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There’s a snuffling noise coming from somewhere. Is it from his dog, sitting beside him and looking at his tear-streaked face with wet, doleful eyes? Is it coming from the dying fire, crackling out its last few moments? Is it coming from the snow, landing so gently outside?
Each of these possibilities less likely than the other. Parrot realizes, distantly, that it’s coming from him.
It’s coming from him, kneeling on the rough hand-crafted lovingly-made spruce floor. It’s a terrible floor, and little splinters dig into his knees and draw blood ‘cause he’s kneeling on it. He’s kneeling and whimpering and snuffling, and staining the wood with his tears and blood. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. All he knows is that he is honestly and truly alone.
All he knows is that Wifies is gone and dead, pale face upturned to a room of bobbing shimmering blue-green pearls, face up to life, void grasping hungrily at his feet. Eating up the person Parrot loved so, so dearly bit-by-bit, pixel-by-pixel, code-by-code. Corrupting and corrupting until there was no one left, until the Wifies he loved was gone.
Or - no. Maybe that’s not right. Maybe Wifies was invisible; maybe he was dressed just the same as everyone else; maybe he was a nobody. Maybe the universe didn’t care about it at all. Maybe the words that whispered in his mind, echoing and echoing, saying I love you were lies. Maybe he looked down at his feet; maybe he was betrayed. Was he betrayed? That Parrot had caused his death?
Did it hurt? Did he scream? Was he scared? Was it fast, or slow? Did he have to die? If he did, why couldn’t Ash have killed him then and there so Parrot could curl up around his best friend like he was dying (because he was dying, his universe was dying and he was dying because he didn’t want to live in a cruel lonely universe that had killed Wifies) and whisper reassurances into his ear and watch the blood stain the snow pink?
Parrot doesn’t dare to go out into the whistling snow. It sounds like screams. It sounds like Wifies’ screams. He stays in the house, slumped over the terrible sofa Wifies made. Wifies made. For him. For him, god, for him, Wifies made it for him, Wifies made everything for him, would do anything for him. Parrot would do anything for him, too; anything anything, would try to fly up to the sun and catch it if it just meant that Wifies would be next to him right here and now.
Now all he can do is dig a grave in their - his house, front and center, so it’s an inconvenience and he has to walk around it on the rare occasions he decides to get up. He buries nothing in the grave; null; cold dead air, maybe.
He has a yin-and-yang hanging around his left wrist. It dangles from a shiny metal chain. The chain attaches to a strip of fabric cut off from Wifies’ headband. The strip of vibrant purple fabric is wrapped around his wrist.
The black-and-white pendant jingles, too-loud, as he rips up the floor with his axe. He would rip up the walls, too, but that would let the snow in and he hates snow. And that would let the screams of wind in.
He leaves Wifies’ grave as the only thing on the ground intact.
He hasn’t fed his dog in days? weeks? months?
Either way, the poor creature is starving, its ribs showing. Parrot would feel pity, but there is no heart left in him to pity. He barely counts as Parrot anymore. What is he, what is Parrot without Wifies? What is he without Parrot-and-a-Wifies?
He puts the dog bowls by the door. He fills them with steak. It’s not as if he eats steak much himself, anyway. Best to give others joy when he can’t feel much of anything anymore.
He’s starting to regret ripping up the floor. He uses some rotting old oak planks to make a few new platforms on the dirt. They don’t blend in nicely with the dirt beneath, or the spruce walls of the house. They look like scars. He leaves them. His dog seems to like it, anyway.
When Parrot returns from a sickly-sweet prison, the first thing he does is rip the whole house down. Who cares if the wind drives into his ribcage like knives? Who cares if the snow buries him alive?
Not him, that’s for sure. He huddles in the snow, a ball of pale green amidst the white.
There is an avian looking at him. He looks innocent and painfully earnest. His name is Theo. He didn’t look this earnest before. Or is it just Parrot who’s gotten older?
Theo draws him away from the not-house he lives in. A once-house, a memory-house, a ghost-house. A house that doesn’t exist. He gives Parrot a new, real house. They live there together.
“Come out? Please?” Theo asks, his voice hovering on the knife’s edge of begging. This is - well, it’s nice. It’s nice to have a living body instead of a dead one, something warm, not cold like snow.
The thing is, Parrot’s dead. It’s nice to be warmed by someone else, but he’s cold and dead. He died when Wifies died. He died again when the Director died. He’s twice over dead now. So really, Theo’s attempts are fruitless.
“Do you like it?”
Parrot considers, looking around at the shop. “Yeah, dude,” he laughs, easily. It feels freeing, even though he hasn’t laughed like this in a thousand years. “It’s really nice.”
“‘Kay. I was a little scared that you wouldn’t like it ‘cause I know you don’t like coffee, but they do sell a lot of other stuff so -”
“I know! I know!” Parrot holds up a hand to stop him, a grin emerging on his face. “You don’t have to convince me.”
“Okay. Good.” Every word seems to breathe a little life into him, warming him up from the inside. Theo, slowly reconstructing him, bit-by-bit pixel-by-pixel, code-by-code.