Work Text:
There would be no freedom for Sunday.
Not anymore.
This freefall, this was freedom.
His last freedom.
Fleeting.
A bird with clipped wings, the fledgling not yet learned to fly, he plummets.
Death would be his freedom.
Life had kept him in chains.
All his life, chains had wrapped his halo & bound his wings, but in death he would finally fly.
If allowed to live, would he not just linger in a cell?
If brought back to his past, his life would still not be his own.
It would be Theirs.
Caged birds will never learn to fly.
And that Sunday was, a bird never learning to fly, never allowed in the sky.
He lived his life in an opulent, gilded cage, in which he was the Lord.
And just as the lord had done for them, he would die for their sins, and his own.
The wind whistled past his face, a cold slap to the face.
Disharmony in the face of Harmony itself.
His wings were ruffled by the fall, feathers displaced, all his work undone.
Idly, hysterically, he thinks that they would need to be preened.
As if he would survive this.
If all went according to plan, the plan he had made up in mere minutes, perhaps Sunday would be no more.
And yet like a bird fighting to get out of a cage, his heart longs for someone to save him.
Show me how much you care.
But no.
This was what was best.
His redemption would be his death, and he finds solace in that.
The people may now hate him, his sister may scorn him and yet, death was a mercy.
He would rather die than see her face as she turned and walked away, leaving him to the wolves yet again.
For the fact is, she had always been his redemption.
When the Family took them in, it was because of Robin’s abilities.
Her performances garnered Their attention, and admiration.
He was who he was because of her.
They took him & Robin in, & cleansed them of their sins.
At first, he was scared, afraid of this new salvation.
They trimmed his wings, as was best for him, and did not let him fly away into the face of that great evil.
However, with time, the urge to flee grew less and less, until it was no more.
In time, he decided, he would show the world, he would show Robin, how grateful he was for this deliverance from evil.
He would pay her back!
For how shameful was it, as an older sibling, to depend on your younger?
In reverse, shouldn’t he help carry her sins?
He was made to be dependable.
How . . . sinful, to encumber another with your burdens?
Sunday shouldn’t have to burden another with anything, & Robin should be free of hers.
Not meant to carry his.
In the perfect dreamscape, his cross is his to bear, his sins alone he must repent.
Like a martyr to his religion, his death would absolve guilt.
And he is glad, glad that he had gone to confessional before this, so that he might die without worry.
Though the truth is, Sunday feels he deserves that punishment.
The purgatory looms, at the back of his mind, and it calls his name.
The truth is, Sunday still worries.
For Robin.
Would his death affect her?
Would his tarnished image taint her voice, her stardom?
Hopefully, the answer was no, that in those few moments in which Sunday had shown his true self, feathers falling back to reveal snakeskin, she had ceased to care.
She had seen the monster beneath the mask, had seen the angel cast down from Heaven by Their hand.
But one could not hope in a dream.
Robin had once told him,
“Hope is the thing with feathers.”
As she had cared for the Charmony dove as if it was hope itself.
She had coddled it, fed it seeds from her open palm, and perhaps that was why it was dead when she was gone.
Sunday could not sustain hope.
Like those of which he spoke, a man fighting for his own survival barely has time to hope.
A bird fighting to fly does not hope.
& he dare not dream of hoping, when a wasted moment, a selfish prayer is all that it would take to turn Their eyes from him.
But yet, as he falls through the sky, into a dream, he finds himself hoping.
For Their eyes have already turned from him, & hope is an easy thing.
It is easy to have, painful to admit, at times, like a sin.
& what was one more sin, atop his golden throne of lies?
And as such, Sunday allows himself to hope, hands clasped in prayer.
Oh Triple faced soul, look down upon my sister for me.
Let her smile once again.
And as the wind whistled past, he thought he heard Them laugh, like church bells on a Sunday.
As Penacony left behind that gloomy Sunday, to begin anew on a Monday.