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Grian cannot see past the void-like darkness that encompasses him, but he knows even so that he is back in the birdcage.
The ground beneath his hands is flat, unnaturally so, and it’s cold enough to send a shiver through him. He knows that if he reached forward five or so inches, his shaking fingers would collide with the metal rim of the cage. He knows that if he allowed his fingers to delicately climb upwards, skimming the air ahead of them, he would be met with thick, decorated bars.
He daren’t.
This cage is one where he has spent many, many hours, or perhaps days. Maybe even weeks.
It’s the place that he gets put when he ‘misbehaves’, a sentiment that he has heard repeated so many times throughout his life.
While the cage was perhaps never as literal as it is now in all of those previous times, Grian thinks that it has always existed, even if just in his mind.
When he was young, Grian thinks that his parents were that cage.
They controlled him, sent him away whenever it pleased them, and made sure that he was never an inconvenience. He felt trapped in that house, and he knew that he had to leave, even at only six years old. When they sent him to Japan for the first time, it tasted like freedom. It tasted like something that he grew to crave, his stomach rumbling at the very thought of that independence.
He got that freedom back during highschool, and it was delicious to begin with; a new, exotic delicacy that he couldn't get enough of. But eventually, the cage came back, and nothing tasted quite so sweet anymore.
In his teenage years, the cage was his identity; his fears.
He was someone who was trapped, and he learned to make something of it; to allow that to turn him into something that he didn't want to be. He knew that he was trapped, so eventually he stopped trying to escape, and, at the same time, he stopped caring about his fears. If he was trapped, then did anything that he did truly matter? He didn't have a choice either way, so he may as well make something fun of it.
And he did. He allowed that place, that place that was so uncanny and uncaring and unlike anywhere else in the world, to change him into someone... free. Or, something akin to freedom. A sort of poisoned, sick version.
He didn't need to care anymore, he could go along with whatever crazy scheme with no consequences, but that freedom was... soured, even if he didn’t know it at the time. It tasted like it had expired, like it was coated in mould and rot, but he didn’t know at the time. It was as though he was taking every bite in the dark, so he couldn’t see just how mangled it was. That spoiled, infested freedom was the only one he had ever had tried, so he didn’t know that it wasn’t supposed to taste so disgusting; he didn’t know that the texture wasn’t supposed to make him recoil.
That freedom wasn’t anything good, it was something that he didn't need- too whole and too complete to be good for anyone involved. He used it to do horrible things with his laughing friends at his side; things that he didn't know that he would live to regret.
And maybe he wasn't in the cage anymore at that point, but the shadow of the bars loomed so closely over him that he lashed out at every glimpse of the dark. He thrashed and screamed and tried his hardest to escape, even when the door was open to him.
At some point, for one reason or another, Grian finally realised that the door was open. He realised that the birdcage he was being kept in wasn't locked, so he spread his wings and flew away so fast that you would think there was fire licking at his heels.
He flew straight from that open cage into one of his own making.
World-hopping was fun, to begin with.
He travelled around with his sister, his partner, and a few other friends, and they got up to mischief. He looks back on that period with some level of fondness; they were together, and they were out of that world that they grew up in. That was all that mattered to Grian for a while, as he learned just how much he hated the person that he had become.
Then, he tried to settle down somewhere. He built robots to keep him company, throwing himself into his projects and running himself ragged for months. He didn't leave that tiny private world, he didn't leave that birdcage. He simply kept himself to himself, only barely interacting with the few people that he allowed to enter that world.
It was lonely, but he did it to himself. It's never felt like that time - that cage - was one he could really complain about, not without acknowledging that it was all his fault. That the people he hurt via his self-imposed isolation were hurt by him and him alone.
Grian wanted to believe that he was trying to be better, at that time - learning from the mistakes he made during highschool - but the way that he treated his friends, his creations, himself- it makes it hard to believe.
Either way, Pearl eventually managed to drag him out of that place, convincing him to put the coding that he had learned how to do during that time to good use.
Then, he created Evo.
Evo was everything to him, for a long, long while. He didn't feel trapped there, but he didn't feel free enough to be limitless either. He could be himself and have fun, but, at the same time, he had responsibilities. It was a nice balance. It was possibly the only place that hadn't felt like a cage at all.
(To begin with.)
On Evo, with all of the people that he cared about, Grian truly felt like he could spread his wings. He could take off and fly towards the clouds without a moment's hesitation, and something that wholly, undeniably good- well, it couldn't last.
The looming shadow of the cage reemerged eventually, as it always seems to, and then he ended up here. Sat in the cage that is unnaturally smooth, with the beginnings of cold bars that lie only a few inches ahead of his splayed fingers.
He doesn’t like thinking about it- about the first months that he spent under Their watch.
"No one will find you," They would coo at him, stroking his wings and preening his hair. "We will take care of you, little one."
They reminded him of his own parents, oddly enough. They were restrained in their affections, oddly controlling of his every move. It was as though they had taken him in expecting a statue, but instead finding him to be something haunted. Something broken.
He felt more like a ghost than he cares to admit, for those long months. He would walk the halls aimlessly, whenever he was able - simply thankful for the mercy of being able to walk around. Whenever he couldn't do that - whenever he misbehaved, usually in some way that he just couldn't understand - Grian would be locked in the cage.
Just like his parents, all false pretences of care and love would be dropped; replaced with a hard, angry interior that would scold and punish him, over and over until he could take it no longer.
Sometimes it would be painful in more traditional ways – a pull to his hair, a slap across the face, a grip on his wrist; but other times it would be different. Other times, they might use magic – binding him tightly and replaying the burning downfall of his home over and over, forcing him to watch as his friends and family were killed again and again. Or perhaps, they might simply berate him - telling him the things that he tells himself, reiterating his most hate-filled thoughts and filling him with doubt.
Most often, though, they would throw him in the cage. It seemed to be their favourite- something that they could take a strange, almost perverse joy in. Perhaps it was because he made such a challenge of himself - constantly lashing out and disobeying them, whenever he could actively see an opportunity to do so. Or perhaps it was just because they could.
Either way, Grian has been in this scenario a million times before.
He isn't certain how long it will be until they let him out. Sometimes he's only in the cage for a few hours, other times he's trapped there for weeks. On one notable occasion, he was kept there for three weeks; told to sing and keep himself presentable like the good canary that he is, until they deemed it enough to let him out.
He doesn't know how they manage to flip-flop so seamlessly- how they manage to change so easily between the loving, careful guardians providing him guidance and advice as he navigates his new existence; and the cruel, merciless creatures that the legends tell of.
It hardly matters, Grian supposes, as he closes the gap between his fingertips and the bars, wrapping his cold hands around colder metal and clinging to them like a lifeline. He leans forward heavily, mask-covered face pressed into the cooling steel as he chirps lowly to himself; a sad, lonely song.
He will wait, just as he always has, until he is taken somewhere new. He will stay in the cage for as long as it takes, because he has learned, time and time again, that the cage will always take on a new form.
He will not be here forever - just as he was not in highschool forever, or on Evo forever. Eventually, he will end up somewhere new, with a new cage and new captors.
Perhaps it's not the most soothing of thoughts, but he lets it placate him nonetheless, as he settles back into waiting, wings hanging heavy and useless at his back.
The cage is not broad, and the bars are not thin, but Grian knows that he will end up somewhere that he can fly freely, that he can see far and wide, someday.
Someday.