Xisuma's Parrotsitting [HermitSteal AU]

And just like this, we're together

TW//Slight panic attack.

The house isn't the same when they get back. Not the arrangement of the furniture, it isn't trashed, no, but Pearl is the one riffling through the kitchen cabinets when Parrot and Spoke wake up in the morning. The door to Xisuma's room is shut, most of the time, and the woman had taken up house-sitting duties with a sharp smile and wild, red eyes that spoke of bloodthirst.

Parrot pushes the door open slowly, as quietly as he possibly can. There is a certain stillness to the man's body on the bed, buried under blankets, that reminds Parrot of a dead man. A few hours ago, Xisuma might as well have been dead. When they brought him in, he was barely breathing and his skin was ice cold; the only sound he'd made was a cough and the catch of breath as he was suffocating on air .

There is no sound now. There is no movement, no pain visible on his bare face but there is no real peace set into it either. The oxygen –now turned void – mask fogs black in spaced out pulses with each labored breath and that's the most active Parrot has seen Xisuma in two days.

So, he creeps into the room, like he did yesterday and the day before. Pushing his fingers against the side of Xisuma's neck when he's at the bedside. The pulse is weak against his fingertips and he has to push down a little harder to properly feel it but it's there; it's there and it's the only sign that there is a heart working under the armor plates over Xisuma's chest. Parrot studies the gaps between the plates and how there is black fabric wrapping around Xisuma's neck, right where the helmet would connect.

There is no helmet now, and Parrot doesn't know if there is a spare somewhere in the house to replace the old one. The hair that falls over the man's closed eyes was a surprise when Parrot first registered (after the night of the retrieval) that Xisuma wasn't wearing anything around his head. The man's whole face was a surprise, honestly; he doesn't look as young as he sounds and Parrot is having trouble connecting the voice to a face he'd never properly seen before.

Parrot prods at Xisuma's face, poking at his cheek, nudging his head. He doesn't like how motionless the man is on the bed, only showing the basics of liveliness. He hates it but he can't do anything to reverse what has already happened. Xisuma was lucky to be alive at the moment, deprived of precious void as he was when Parrot broke him free of the freezing cage.

When he asked Pearl if she knew why Xisuma had been put in a freezer, she said she didn't know. So, he has a lot of questions to ask when Xisuma finally wakes up: like how he got kidnapped in the first place! Also, who kidnapped him would be a great question; Parrot is the only one allowed to kidnap Xisuma and get away with it –he's proven that much.lls and sticks to the man's sweaty forehead is soft but also confusingly white . There aren't many wrinkles on Xisuma's face and he looks like the average adult man, yet he has hair that could only fit old age. It's a little puzzling but it might be a voidwalker thing; to have white hair.

Then, assured that Xisuma isn't dying on him, Parrot steps back. He paces around the room, gnawing at his knuckles; he doesn't feel sure; he doesn't feel safe with the voidwalker out of commission like that. Spoke is somewhere in the office, last time he checked, riffling through cabinets, no doubt. He wants to go find his friend, he wants to go play, maybe see what Miss Pearl is up to in the kitchen but...

He needs to stay here. He can't leave; what if Xisuma wakes up? Or worse, what if he dies when he leaves? Life has never liked Parrot enough to grant him good things, he knows that; the moment he turns his back, everything will go south.

Yesterday and the day before, it was either Spoke or Pearl who would drag him out of the room –sometimes kicking and screaming– to knock some sense into him. He'd linger outside the door afterwards, up till the point where it opened a crack again and nothing was distracting the avian's mind.