Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Orange wakes to-

-To that same singing. It never stops. She can't understand how the bird, for all it's terror and skittishness, boldly announces to the world it's still there. That it's alive.

It must be lonely. She doesn’t love it. She doesn’t care for it. The bird sings all day and she feeds it and gives it water and spends the rest of her day at work trying to live another day. It frustrates her. Orange does the same thing every day and so does the bird, and they must hate each other for it.

The goldfinch presses against the bars when she pours it birdseed and she does everything she can to ignore the singing. Orange feels like she’s the one in the cage, that she was something to admire and be used as status. That she was in this little room the size of herself and left to be gawked at.

Because every second of herself has been left for others to see, and she knows they see her as that poor mother who lost her child. And that’s what makes it so awful, because she is! She is someone who’s daughter died and she’s still here, doing the same things she was doing before.

Orange’s tired of it. She’s tired of the pity and the “I’m just checking in” and how people won’t look at her the same way anymore. They dance around Gold having died like it’ll kill them to even think of it. And then she does the same! Because what has she been doing in the past months other than trying to forget about it!

So it pisses her off, and then her mother buys her a fucking bird about it and it’s just-

That damn bird. She can't- Not anymore. Orange storms into the living room and

                              the bi-

                           rdcage is op-

                       -ened and she has-

                           it in her hand-

..........................it squirms, wings-.................................

                          beating against her

                          peeping as she holds-

                          it tighter and tighter

                          she digs her thumbs in

                          against its neck and s-

                          -he can feel its pulse-

                           flutter. the thin bones

                           in it's neck threaten-

                            ing to give in to her

                              to break under her.

                               the bird screa-

                                  ms when she

                                   -presses-

                                   down, sh-

                                    rieks a-

                                    nd claws

                                     for its

                                     life, a-

                                     nd then

                                     she fee-

                                     ls---the

                                     sn-  -ap

-the goldfinch stills, twitching in her palms.

It is then that Orange stands down, that she looks at her hands, and she cries.