Chapter Text
Purple had no fucking clue what was going on with her.
The wings were a physical change. That, she could handle. That, she had handled, when her height sprung up and her meager curves grew in and she started bleeding every month. She was all on her own, but she had done her research and learned what was happening. Physical changes were a part of life. Physical changes were fine.
It was the mental changes that she hated.
It was bad enough that existing in the messy pile of softness that definitely hadn't been in Mango's house before made her brain all fuzzy and unnervingly calm. It was worse that him and Green and all the others kept chirping at her like birds and now she answered without a second thought. But it was downright terrifying that she couldn't remember how the hell she'd gotten into this situation.
She had been in Mango's house, early in the morning, before he'd woken up. She had gone through the Nether portal, trailing feathers and fuzz behind her, and struggled all the way to the Note Block Universe portal while her head was screaming at her to go back, Mango was there, her dad was there, she needed to go to him. (Nevermind that it was just flat-out wrong about the dad part. Her father was somewhere far away from her, where news of her exploits wouldn't reach because she'd never accomplished them in the first place. But if she kept thinking about that, she'd get emotional.)
She had gone up the very same mountain that she'd been chased up by Green, far enough away that she thought no one would find her. But that fact combined with the already repressed panic and the horrible itching on her wings had sent her into a sort of frenzy, and now she didn't remember a lick of what happened afterwards.
Oh, she got impressions of things. She knew, distantly, that she'd been scared and hurting, and then that she'd been completely calm and even warm, and there was a brief moment of coffee and breakfast, and then nothing but absolute terror for a good long while. According to Mango, she hadn't wanted to let go of him or go outside, so he'd just been put on house arrest by some girl he was probably already sick of by now. Code, what was wrong with her?
(She hadn't asked him, had given away as little as possible about her sudden brain fog that apparently blocked out an entire two days. No, he'd been telling the Prism gang when she was waking up from a nap.)
(Laughing. They were laughing at her. How freaking pathetic had she been acting?)
And then, as if things weren't awful enough, when she'd finally gotten the nerve to open her eyes and hear Mango's "good morning, sweetheart" directed at her, she opened her mouth to say "morning" back and whistled.
Whistled! Like some tiny little bird in the woods!
Yellow and Blue and Orange had all responded in kind and whistled back, which was embarrassing but not as much as Red's barely-suppressed giggles.
Cursors, it was humiliating. She hated this position she was suddenly stuck in. All of her friends having stayed the night because she got some dumb pair of wings attached to her back and couldn't handle it herself like she was supposed to. Mango having gone off and bought so much when he was already short on money and time- The man still couldn't keep a job for more than a few paychecks!
And worst of all, the clinginess. Oh, the clinginess. Fuck. She'd gotten like this only once before, even if she still didn't know why, but at least she allowed Mango to leave his own freaking house back then. Now, she wouldn't even let him leave the gaudy and brightly-colored splotch of blankets on his floor, and she was making such a mess of his things, and she really needed to clean it all up and leave as soon as possible.
Just one problem with that, though. She couldn't actually leave the stupid space to start putting things away. She could unravel something from the so-called "nest" just fine, but the moment she tried to stand up with the intent to leave it, her body just wouldn't let her. There was little she hated more than her own body refusing to listen. And she wasn't even starving or dehydrated or sick this time! No, everyone had made sure she was better fed than she deserved at any moment of her life, much less this one. So it should've been just fine to start dismantling the soft explosion by Mango's bed.
Nope. It wouldn't happen. No matter how much she tried, it wouldn't happen.
She couldn't get herself out of the nest, she wouldn't let Mango out of the nest for some ungodly reason, and then, as if she weren't being demanding enough, she wouldn't even let most of the others in! No, just Green was allowed in, and she didn't know why.
The second Red had tried, she screamed at him. She was mortified at herself after, but it didn't change the sharp shriek that would jump from her throat when he made for it. Yellow and Orange were only given enough leeway to sit by it. This annoying chittering sound would crawl off her tongue if they touched it, though. Blue hadn't even tried, except to give her a nice home-cooked meal, and why hadn't these people just left her the heck alone already?? What had she ever done to deserve this many passes on her behavior?
It didn't matter that the thought of them leaving made her already sore throat clench up and send tears to her eyes. She didn't deserve it.
She didn't deserve them.
And still, they stuck around. Still, they allowed her to be selfish and rude for no good reason- no reason at all! Hell, they were teaching Mango how to speak in chirps, like that made any sense at all.
She had to get out of here.
It didn't matter that trying to leave the nest made her muscles lock up with a fear so tight she thought her father would come through the door. She had to go. She couldn't burden these people with her problems any longer.
Still, the next few days crawled by without Purple able to step outside the pile, let alone the house. Still, the ever-lingering fear encroached on her heart when any of the Prism were out of sight, though it wasn't awful as long as someone was still in or by the nest with her… which only made her guilt worse. Here she was, keeping these people stuck here because she couldn't stop a few noises from slipping out. She really wouldn't be surprised if they decided never to see her again after this, code, she was so clingy. Mango constantly complained about his back hurting from nights on the ground instead of in his bed. Some of her friends had to go back to their PC to tell their cursor they were staying here, despite her protests. They didn't need to. Why did they feel so obligated to take care of her?
It was probably Orange and Yellow. They were both avians as well, they both sung their words like second nature, and they both constantly worried over her and her wings. She had to get out of here before they drove themselves mad with all her stupid childish needs. They couldn't even cross the edge of the dumb circle of blankets and pillows to preen her.
Speaking of, her wings had been growing bigger. They were the size of her elytra before, which were just big enough to allow her hovering and simple flight (although, with her expertise in them, "simple" became so much more). Now, they and the budding feathers they sported stretched long across her body, all the way down to her knees when she stood up straight and folded them in. Green said they only promised to grow even more.
So now she was worried about not even fitting through Mango's door anymore. Which was real great, yep, not terrifying at all.
(Logically, she knew she would still be able to fit. Orange did, after all, and its wings were the same size hers were now, if slimmer beneath the feathers. But she had lived her whole life thinking of and preparing for the worst, and then the worst had happened a lot of the time. This was one thing she couldn't reasonably blame herself for.)
It was one pitch-black night outside, with Mango in his bed (one hand drooping down so Purple could hold it, her heart clenched when she did, he loves me screamed that feeling in her chest and he's sick of me cried the old memories in her head) and Green curled up against the edge of the pillows (always nearby, always checking on her, soft notes falling out with his softer snores that made her throat ache to respond in kind, to sing with him again, but no, that would wake him up) and the other four sticks of ALANSPC all scattered about the living room floor, some closer than others (Yellow using the nest as a pillow and nothing else even though sleeping on the hard floor is so uncomfortable, Orange in a ball like a cat blanketed by his nice white-and-black wings that he let her touch with shaky hands, Blue hunched over Mango's desk and asleep on some books she'd been poring over with him earlier, Red next to the trapdoor and sprawled out like nothing mattered in the whole wide world as long as they were with the others), that Purple was finally able to stand up, and step outside into the cold night.
The simple action of getting both her feet on the freezing surface was agonizing, slow and silent as usual and shivering like she wasn't supposed to. For a long, long moment, she couldn't move at all, arms and legs shaking with the effort of just keeping her upright and still and not jumping back into the nest to snuggle deep into its warm warm warm embrace, it was right there and full of things her friends made, things that looked and smelled like her friends, her dad, the people she loves-
Purple took another step.
The floorboards did not creak under her weight, she'd long learned which parts did and didn't. It was muscle memory by now, to step where she would go undetected, even as her mind was abuzz with a horrible whirlwind demanding that she lay back down, get back to safety, go back to Green and Mango and drag Yellow and Orange inside with her, call Blue over to protect her and scream for Red to wake up and run expert hands through her feathers until she calmed down. She did not do any of those things. Those were avian things, awful clingy avian things that would wake them up and force them to do something they probably didn't even want to do, deep down.
She hated those new instincts. She thought she had buried the yearning and the desire with her mother and her childhood innocence.
Whatever. She could bury it again.
Though every step was painful, the icy paint beneath her toes stabbing every bit of skin it touched, Purple slipped on her socks and shoes and wrapped her long fingers around the door handle.
Against her will, she looked back. The sight of the four sticks by the pile of soft things where she should go made her heart ache, made her breathing stop until her airway did as well, made her hands shake so violently she thought someone would surely hear the rattling and creaking of her bones and wake up.
No one stirred. No one made a sound.
So Purple didn't either, and with the intense reluctance of leaving home for the first time again, she turned the handle and quietly opened the door. The hinges creaked. She moved discreetly enough that they didn't do it loudly.
The cold air flowed into the house, and she heard Yellow shifting (the drag of its small wings against the ground and its skin, the tiny groan in its voice, the way those wings so often wrapped around her while that voice rumbled from its chest-). But even if they had woken up properly, the practice was so ingrained into her bones that she slipped through a gap just wide enough and closed the door just as sneakily as it had opened.
Her wings jittered. No one in sight meant the pain in her throat turned sharp and wet, triggering a familiar stinging in her eyes and nose, and Purple pressed her hand to her face and refused to look at anything at all until she was sure she had her emotions under control enough.
Fuck. This wasn't how this was supposed to go. No one in sight was supposed to mean a feeling of security, the silence around her was meant to be a reassurance that no one was here to see her or to sneak up on her.
It was cold. It was freezing. Heck, it was frigid outside, where she didn't belong.
She shook her head. A deep breath forced itself in through her nose and mouth at the same time. If she didn't belong out here, then she had to get back home. To her place, in the city, not these suburbs an hour's leisure flight away.
Purple decisively turned on her heel, not allowing herself another glance at the house she had spent the last few days in, and started walking. Her wings spread and flapped, and flapped, and she jumped up into the air, and lit a firework, just as she had always done. That new feeling shrieked at her that her flight feathers weren't grown in yet, her regular feathers weren't even grown in yet- She forced it away. Hovering was all she needed. Hovering and fireworks were what she had gotten by with for years now. Besides, these wings were more than big enough to support her doing that.
She nearly crashed twice.
She had to rest for almost ten minutes halfway through. Eight of those ten minutes were spent fighting the impulse to go back.
She landed on the doorstep of her apartment building a bedraggled, frostbitten mess.
Soft gray down scraped off on each of the six stairways she climbed.
The mattress groaned under her weight as she fell hard onto it. Wings aching, limbs exhausted, she dragged her single pathetic blanket over herself and laid there until sunrise.
She wished she could say she slept that night.