Chapter Text
“I never wanna leave here,” Parrot says, in Wifies’ house, in Wifies’ bed.
It’s a secret, sleepy sentence, sighed against the side of his friend’s shoulder as he reads a book and Parrot comes down from battle-high adrenaline.
“Yeah?” Wifies murmurs, absently. He’s still reading whatever it is he’s reading. The cover is red and the spine is black. Parrot’s not sure what it is but he doesn’t care, because it only matters that it makes Wifies happy.
“Yeah,” Parrot sighs. He doesn’t clarify if he means the Empire or the End or Wifies’ shoulder. He’s not sure which of those he means, only that this is where he needs to be right now and forever.
“Put your hand on my back,” he huffs into the soft black cotton of his best friend’s hoodie. There’s no please or thank you or if you would kindly—it’s not an order or a command, either. It’s just the logical conclusion of the hypothetical condition. Like an electrical pulse snapping from synapse to synapse; like redstone chasing down the dust-line. If and then: what Parrot wants; what Wifies will give.
Wifies’ hand is wide and as heavy as a chorus fruit and it sits right between his wings; not too much pressure and not too little. He holds him down to earth; a gentle, reassuring weight, pinning him down to the island, down to the endstone and the miles of void underneath.
“If I asked you to stay,” Parrot asks. “Would you?”
“Of course,” he replies, easily. Instantly. Wifies turns another page. An Advanced Guide to Chunk-Bans, it says on the spine. He’s halfway through. Maybe he’s cross-checking it against personal experience.
“Really? You wouldn’t get bored?”
“I’d do anything you asked me to,” says Wifies, and Parrot sighs, and melts into soft black velveteen cushions on Wifies’ white bed in Wifies’ house, curled up against Wifies’ shoulder with Wifies’ steady hand square in the center of his back.
“Yeah,” he murmurs, curling one wing over his friend’s lap. “I know.” Wifies presses him closer in return and they while away the dayless afternoon like that, draped together like sheets of linen in the laundry-basket, so sleepily entangled it’s hard to tell where teal-blue feathers end and Wifies begins. Parrot-and-a-Wifies, that bastard Spoke used to crow whenever he saw them. Parrot-and-a-Wifies! Two-in-one, one-in-two, perpetually, perfectly in sync; like the swirling yin-and-yang medallion hanging from Parrot’s belt, or Parrot’s feather hanging from Wifies’ ear. They traded mementos months and months ago, when Parrot invited him over to the birdcage for a game of cards and an invitation to a scavenger hunt.
Wifies said yes, of course, and Parrot said I knew you would, and then Wifies walked into and out of a chunkban and when Parrot said he got him out Wifies said I knew you would.
I knew you would, I know you will, I know you.
How delicate—how difficult it is—to be known. Like the precarious, precious, self-contained gravity of the end; the impossible archipelago of pearl-colored islands orbiting themselves in the mist of true nothingness. You gotta put a list of trust in that layer of endstone. You gotta put a lot of trust in that hand on your back.
The End is dayless, nightless, perpetually lit by an eerie inner glow; draped in pale moonless moonlight. Wifies’ bedroom in Wifies’ house has large open windows and a bed large enough for one person to sprawl out or for two people to hold each other tightly. No breeze filters in from the island; the End is still; windless, motionless; and yet still the sweet smell of Chorus fruit—sickeningly sweet, like loquat rotting in the late summer—drifts in from the window.
Parrot won’t lie to himself; he misses the Overworld. The heat of the jungle, the greenness of it all, the warmth of the sun—the feeling of the wind in his wings—but how could any of that other world compare to this immaculate, impossible safety–to this total security–to Wifies, right here?
In the absence of an evening, Parrot whispers, suddenly. “Would you die for me?”
Wifies turns a page. “You’re so curious today.”
Parrot sighs. It’s a slight, quiet sound; almost reassured. “Is that a no?”
“I’d die for you.” Wifies tells him, absently.
“Would you kill for me?” He already knows the answer, but he asks anyway.
“Yes,” Wifies says. “I’d kill for you.”
“If I asked you to—“
“Anything, Parrot,” Wifies says, and he puts his book down, at last. It has that strange ring of an oath—as if he had meant to answer lightly and halfway through had realized that instead of a joke he had told the deadly truth. “I’d do anything you asked me to.”
Parrot pauses. He readjusts his wings slightly as he turns his face into Wifies’ hoodie. “What if I asked you to kill me?”
He can feel Wifies’ breath stutter. It’s a testament to how good of an actor he really is, because if he weren’t pressed to his side he wouldn’t have even noticed a reaction in Wifies. Even as his chest stutters, his face stays porcelain-still. “Would you ask?”
“No,” Parrot replies. “What if I asked you to let me die?”
“Don’t,” Wifies replies, picking up his book. “And you won’t need to find out.”