NOTE: Karkat is twenty-one, and Sollux is twenty-three, just to clarify.

It's funny. When most think of white wings, they think of angels, of rapture and heaven and bliss. They think of the dove, of its peace-bringing olive branch.

They think of God, of salvation, of beauty.

You think of leather jesses. You think of black baggy clothing and imprisonment. You think of stale water and putrid food. You think of a million pairs of eyes always looking at you, like you're some kind of animal in a zoo.

It's funny, because when they think of wings, they think of flying and freedom.

You think of cages and the dark stone ceiling, always blocking the sky.

You remember your childhood well. C'était magnifique.

You remember your mother, curly blonde hair piled high on her head, radiant smile always on her lips. You remember your father, brown beard, husky voice and booming laugh. You remember your brother, far-too-curly black hair and wide, lazy grins.

You remember yourself as well; you were so different then. Back then, you had fair hair and a light laugh. Your wings were small, small enough to hide under a leather jacket. You thought wings were exciting then, thought they'd bring you luck.

Instead, all they've brought you is fire, and blood, and cages. Cage, after cage, after cage, after cage. House, after house, after house, after house. Owner, after owner, after owner, after owner. Lie, after lie, after lie, after lie. Diables, chacun d'entre eux.

Then you landed here, in the middle of a freaks menagerie. Had you known what your wings would do, what they would cause, you would have cut them off. No, you would have ripped them off.

You tell yourself this everyday, every minute, every second you find yourself trapped behind gold bars. You tell yourself this once for every blue eye that looks your way. You scream it at yourself for every brown eye. You ignore green eyes because they remind you of your mother. Any colors ranging between those get a bark of annoyance and nothing more.

You catalogue every iris that casts its glance in your direction, and berate yourself according to its pigment. You have nothing else to do, really, except wallow in self-hatred, but that grew boring ten years ago.

So you continue to raise self-loathing like a drunkard's beer tab, reminding yourself over and over again that this is all your fault. Had you kept your head down, been smarter, been more careful, you wouldn't be locked in a cage in the Baroness's private animal collection.

Ha, private indeed. Not so private now that she has a wonderful mutant to show off to the world. Now that she has something to rake in the dough.

Vous n'êtes rien, mais une bête de les.

May Twelfth, year sixteen into your stint as a showbeast. It is ten o'clock on this rather sunny morning, but you cannot see the sunlight. All the windows around you are shut tight, and your only illumination is the white lamps lining the walls at six-foot intervals.

There was an influx of visitors today, as that certain country's ambassador had come to Skaia, bringing tourists in his wake like a wave. Over the course of the five hours since your exhibit has been open, you have counted six-hundred and eighty-seven pairs of blue eyes, ninety-six hazel, eight-hundred and eleven green, and one thousand nine-hundred and thirteen brown, censuring yourself for every one of them.

When many of the visitors leave for lunch, you sigh gratefully, letting your eyes flicker across the near-empty hall you're in. Your giant, no, humongous birdcage is settled in the center of the room, fifty feet away from every wall except the one behind you, which is still rather far away. Your only form of cover within the cage is the giant nest in the center, and a brass perch about fifty feet above aforementioned nest. It's a pain to fly up there, and it's even more uncomfortable to stay, so you tend to stick to the nest. Today, however, there are only three people in the room right now, including the two guards, so you are actually quite content to lean against your closely-crafted bars, letting your wings out to stretch them.

The one guest still here ooh's at the sight of your unfurled feathered mutations, and you even see one of the guards looking in interest. You tend to keep your wings folded in the presence of others because, let's face it, you're embarrassed and you don't really like people looking at them. But right now, you're rather tired and really couldn't care less what the others did, as long as they didn't touch your wings. Hells-to-the-no. Your wings are extensions of your body, and only you are allowed to touch them. And only for grooming purposes, because despite the fact that you've had them your entire life, they still kind of freak you out.

You save your preening for after hours and you fly up to the perch to do so, because not only do you not want your nightly-guard watching creepily, but your wings are, well, rather large. Aussi large que les portes du ciel, as wide as heaven's gates, and hang down clear to the floor while you're sitting on the perch.
It is, however, not after hours, so you leave your pure-white wings alone and set yourself to a small nap before the afternoon rush.

Your nap is ended all too soon and you quickly fold your wings as new visitors flood in, bending the kink out of your back before settling back against the bars.

You should really just call it mesh, as the rods of gold-plated steel cross each other close enough together that you can only stick a hand through the bars, and just barely. Despite that fact, the Baroness had ordered a twenty-foot circumference of velvet roping to ring your cage, and you're actually a little appreciative of this, because, while it keeps you from reaching out, it keeps the people from reaching in. You might have killed yourself by now if people could reach in. Despite being a mutant, you still deserve some rights, right? You are not an animal with no emotion. Vous n'êtes pas un animal sans émotion.

Your thoughts are interrupted by a child crying, and you look out at the audience, finding the small girl wailing near the front, tugging on her mother's hand. In the child's fit, her round glasses nearly slip off her speckled nose, then she sees you looking at her and immediately stops crying.

You hold her gaze calmly, her green eyes widening. Ah, green eyes. They always bring back memories of your mother, making you shift uncomfortably in the black, coarsely made fabric of your clothing.

The little girl still hasn't looked away, hopping from one foot to the other nervously, so you throw her a slight smile, something you do not do often. Actually, judging by how taught your cheeks are while treating the child, it seems you haven't smiled in a rather long time.

The girl timidly throws you a grin, before turning to follow her mother out of the hall. You sigh, and start counting eye colors again, distaste rumbling in the pit of your stomach. Or it could just be the slightly-molding bread you were forced to eat last night.

As you reach over two thousand brown pairs of irises, you begin to wonder what you would do if you were encounter gold eyes. How would you choose to scold yourself? Would you ignore them like you ignore the green ones, or would categorize under "other"?

You spend the rest of the day thinking about this, and almost forget to preen before you fall asleep.

When you awake the next morning, you groan. Not only is five o'clock a terrible time to open your exhibit, but your jesses are getting old, and are rubbing painfully into the skin around your ankles. Seriously, they think you're bird enough to chain you back with leather straps.

Actually, it works very well, and you're just thankful they don't hood you.

You slowly rise from the nest provided to you and rub the sleep from your eyes. That having been done, you pad over to the furthest point in the cage away from where the guests can be, and find your breakfast without surprise. They always put it in while you're asleep, so you don't start attacking them (Yeah, who knew a ten year-old with wings could take down a six-foot soldier with his bare hands?)

You sigh and settle down onto the cold metal floor and scoop up the tray of a few slices of ham and a large trencher of soup. There's also a large tin cup of water, and you always save that for last, because that's all you get until supper after your exhibit closes.

As you are digging into your rather meager meal, you hear the door to the hall open, marking the entrance of a guard. Normally, you wouldn't care, but as you spy dirty-blonde locks, you are immediately interested. Who is he? Qui est-il? You've never seen him before. Vous ne l'avez jamais vu auparavant.

He goes about his business, making sure all the lamps are lit and full, all the velvet ropes secure and their posts unmovable, and you watch him. He's lanky, extremely so, and would tower above you if you were to stand side-by-side. His uniform looks a little small, and you doubt they have any that will fit his long legs.

But you don't care about that. You want to see his eyes. You want to see what's hidden behind the strange glasses he wears. He never connects your gazes, and you begin to suspect he's purposefully doing so. Geeze, what did you ever do to him?

You shift your wings annoyedly, your white feathers making a faint ruffling sound. You see the guard glance over at you, and you send him a glare. Hah, serves him right.

He visibly winces and returns to tightening the ropes surrounding you. You follow his movements as you slowly chew your breakfast. He seems really jumpy, like he's nervous, and hell, he probably is. How often do you get assigned to guard a human with wings? He probably didn't even know what he was getting into when he applied for this job.

You shift again, and your elbow bumps your cup, knocking it out of your cage and sending it flying across the floor. You yelp as you're hit with the splashing water, and your jesses are accidentally yanked rather painfully.

"What'th going on over there?" You look up in surprise at the lisp and search for its owner, eyes falling on your dirty-blonde guard, who is quickly striding towards you, his nightstick out and ready.

You can't help but snerk as he bends over to pick up your water cup. "Your lisp negates all the authority your uniform implies, dude." Damn, he looks like he's seen a ghost. He stands stalk-still, knuckles white around the cup.

"Y-You... You can talk?" You snort. Jesus Christ, what did he think you were? An animal?

"'Course I can talk." Though, granted, you haven't spoken in a while; your voice is a little hoarser than usual.

His eyebrows kit together. "H-How?" Whoops. There goes your interest in this entire conversation.

"By using my mouth, genius. You, however, seem to be talking out of your ass." You relish in his surprise, quite happy to let him get a taste of your vulgar language. It's always so amusing to see a guard's face when you start throwing around swears, because they not only think you're uneducated, but because of how normal you seem. "What, they didn't tell you during orientation?" He still doesn't respond, and you sigh, shaking your head. "Hey, can you refill that?" You gesture to the cup in his hands. "I haven't even had any yet."

"U-Uh, yeah. Sure." He shakes himself, walking over to the water fountain closest to your cage; there are twelve in here, and the closest is about twenty feet away, so you watch the guard as he walks there and back, smirking. This is going to be fun. Cela va être amusant.

He passes the cup to you with some difficulty, and the skin where his fingers brushes your hand is left rather tingly. As to why, you cannot fathom. As soon as you have a grip on the cup, he pulls back like he was burned, and avoids your eyes again, shuffling his feet. You raise an eyebrow and raise the cup to your lips, taking in the guard's features. Said features are rather pointed, but they're far from unattractive. If it weren't for the circles under his eyes and the scar on the right side of his jaw, some might even call him handsome.

For a split second, his gaze meets yours, but it passes so quickly, you wonder if it had happened at all. Ooh, he really is interesting.

You smile sincerely, cocking your head to see him better through your bars. "Karkat." He jerks his head up in surprise. You keep your slight smile on to reassure him. "My name is Karkat." He just keeps staring at you like you had spoken gibberish. "And your name is...?"

"O-Oh, um, Thollux. Thollux Captor." A laugh squeezes itself from your chest before you can stop it as you pause mid-sip.

"Well then, 'Thollux'. It's very nice to meet you." You continue to laugh at his disgruntled expression, and just like that, you make your first friend in sixteen long years.

How magnificent. Quel magnifique.

A/N: Welcome to Des Ailes Dorées, my newest edition to the wonderful fandom of Homestuck.

I have a couple things for you readers to ponder.
First: "Can I actually pull off second-person?" I haven't really ever written in it, so is it "Yeah, you can pull it off", or is it "NUUUU! GO BACK TO FIRST PERSON!"?
Second: "Should I even continue writing this in the first place?" I dunno how I feel about this as of yet, so you guys get to decide.
Third: "SolKat?" I'm kind of already heading in that direction, but I want your guys' opinion as well.
Fourth: Are the French bits confusing? It was a kind of spur of the moment thing, and I'm just wondering if they even fit the story well enough to keep them. Your thoughts?
Fifth: Am I even getting the French right? I've never studied it, so...

I explained most of the French bits, but left some English translations out, so here they are in order of appearance:

C'était magnifique - It was magnificent.

Diables, chacun d'entre eux - Devils, all of them.

Vous n'êtes rien, mais une bête de les - You're nothing but a beast to them.

I think I have the rest have their English bits next to them.

Okays, I've had the flu for about a week now, and have been kind of incapacitated, so I will blame that for my lack of updates with Runners and Charcoal & Scars. I will try to get to that soon.

I LOVE YOU ALL! Everyone's support on my series Of Freckles and Silver is greatly appreciated, and it means so much to me that people are actually reading them. I'd put a heart here if fanfic didn't remove the greater-than symbol.

Ciao for now,

~Webs