Archive of Our Own ^beta

Parrot yanked at the chains again.  

The metal bit into his wrists hard enough that he hissed, teeth clenched, breath stuttering. The cuffs were freezing—cold that didn’t just sit on his skin but leeched, as if the iron were actively drinking the heat from him—and no matter how still he held himself, they didn’t warm up. They didn’t soften. They didn’t give.

Of course they didn't. 

When he shifted, trying to ease the pressure, the ropes binding his wings pulled tight instead. Coarse fibers scraped against feathers already bent wrong, already sore. The sensation crawled under his skin, sharp and insistent, setting his shoulders twitching as if his body were trying to tear itself free without his say-so.

He stopped struggling before he could make it worse.

Panicking doesn’t help. Panicking has never helped.

He forced himself to breathe. Slow. In through his nose. Count it. Think.

If he didn’t get out soon, there were only two endings left to him.

Death—

—or something worse.

Footsteps echoed.

Parrot’s head snapped up.

The door creaked open. He didn’t know why the slowness of it made his chest tighten, only that it did. That each inch of movement stretched the moment thinner, taut as wire. 

The room didn’t change, not really. No shadows shifted the way they shouldn't have. But the air thickened, pressure settling in his lungs like the world itself had decided to hold its breath.

Then he saw it.

Netherite armor, dark and impossibly solid, resolving out of the shadows of the ajar door. Quartz trims caught the light, sharp and deliberate, outlining a figure that hadn’t been there a second ago.

The Director had arrived.

Parrot straightened as much as the chains allowed. He refused to start this curled up and small. If this was a negotiation—and it always was, with people like this—he was not doing it on his knees.

“So,” Parrot said. His voice came out hoarse but steady enough. “You finally decided to stop lurking.”

The Director didn’t respond immediately. He tilted his head, just slightly, as if examining a flawed piece of glass.

“You’re hurting yourself,” he said at last.

Parrot barked a laugh. It scraped his throat. “Yeah? Funny how that happens when you chain someone to a wall.”

“You always were bad at knowing when to stop.” The Director took a step closer. “You push until something breaks. Usually you.”

Parrot’s jaw tightened. “If you’re here to monologue, save it. If you’re here to kill me—do it. Just don’t pretend this is concern.”

A pause.

Then, calmly: “I don’t want you dead.”

That stopped him. Just for a beat.

“Oh?” Parrot shot back, recovering a beat too late. “Could’ve fooled me. You’ve been murdering your way through everyone I care about.”

The Director’s helmet turned, quartz flashing like a blade. “I’ve been removing variables.”

Parrot leaned forward as far as the chains allowed. Iron bit deeper into his wrists. “They’re not variables. They’re people. And if you think killing them will make me—”

“—stay?” the Director finished. “Listen?”

Parrot faltered. Barely a heartbeat.

The Director noticed.

“You always listen eventually,” he continued. “When you’re tired. When you’re hurt. When you’ve run out of impossible plans.”

Something burned in Parrot’s chest, sharp and ugly. “You don’t know me.” 

“I know you better than anyone.”

The certainty of it raised his skin in a prickle, like static before a strike.

“I won’t do it,” Parrot said, firmer now. “Whatever you’re trying to make me do. I won’t help you. I won’t be your trophy, your symbol, your—your excuse.”

The Director stepped closer. Close enough that Parrot could see faint scratches in the netherite, places where it had been reforged. Repaired. Evidence of damage survived.

“Even if it means they die?” he asked softly. 

Parrot swallowed. His mouth felt dry, thick. “You think I haven’t made that choice before?”

The Director tilted his head again.

“I’ve already killed several,” he said. “Haven’t I?”

The words slid between Parrot’s ribs and stuck.

His mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

For a moment, the room went unbearably still. Parrot stared at the armor, at the warped reflection of himself in its dark surface. Faces crowded his mind—smiles, voices, plans that had never finished becoming real.

His shoulders sagged, just a fraction.

The Director straightened.

“Good,” he said. “You’re thinking.”

He turned away, already half-way to the door. “I’ll give you time. You always come to the right conclusion—eventually.”

Something clattered softly at Parrot’s feet. A bowl. Bread. Water.

“Eat,” the Director added. “You’ll need your strength.”

Then he was gone.

Parrot slumped against the chains. His breath shook despite his effort to steady it. His wrists burned. His wings ached dully, deep in the joints.

His heart felt hollowed out—like a space something important had been scooped from and left echoing.

Still—

His eyes hardened.

“I’ll find another way,” he whispered to the empty room.

Because he always did.

Even if this time, the person who claimed to “know him best”—Parrot scoffed at the thought—was the one trying to cage him.

—

The air shifted again.

Parrot felt it before he saw anything—the same pressure as before, the same wrongness, like the world being folded inward along invisible seams. The hairs along his arms prickled. His breath caught halfway in. He lifted his head slowly, carefully, as if sudden movement might make whatever it was snap shut around him.

Netherite armour stepped into the cell.

It didn’t clank or scrape the way armor should. It simply was—dark and impossibly solid, resolving out of the dim like a thought given shape. Quartz trims caught the light in sharp, deliberate lines, too clean for a place like this.

The Director stood a few paces away, helmet angled just so.

Parrot straightened as much as the chains allowed. Iron bit into his wrists. He welcomed it. Pain was grounding. Pain meant he was still here.

“Have you changed your mind?” the Director asked.

Parrot didn’t hesitate. “No.”

The word came out rougher than he meant, scraped raw by disuse, but it held.

A beat passed. Long enough for Parrot to wonder—briefly, absurdly—if the Director was disappointed.

Then the Director sighed.

Not sharply. Not angrily. Just… tired. The sound slipped through the cell like something human that had no business being there.

“I gave you time,” he said. “Food. Rest. Space to think.”

Parrot barked a laugh. It hurt his throat. “You gave me a cage.” He tugged at the chains, just enough to make them clink, metal singing faintly against stone. “And a threat. That’s not thinking—that’s coercion.”

The Director stepped closer.

The distance shrank. The air felt thicker for it, pressure settling in Parrot’s lungs like the world leaning in to listen.

“You always confuse the two,” the Director said. “You call it coercion when someone stops you from hurting yourself.”

Parrot’s smile was brittle enough to crack. “By killing everyone else?”

“They were already dead the moment you decided to keep flying headfirst into danger,” the Director shot back. “I’m just making it obvious.”

Something hot twisted in Parrot’s chest. His wings twitched against the bindings before he could stop them, rope biting into feathers already bent wrong. The burn crawled under his skin.

“You don’t get to decide who’s expendable.”

“No,” the Director agreed quietly. “I decide what’s necessary.”

Parrot let out a sharp breath. “That’s what tyrants say right before they convince themselves they’re heroes.”

The words landed.

The Director went still. Not frozen, but tightly controlled. Armor plates shifted with a faint scrape, the sound small but loud in the silence that followed. His shoulders tensed. His head dipped, just slightly, as if something heavy had settled there.

“…No,” he murmured.

So soft Parrot almost missed it.

“Heroes lose what they’re trying to protect.”

Parrot frowned despite himself. “What?”

The Director didn’t answer. He turned his head away, voice lowering, the words no longer aimed so much as leaking out.

“Maybe I’ve been taking the wrong things,” he said. “People are replaceable. Pain fades. Fear passes.”

Each sentence landed slower than the last.

A pause.

“But habits,” he continued. “Instincts. The parts of you that keep trying to leave—”

Cold flooded Parrot’s veins, sudden and absolute. His stomach dropped.

“What?” he said again, sharper now. “What are you talking about?”

The Director stepped forward.

Parrot leaned back instinctively, spine striking stone. The impact knocked the breath from his lungs in a short, humiliating gasp. The chains pulled tight. His wings strained uselessly against the rope, muscles screaming in protest.

There was nowhere to go.

The Director stopped directly behind him. 

Parrot could feel the heat of him. The space where the armor blocked the air.

For a moment, nothing happened.

The silence stretched, thin and unbearable, like the second before a fall.

Then—hands.

Light. Almost careful.

They settled against Parrot’s wings, fingers splayed over feathers like someone steadying a nervous animal. The touch was wrong in a way his body recognized instantly, ancient instinct flaring hot and bright.

Parrot went rigid.

Every denial he’d been clinging to shattered at once, collapsing inward like rotten scaffolding.

This wasn’t bluffing.

This wasn’t theater.

“Maybe,” the Director said softly, “if I take your wings… you’ll stop trying to fly away.”

Parrot sucked in a sharp breath. Panic surged, fast and feral. “Stop,” he gasped.

The hands paused.

Hope flared—small, fragile, desperate enough to hurt.

“I’ll—” Parrot swallowed hard, throat working uselessly around the words. “I’ll do anything. I swear. Just—don’t.”

He hated the way his voice shook. Hated how thin and broken it sounded, like it belonged to someone else. But silence felt worse.

Silence felt like permission.

The hands moved again.

Fingers slid slowly along the length of his wings, unhurried, following the curve of bone beneath feathers as if mapping something precious. Parrot shuddered despite himself, wings twitching, instinct screaming at him to flare them wide—to make himself look bigger, stronger.

Dominance. Fear. Survival.

“Wa—wait, I didn’t mean to—”

A soft, disappointed tsk sounded behind him.

Then the hands clamped down.

Hard.

Parrot screamed.

The sound tore out of him before he could stop it, raw and sharp and ugly. Feathers were crushed beneath merciless fingers, pain blooming white-hot. 

“I warned you, Parrot,” the Director said. His voice was gentle.

That was the worst part.

The voice slid over him like something intimate and wrong, like hands meant to soothe doing the exact opposite. The grip tightened—not enough to finish it. Just enough to promise.

“You don’t stop,” the Director murmured. “You don’t learn. You keep choosing everyone else over yourself.”

Parrot sucked in a shaking breath, forehead pressing hard against the stone. His vision swam, spots bursting behind his eyes, but he stayed there.

Stayed present. Stayed upright.

Endure.

“So I’ll make you stay,” the Director continued softly. “Even if I have to take the part of you that keeps running.”

The hands did not loosen. They tightened. 

Then they pulled.

Pain detonated.

Not sharp at first—just vast. Too much, too fast, spreading through him before his body could decide where it hurt most. Parrot cried out, the sound ripping from his chest as if something deep inside him had been grabbed and yanked free.

Fire tore down his spine.

His head snapped sideways as his body convulsed, stone scraping his cheek. Chains rattled violently, metal biting deeper into his wrists as instinct took over—fight, twist, hold on—

“No—” he gasped, breath shuddering. “No—stop—”

The pressure increased. 

Muscle screamed. Breath hitched. His shoulders burned as if they’d been wrenched past their limit, joints screaming betrayal. Parrot sobbed through clenched teeth, the sound breaking loose despite his efforts to swallow it back.

He couldn’t get enough air.

His lungs burned.

Pain roared loud enough to blur the edges of the room—but Parrot forced himself to stay with it.

Stone beneath his cheek.

Iron at his wrists.

Breath in. Breath out. 

He clung to the details like anchors, teeth clenched hard enough his jaw ached. If he focused—if he stayed here—maybe he wouldn’t come apart. 

The effort only made the pain sharper.

Every breath dragged fire through his lungs. Every second stretched thin and brittle, threatening to snap. 

Don’t—

Don’t—

His thoughts began to skid, looping uselessly, blurring at the edges no matter how tightly he tried to hold them.

The Director was speaking again. 

Soft. Steady. Close.

The sound slid in beneath the pain, threading through it—too calm, too careful. Wrong. It brushed against something raw and exposed inside him, something already unraveling. 

“It’s all right,” the voice murmured. “I’ve got you. I won’t let you go.”

Parrot shook violently, tears spilling unchecked as his mind reached for the sound without understanding why. The words settled against him with a familiarity that hurt worse than the pain, pressing into something old and desperate.

That voice—

No.

No, that’s—

The thought slipped sideways, half-formed, washed thin by agony and fear. His head swam. The room tilted. And the name surfaced anyway, dragged up from somewhere buried and aching.

Wifies.

The realization hit him like a lifeline thrown into dark water.

Wifies. Wifies is here.

Relief crashed into terror, overwhelming and incoherent. His mouth opened again, and this time the sound that came out wasn’t just pain.

“Wifies—” he choked. “Wifies, help—please—help me—”

The pressure on his wings stopped.

It wasn't gone. 

It was just… still.

Parrot sobbed, the sound breaking out of him in a rush as his body finally sagged against the stone. His lungs dragged in air too fast, too shallow, each breath scraping raw paths through his chest—but he didn’t care. He was breathing. That was enough. That meant he was still here.

It had stopped.

The pain still screamed through him—bright, blinding, everywhere—but it wasn’t moving anymore. It wasn’t tearing him open further. That distinction lodged itself in his mind and refused to let go.

Relief crashed through him so hard it made him dizzy.

“Oh—” he choked, tears spilling freely now. “Wi—”

The sound cut off halfway. 

His thoughts slipped, edges softening, the room tilting strangely as his grip on the present loosened. The ache, the chains, the stone beneath his cheek—all of it blurred together around a single, impossible certainty settling warm and fragile in his chest.

He’s here.

Of course it stopped.

Wifies wouldn’t—

wouldn't let it keep happening.

“Wifies,” Parrot breathed, the name falling from his mouth like a prayer he’d learned by heart. Saying it steadied him, just enough. Gave the world shape again. Meaning.

If Wifies was here, then this was over.

Parrot sagged forward, breath hitching, letting his weight rest fully against the chains. He didn’t dare move his wings. Didn’t dare breathe too deeply. Any wrong movement might remind the pain how to start again. 

He’s here. He heard me. 

He waited for the rest of it to stop. 

It always did. 

Time stretched. Thin. Uncertain. 

Something shifted behind him. 

Parrot’s breath hitched. 

Careful now, he thought dimly. Careful meant help. Careful meant hands moving the right way. Loosening, not pulling. Fixing what had gone wrong. 

He didn’t turn. Didn’t want to scare it away. Didn’t want to break the fragile logic holding the world together. 

The grip tightened.  

Parrot froze.     

“Wifies—?” 

The name came out small. Questioning. 

Then the hands pulled. 

Agony tore through him so violently it erased the pause like it had never existed.   

Wrong. 

This was wrong. This wasn’t how it went. It wasn’t supposed to still be happening—

Wifies wouldn’t—

The thought never finished.

His scream ripped itself free, hoarse and shattered, his body convulsing as feathers tore loose in brutal handfuls. Fire screamed down his spine. Cold followed, sharp and biting, like the world itself was punishing him for still being alive.

“Stop, stOP—WIFIES—” he sobbed, voice breaking completely. “HELP—help—please—”

Why wasn't it stopping?

Why wasn't he stopping it? 

The name spilled out of him uncontrollably, again and again, tangled with sobs and screams. He couldn’t stop it. The thought that something was wrong—deeply, catastrophically wrong—kept slipping away every time it came close to forming, torn loose by pain before it could take shape.

All he knew was the voice. 

Soft. Steady. Close.

The hands didn’t stop.

They kept pulling.

Feathers tore free—one, then another, then too many to track. The sensation blurred together, pain stacking on pain until it stopped being sharp and started being everywhere. Parrot thrashed weakly, chains biting deep into his wrists as his body fought on instinct long after his thoughts lost the thread of what it was doing.

Endless. 

Endless meant there was no next.

No rise. No fall.

Just the same tearing force—again, or maybe not again at all. Parrot couldn’t tell anymore. He couldn’t tell if it was happening over and over, or if it had never stopped happening in the first place.

His body jerked.

Then jerked again.

Somewhere far away, he realized he hadn’t chosen to move. The motion came without permission, without thought. He wasn’t sure what part of him was still fighting.

He wasn’t sure he was.

His screams broke apart into something lower, uglier—sounds scraped raw from his throat without shape or words. He tried to pull them back, tried to make them mean something, but whatever part of him knew how was already gone.

“Wifies—” he cried hoarsely. “I’m scared—please—”

The words came out wrong. 

Small. Wrongly spaced. Like they belonged to someone younger than he remembered being.

Another wrench.

For one brief moment—just one—Parrot thought this was the worst of it. That this was the edge. The point where his body finally failed, where the pain would stop because it had to.

The thought barely finished forming before it collapsed.

Something inside him gave way completely.

His body sagged.

Still, the hands kept moving.

Pull.

Tear.

Pull.

Until his wings felt wrong—wrong in a way he couldn’t understand, like they were no longer where his body expected them to be. Until every nerve screamed betrayal. Until his thrashing slowed, then faltered—

Then stopped.

Parrot went limp, chains the only thing keeping him upright.

He didn’t register when the hands finally let go.

Didn’t notice the absence at first—only the sudden wrongness of his balance, the way his body no longer made sense to itself. His head drooped forward, chin striking his chest dully. Breath scraped in shallow, broken pulls that burned his throat raw.

He shook once.

Then again.

Then not at all.

Time stopped behaving properly.

When his mind dragged itself back into awareness, it wasn’t relief that met him.

It was confusion.

The pain was still there—huge, blinding, everywhere—but it had lost its edges. No warning. No pull. No change. Just a vast, unchanging pressure filling him completely, like something solid poured into his veins.

Parrot made a sound.

It took him a moment to realize it came from his own throat.

He couldn’t lift his head.

Couldn’t tell where his wings were supposed to be.

Couldn’t remember how it was meant to feel to have them.

The chains held him upright. Without them, he suspected he’d fold in on himself, but the thought drifted away before it could settle. Thinking required too much shape. Too much effort.

Whatever part of him usually did that was still there. 

Just out of reach.

Breathing happened without him.

In.

Out.

Stone pressed cold against his cheek. Iron bit into his wrists. Those sensations registered dimly, like they belonged to someone else.

Something essential was missing.

Not pain. Pain was everywhere.

Something else.

Parrot stared at nothing, eyes unfocused, mouth slack around shallow breaths. The room no longer felt like a place he was trapped in. 

It was just where he existed now. 

No after. No next move waiting to be planned.

No flight.

Only weight. 

Only stillness.

He was alive.

The thought arrived without comfort, without meaning.

It stayed anyway.