’t get him to give in easily with that short of an argument.
“The time’s gonna pass anyway.” Theo shrugs.
“Yeah, but I’ll be hurt for more of it,” He argues.
“Aren’t you always?”
The words stun Parrot into silence. Theo continues anyway, soaking a cloth in water before starting to dab at the corners of Parrot’s wound.
“Aren’t you always getting beat up or pushed around or cut up, literally all of those things for this whole saving the world mission you have going on? It feels like more often than not you’ve got a totem on you and you’re telling me you’re about to die. Like, really, what’s the difference between that and having a few stitches? When’s the last time you weren’t hurt?”
And for a moment so long it feels like a lifetime, Parrot can’t breathe. Torn back to time spent surrounded by obsidian walls, safe from everything but himself. Not the first time he realized he could turn a weapon against himself when nothing else would be able to hurt him but the first time he followed through on that errant thought. Chasing pain like a vice even after escaping, some twisted comfort in the knowledge that he could die. That nothing could stop him if he wanted to. Taunting death while being terrified of it. Grim reaper wearing gray while ribbons fluttered like white flags in the wind, asking for surrender.
Parrot, ever-stubborn, finding humour in it all. Laying back in bed with aches in his arms and legs after hours spent doing everything he could to help anyone he came across. Doesn’t it make you mad, he thought then, that you died and I’m still chasing death. Doesn’t it make you mad that you tormented me for nothing?
Far later into those nights, when he stares at the ceiling long enough to memorize the grooves in the wood, Parrot’s mind is a weapon turned against himself.
Doesn’t it make you mad, he asks himself, that he died for nothing?
Parrot’s never brave enough to try and find an answer. Sleep feels like death, those nights.
Theo threads a needle as they drift into silence. Words lost in the rolling clouds, damp against his bare skin. Eyes stinging before Theo presses the point against the flesh next to Parrot’s wound and speaks.
“I’m going to start, alright?”
Quiet as he tries to be, Theo’s voice overtakes all regardless. Parrot closes his eyes and nods.
Rhythmic and practiced. Hands that are used to this routine, patient enough for healing that persists instead of easy fixes that everyone else seemed to employ. Parrot can’t imagine someone like Flame or Wemmbu sitting still long enough for things like this. Allowing themselves slow acts of caretaking that make Parrot want to throw up the longer they last.
He can’t bring himself to open his eyes. Parrot anchors himself to the line of warmth by his side and pretends this doesn’t feel like nights spent in a cabin dusted with snow.
“I am sorry,” Theo says, quieter now. Apology brushing against Parrot’s skin. “For being harsh. But I still think you’re…” He trails off and Parrot, unlike himself, doesn’t ask him to continue. He feels hollowed out even as Theo puts him together again.
“I wish you didn’t want to kill yourself,” Theo says bluntly, a little while later. He’s almost done with the wound, on the last few stitches out of about ten. “It’s selfish to say but I wish you didn’t.”
“I don’t want to kill myself,” Parrot says automatically.
“Don’t you?” Theo asks. It doesn’t sound like a question.
“No,” he insists.
“There’s not that much of a difference between wanting to die and not caring if you do,” Theo points out. It hits like a blow to the chest.
“I don’t want to die,” Parrot repeats. There’s none of the force behind the words that Parrot means for there to be. It just sounds less like he’s convincing Theo and more like he’s convincing himself.
Theo doesn’t say much more, simply tying off the last thread and busying himself with cleaning off the needle again, wetting his cloth and wiping Parrot’s wound carefully. Last bits of blood speckled around puckering skin cleaned off until he’s remade once more.
“Can you just tell me when you mean it?” Theo asks quietly. Genuine. Like he wants a truthful answer, and will believe in whatever he hears. Parrot blinks, looks away. Too far from the ground to peer over and find the ocean, too far from afternoon to hang onto blue skies for comfort. Even those grow darker. For a moment, he can close his eyes and feel snowflakes against his skin.
“If you’re around,” Parrot says a long while later. It shouldn’t feel as final as it does.
Theo doesn’t seem surprised — just nods, packing his bag meticulously. Then, hesitates before returning to his wings, back where he was only twenty or so minutes ago. Sorting through feathers once more, like he hasn’t torn Parrot in two while trying to put him back together.
Healing reminds Parrot of woodcarving, sometimes — growing around the parts of himself that were gouged away, no regard for the pieces that were sloughed off to make his pointed angles softened and gentler touches into something sharper.
Parrot is both familiar and a stranger in his body; he can’t make himself put a hand on Theo’s shoulder, too scared he’ll turn the moment between them into a palimpsest. Words stuck in his throat like blood behind teeth. A thin line between now and the times when the cold air dried out his crackling white knuckles. Everything eating and eaten, life a circle that brings him back to sitting next to a friend after fighting, telling them he doesn’t want to die. No matter how much it seems like he does.
“You can’t die,” Parrot says without thinking. Theo looks over at him, almost confused.
“What?”
“You can’t die,” he repeats. Theo doesn’t seem any closer to understanding — worry is a vignette around his torn edges that loathes to fade. He clears his throat, laughing a little awkwardly.
“I thought I was worried about you dying,” Theo says. Trying to lighten the mood a little, a poor joke that Parrot doesn’t know how to reply to. He’s dug his grave and doesn’t know how to get out of it — not without a helping hand that won’t ever come.
"I won't, alright?" Theo says, more serious, when it's clear that's not enough. In another world, it's reassurance enough.
Parrot doesn’t answer, just stares at his hands for a long few moments before taking the reins again. Holding them so tight they press uncomfortably against his palms, nearly sharp in their pressure.
The evening sky ahead grows ever-darker. Parrot’s knuckles are cold.